Hello!
I'm a completely beginner with graphics and tried to start with gifs now. But there is a tremendous loss of quality whenever it comes to animations.
Maybe some of you can help me?

So, that's the original graphic I made:



And then I put an animation in the transparent area and now it looks like this:



It's so pixelated now - Has anyone a tip for me how I can avoid that?
Thank you in advance!


#ag #aghelp

I had a similar problem when I was making this sig:



I noticed that the more layer adjustments I used the more pixelated it got. The way you save it can also effect it so I would look at some of the links here. I wish I could be of more help but this is a topic I don't quite understand myself.

Alrighty! I'll try to follow your tips when I'm working on graphics the next time
I'll inform you if I was successful!

As far as I've been told, the pixel-ly ness is just something that happens with gifs =o

Yeah, I read that many times, too. But when you guys do a gif it doesn't look that pixelated

I love that sig Yunie! XD

I usually play around with the settings until it looks the way I want it to. It doesn't look perfect but it helps sometimes

Thank you - let's see if I can improve it with your tips

Ok

I'll answer you in a few moments...*opens photoshop*

Hehe, take your time, I'm patient

Option #1

Sharpen the animation. i can do a tutorial on how to sharpen all images at once of an animation.

Option #2

Use a good quality video/frames. this will help to reduce the quality. in the end some quality will be loss, is something that has the compression of gif.

Btw, let me see your settings, maybe you changed something, but like Kaya/Diana said, there is always some loss :/

If you use Photoshop, this should be the setting you use when saving (it's mine anyway, and it always comes out relatively HQ)

Thanks, you both Your tips are very helpful!
But can I also use these tips in GIMP? Because I don't have photoshop - it's too expensive for me >.>

Ah, I don't actually know since I don't use GIMP. But I believe Neo Queen Serenity gave a link in her class to get Photoshop CS2 for free and legitimate if you're interested.

Yeah, I already saw that and I wanted to get it but my mum doesn't allow me to download it because she read some negative articles about that :bunnynarroweye
So, I have no other choice than GIMP.

Hmmmmm. Let's see.

What DPI (dots per inch) are you working in? The maximum for anything you post on the internet should be 72 DPI. If it's any higher than that, it'll get all fuzzy, futzy, and pixelated when you upload them.

Does GIMP work in layers? If it does, try and sharpen the top layer (the one with the text that got fuzzy).

Good luck! xo

It's already 72 DPI

I sharped it now but it still looks so super duper fuzzy.
Before

After


Maybe I'm just the only one but it seems to be even more fuzzy xD
I think I should stick to still graphics

I think it looks better now with the sharpen =D

Mercury thank you for that tip! I was able to improve a few sigs I had made (I'm happy I learned something!). I also found this helpful article that seems to use the same settings you suggested, and it explains what each setting does:http://help.adobe.com/en_US/creativesuite/cs/using/WSC7A1F924-DD38-49b4-B84B-EFF50416C860.html

oh sweet <3 this is very nice!

Haine wrote:

Option #1

Sharpen the animation. i can do a tutorial on how to sharpen all images at once of an animation.

Option #2

Use a good quality video/frames. this will help to reduce the quality. in the end some quality will be loss, is something that has the compression of gif.

Btw, let me see your settings, maybe you changed something, but like Kaya/Diana said, there is always some loss :/

Haine's right here. I always sharp my gifs (i use an action for that, the action sharps 120 frames)

And if i make gif-sets for tumblr, i always use my dvd's for giffing. But you can also download a very high quality video from yt.

^This!

if the HD option is available on youtube, you can download it, i use this website "keepvid.com" you can download even the audio!!

D: I totally forgot about sharpening stuff when making gifs.

I still don't understand how gifs work xD
I made another signature. But this time it isn't so noisy, just a bit. I know this is good - but I don't know WHY it looks better now xD I did exactly the same, no changes. So could maybe one of you explain why this looks a hundred times better than the other one? xD

I've already done a little bit of digging online regarding this, but none of the solutions I found solves my problem.

I want to make a GIF that transitions between three still images. I made it using the "Animation" tool on my Photoshop CS2 yes, I know it's very old and outdated OTL and it looked fine when I played the animation. But when I save the image using "Save for Web", I loose resolution in the saved GIF file. For the "Save for Web" option, I'm already using the max 256 colors, so I can't max that out any more. If I just do a regular "Save" and save it as a GIF there's no animation in the saved image.

I see graphics artists on GC making sigs with animation in them, and I'm wondering how do you save your files without loosing resolution? Is this an issue with my old CS2, or is there another way to save GIFs without loosing resolution?

There's already a similar thread here. Perhaps you can upload a still version and animated version to show the difference? You can't really prevent quality loss 100% but if your settings are at the highest it shouldn't look terrible.

Thank you! I'll have a look at that thread then.

i have that Issue with Gimp, when using the preview in gimp, i recorded it with this gif maker.

Frist here is the screen cap,


Gimp: I get the blotch coloring, more so in the faces. and it's not the star wars ones, i had this issue with the Disney screen caps too



gifCam  aside from the frame rate, the blotchy is gone but now it's fuzzy




These are just to show how it looks, if i want to make a gif banner, were will be more going on and such,

Okay, so no idea about GifCam, never used that one before, but regarding GIMP... correct me if I'm wrong, but unfortunately, you can't really help it.

There are different algorithms for saving GIFs, every graphic program uses a different one/different ones, and the algorithm used in GIMP uses, well, that "blotchy" method to reduce the colors down to 256.
While in Photoshop you can choose the algorithm (perceptual, selective, adaptive), GIMP doesn't have any kind of saving option, so you basically only have that one algorithm to choose from and can't change anything about it.

If there aren't any saving options in GifCam either, I guess you can't change much about the result with that program then either. The result often depends on the algorithm, if you can't choose another algorithm, I don't think you can do much for a different result :S

(Only tip I can give you is trying to reduce the amount of colors already before saving, i.e. making it black and white, using selective coloring/color balance/contrast and the like)

Like princess moon said, unfortunately GiMP is not gif friendly because it's focused more on graphics than gifs.

I also suggest to reduce the size of your images or you can download photoshop cs2 which is free now that way you could use the animation paet there.

oh? Photoshop has a free Version?!!!   Do you have link???  I'd love to check it out.