GIF optimizing (and creating) -- easy online tools

[Darren Dirt]

In case you ever need to work with GIF images, especially to optimize their filesize by reducing the colour palette, these sites might be handy to remember... (yes, I'm sure these 2 long-existing resources are "old news" for some of you, but now it's on the forum for easy reference )



quick, easy optimizing (allows you to pick the "best" from a range of reduced colour palettes)
http://www.tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/


online image editor, includes palette reducing but also plenty of effects (!)
http://www.gifworks.com/image_editor.html

[Shayne]

I try to not use GIF or JPG whenever possible as PNG is free of licenses and can do everything the other 2 can combined.  However PNG has the color problem as well (lots of unused colors in the image) so I use a little console application called "pngout" found at http://advsys.net/ken/utils.htm you simple drag and drop an image onto the exe and it optimizes it.

[Tom]

I try to not use GIF or JPG whenever possible as PNG is free of licenses and can do everything the other 2 can combined.

Except compressing "real life" pictures all that well. A png ends up being several hundred KB to one or more MB, vs the couple 10s of KB for the jpeg at 80%.

[Shayne]

I will totally agree with that Tom, for photographs nothing beats JPG

[Mr. Analog]

I use Jasc Animation shop to make my animated GIFs it has a lot of nice optimisation options built right in.

[Darren Dirt]

I try to not use GIF or JPG whenever possible as PNG is free of licenses and can do everything the other 2 can combined.

I don't like supporting license monopolies either, but thought especially for web developers the above online resources are handy to at least know about. Especially since they are free *online* tools, don't require any installation etc. Kinda like how http://www.game-oldies.com/ is nice to know about even if you have MAME installed and running.


Yeah, PNG rocks for license-free, lossless compressed files, but the 2nd site (GIFWorks) even lets you create animated GIFs for free as well... Not sure can PNGs be animated?

[Tom]

If you want the equivelent to an animated png, lookup mng, not too sure its well supported though. I'd expect full svg support (scripting, animation) will come first.

[Darren Dirt]

Hmm... never heard of it; guessing most browsers don't support it natively. Guess for now if you want (for example) a "progress bar" simple animation while your AJAX dynamic page is first initialized, you've gotta rely on anim.gif :-\

[Shayne]

A while back i looked into mng, but I agree that SVG will come first.  However that will only be when Microsoft decides when it should be native and uber supported.

[Tom]

Its amusing because mng has been arround a long while now, and fully speced out.. unlike svg, where very few libs/programs suport FULL svg.