Create animated gifs

[jgpaiva]

I needed to create a .gif animated file, so i googled for "gif animation". I downloaded one of the first (shareware) products and ended up with something that looked interesting. But it couldn't make decent resizes of windows, and the thumbnail animated gif came out rubish.
So,i was looking for other programs to do so, and found that the gimp can do it. I also found an interesting tutorial on how to do it.

I thought you might be interested, and i'd like to know if there are better alternatives.

(btw.. the final result is at the bottom of gridmove's page: http://jgpaiva.dcmembers.com/gridmove.html)

[Deozaan]

When I first got into animated gif files, I owned a copy of Jasc's Paint Shop Pro which came with a little animation studio. It worked for what I needed but in hindsight I don't think I really liked it. Now that I have Macrome-- er, Adobe Flash, I use that for almost all my graphic needs. Animations and other things. Of course, Flash art is largely determined by vertexes, so it isn't good for photos or highly detailed pictures.

But Flash can export the images into just about any format you want. Even video files.

[Terry]

Try UnFREEz (http://www.whitsoftdev.com/unfreez/) simplest to use but lack of features. It may not be what you want as it does not have function to create or edit your images.

[app103]

When I first got into animated gif files, I owned a copy of Jasc's Paint Shop Pro which came with a little animation studio. It worked for what I needed but in hindsight I don't think I really liked it.

Jasc's Animation Shop 3 is ok for when you have the frames prepared properly before importing them in, which should be done in Paintshop Pro first. (all frames should be same dimensions, saved as 256 color .bmp files for best results)

If you want something a bit more heavy duty, Ulead Gif Animator would be my suggestion. You can even use most of the Photoshop & Paintshop Pro 3rd party plugins & filters you already have installed.

Also allows you to save your animations as .gif, .swf, .avi, and a few others.

[tinyvillager]

http://www.gamani.com/


GIF Movie Gear is awsome,i'm using the 30 day trial (29$US),a bit expensive but i might actually buy it.You can import avi,export gif,swf,etc.It's worth checking out if your into animated avatar creation,or any animation for that matter.It's a very clean app in my opinion.

From what i see it's an uncrippled 30 day trial so even if you just need to do some quick animation it's worth
the download.

And though not as good,but decent none the less is Easy gif animator from blumentals,($19 US)
I actually bought this a few months back and i'm satisfied with it but Gif Movie Gear i'd have to say is
better.

http://www.blumentals.net/egifan ;

On a side note ,Blumentals has some pretty good software,i've purchased Easy gif animator,WeBuilder 2006,
and screensaver wonder off them and i'm satisfied with all,they have a forum as well which is always a plus.

[lanux128]

just another one for the record, Microsoft GIF Animator - the grand-daddy.

[sri]

I've only used ImageReady that comes along w/ Photoshop. Few samples I did in the past (as part of my day job):

[Carol Haynes]

May be worth looking at Xara Xtreme ... which can do animations as well as photo editing and its main function as an illustration tool.