gif image question

[timepiececlock]

Ok, I made my poem icon. I made it as a slide-show type animated gif, and it's pretty.

But when I save it as a gif file, it looks crappy, because it goes down to 256 colors.

This didn't bother me with the John/Aeryn icon I made a before, but with this new one it's very obvious, probably because there's a lot of bright colors. Also, very detailed pictures

Is anyone able to, or know how to save/create a gif file so that is doesn't lose all the image detail when you save?

Comments

[vrya.livejournal.com]

didja dither? sometimes that helps, sometimes not...

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I don't know what that is.

Re:

[vrya.livejournal.com]

well, where you set it depends on the program, but it mine, there's an "optimization wizard" that allows you to reduce the number of colors used, and to set whether to use "dither" or "nearest neighbor" when reducing from a photo-quality image to a gif. If you can't find it in your animation program, you can go back to whatever program you created the individual images in (Photoshop?) and index them there (change the mode from RGB to indexed), which will give you more control over how the colors map... hope that helps!

[mrthursday.livejournal.com]

Can you not save (and I don't know about Lj, But I know alittle about reprographic processing) it as a Jpeg? They tend to retain detail better

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I would, but it's an animated gif file-- a jpeg is a still-picture of one frame.

Re:

[mrthursday.livejournal.com]

yes how silly of me...!


Well then I know nothing!