Advanced GIF Animator Tutorial Introduction Advanced GIF Animator manipulates GIF-files. It has the following features:   • makes animated GIF-files from set of BMP-files;   • imports frames from other GIF-files;   • duplicates, merges and crops frames;   • defines GIF-files global parameters: logical screen size, background color index, number of loops in animation;   • defines offset, transparency, interlacement, delay, title and value "how to remove" for each separate image;   • adds and removes text commentaries;   • edits color palettes;   • optimizes size of GIF-files;   • shows GIF size and download time for different speeds of modems;   • saves images of GIF-file as a set of BMP-files.       GIF file contains multiple images. These images are created with any computer graphic applications such as Windows Paint, Adobe Photoshop and so on.       Animation in GIF format is realized as a sequence of images, which differs slightly from each other. That gives an illusion of a motion.       This tutorial shows you the basic principles of creating, editing, and optimizing a GIF animation with Advanced GIF Animator. Getting Started   • How to add frames   • How to reorder frames   • How to preview animation   • How to control animation parameters   • How to use file operations Optimization   • Optimal number of frames   • Size and offset of image   • Using dialog "Optimize" Getting Started Adding Frames       Select Add from the Image menu or click the toolbar button       Standard open dialog will appear. You can select BMP or GIF file for insertion.       Sample directory (located in the \tutorial\samples subfolder of where Advanced GIF Animator was installed) contains files named green.bmp, yellow.bmp, and red.bmp. Select the green.bmp file and AGIF will add new frame with image from selected file. Repeat this operation for files yellow.bmp, red.bmp, and second time yellow.bmp. Now you have four frames in the list. Note: If you add GIF file with more then one frames all of them will be added to the end of frame list. Reordering Frames       When you add new BMP images or other GIF files they appear at the end of image list. You can move frame later to any place of the list.       To move image up in the list select Move Up from Image menu or click the toolbar button .       To move image down in the list select Move Down from Image menu or click the toolbar button .       To remove image from the list select Delete from Image menu or click the toolbar button . Previewing the Animation       To preview animation select Animate from Animation menu or click the toolbar button . Image on this button will be changed to . Animation in Advanced GIF Animator continues until you stop it or begin editing actions. To stop animation select Animate from Animation menu or click the toolbar button . Editing Animation Parameters       GIF file contains value of animation loops. You can view and edit this value on the Global page of attribute toolbar (If attribute toolbar is not present on the screen - switch it on by selecting Attribute Toolbar from View menu). In addition to loop counter there is checkbox infinite loop, which in checked state makes counter unavailable.       There is another way to change loop counter: select Loop Counter from Animation menu or click the toolbar button .       Each image in GIF file has individual value of delay measured in one-hundredths of a second. For example, value 25 means a quarter of a second. You can view and edit this value on page Image of attribute toolbar (If attribute toolbar is not present on the screen - switch it on by selecting Attribute Toolbar from View menu).       There is another way to change delay: select Delay from Animation menu or click the toolbar button . You can define delay value for selected frame or single value for all frames at once.       For our example, we may set delays in green and red frames as 300 (3 seconds) and in two yellow frames as 50 (half of a second). Now we have the following result:       Default value of loop counter for new GIF and default value of delay are defined in Preferences Dialog, available by selecting Preferences from File menu (or by "hot key" F6). Saving and Loading       To save your animation select Save from File menu or click the toolbar button . If it is new file (has not name yet) then standard Windows Save Dialog appears to define file name and the folder it will be stored to. You can save GIF file with different name by selecting Save As from File menu.       You can save GIF frames a set of BMP files. To do it select Save To BMP-files from File menu.       To load GIF file select Open from File menu or click the toolbar button . Optimization in Advanced GIF Animator       It is important to make GIF files smaller as Internet pages containing smaller GIF files will be loaded faster. But we want to have some level of quality and attractiveness. Advanced GIF Animator offers tools to optimize size of GIF-file. Optimal number of frames       GIF file contains multiple images. Each image has individual value of time delay shown. The more number of frames leads to better quality of animation, but increases size of GIF file. So it is important to find balance. Size and offset of image       Sizes of source bitmap images influence the size of destination GIF as images are stored in full size with any size of logical screen (Logical Screen defines the workspace for gif view).       If only part of animated picture will be changed, then you can create small images and define their offsets on logical screen. Offset of image of frame may be modified in page Image of Attribute Toolbar or by selecting of Offset from Image menu, or by image dragging by mouse. The great feature of GIF format is a use of images with different sizes. You can position each image in any place. It makes it possible to use small images to animate only some parts of a picture. You may use operation Crop to cut demanded part of image.       List of frames has checkboxes to display images from different frames simultaneously on editing stage. It helps to see how one image is placed relative to other image. Using dialog "Optimize"       Upper part of the dialog shown contains two lines: file size and download time of original and optimized files. Second line appears when you press button Optimize. Four checkboxes define conditions of optimization. You can use different combinations and see how they influence size of optimized file. Combo box Modem speed allows you to see download time for different modems. Crop areas of transparent images.       Transparent image may contain extra background area around visible part of image. This extra area consumes extra space in GIF file, so it is possible to find the smallest rectangle for image and redefine offset for cropped frame. Remove redundant pixels.       Eliminates pixels in transparent image that already have been displayed in previous frame. Result depends on images itself in very great degree. Sometimes it may even increase size of GIF file! So try both states of this checkbox: checked and not checked. Note that images you see in frames after such operations may be strange for you, but you must know that pixels will be combined with pixels from previous frames. Remove image comments and titles.       Comments you can add to GIF file and titles of frames consume extra memory. So you can remove this data and decrease size of GIF file. Sort color map by usage and remove unused entries.       Some of the colors in GIF color palettes may be unused in images. So it is possible to remove them without any loss for images. Note, that color palette may contain one of the following number of entries: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256. It means that after removing unused entries, size of color palette may be reduced or may be not. It depends on the number colors in source palette and on the number of unused colors in image.       Next versions of Advanced GIF Animator will contain more advanced tools to optimize palettes. Copyright ©2000 Alchemy Lab. All rights reserved. GIF is a Service Mark of CompuServe Inc.