GIFanim - Animated GIF maker - Help
GIFanim is a small app. for creating animated (cycling) GIFs from static images. It is available as an applet or application. This is the Help document for GIFanim.
Menus
File
The File Menu contains up to three items.
Open,
Save &
Exit.
Open
Opens one or more images to animate. Supports GIF, JPEG, PNG and possibly other formats such as BMP (depending on support in the Java Plug-In).
GIFs (animated or otherwise) only support 256 colors (per image/frame). If you load images of more than 256 colors into GIFanim, it will reduce the palette to just 256 colors when writing, but not in a configurable or controllable way. For that reason, it is best to use your favorite image editor to ensure that the input image are already reduced to 256 colors (presumedly in a more carefully chosen manner than GIFanim would do it!) before importing them into GIFanim.
Save
Saves the animated GIF using the current frames/options.
Exit
Exit's the GIFanim software. Only relevant to the application form of GIFanim.
To close the applet form of GIFanim, browse to a new page or close the tab or browser.
Information
The Information menu has two items,
About &
Help.
About
Pops a dialog giving the application title, vendor and version.
Help
You're looking at it! Opens this page in the default browser.
Controls
The general controls for configuring GIFanim and animations include settings that are general or apply to all loaded frames, controls used on a 'per frame' basis, and output/message areas to provide guidance and image previews.
General/All Frames
The general controls include
Default frame delay,
Preview,
Append frames &
Output message, image display, frame list.
Default frame delay
The Default frame delay number spinner sets the default frame delay in units of 1/00th of a second.
This will apply to images loaded after the value is set, not to frames already in the
frame list
.
The frame delay in seconds, as well as the approximate FPS will be displayed in the message label.
Preview
Generates an animated GIF using the current frames/options, then displays it in the image preview area. Any problems are reported in the message label.
Append frames
If checked, adds any newly opened frames to the end of the current list. If left unchecked (the default),
any call to Open files will have the opended files replace the current
frame list.
Output
The output/information areas of GIFanim consist of a frame list, image preview & message label.
A list of the all frames currently loaded is seen on the left side of GIFanim. Select any entry to view the image, remove it, or move it up or down.
The area filling the 'center' of GIFanim is used to display a preview of any image selected in the
frame list,
as well as a Preview of the animated GIF. A diagonal color gradient is placed
in the background to help distinguish transparent pixels. If the images are larger than the current
view area, scrollbars appear.
Messages are displayed in the label along the bottom of GIFanim.
Selected Frame
The three buttons and a number spinner below the frame list become useful once a frame has been selected in the list. The selected frame can be removed or moved up or down in the frame list. The frame delay can also be changed using the number spinner.
Frame delay
Adjusts the delay for the selected frame. Note that the frame delay will not be reflected in the frame list until another frame in the list is selected.
■ Remove
Remove the currently selected frame from the
frame list. The removal is unprompted. If you
accidentally remove a frame that is needed for the animation, use the
Open
menu to reload it.
↑ Move Up
Moves the currently selected frame up the frame list. Frames are added to an animated GIF in the same order as they occur in the list.
↓ Move Down
Moves the currently selected frame down the frame list. Frames are added to an animated GIF in the same order as they occur in the list.
Related Tools
Access to some other tools might be very handy while making animated GIFs.
Image Editor
PhotoShop, GIMP..
- Stretch/pad, squeeze/crop images to all the same size.
- Reduce color depth to a palette of 256 colors or less.
GIF Compressor/Optimizer
There are a number of ways to store color tables for animated GIFs. One way is to prepare a single palette of 256 colors that is shared by all image frames, while another is to give each frame its own 256 color palette. The first method leads to good compression (small file size), while the second results in higher color quality for images containing more than a trivial number of colors.
GIFanim saves a GIF with a color palette unique for each image. So it takes the higher quality/larger size approach. If size is of a premium, use a GIF compressor/optimizer to produce a version of the animated GIF that is smaller, but still of acceptable color quality.
