(>CRG>) On Fri, 23 Jan 1998, Cathy & Ray Gallagher wrote:

>CRG> My question is this:  Is there some way to add an existing
>CRG> annimated GIF to new GIF file?  I'm trying to make a banner
>CRG> with a annimated "click here" statment.  I use Ulead's PhotoImpact
>CRG> (which I never hear anyone talk about -- should I switch to
>CRG> Paintshop? Photoshop is out of my reach) which is the program that
>CRG> came with my scanner.

PhotoImpact is a good program, and a combination of it and PaintShop Pro
should get you access to a great number of the things Photoshop can offer
(PhotoImpact has anti-aliasing as well as some very powerful text
features (Like automatic bevelling and texturing), and PSP makes handling
indexed images a breeze.. I do so enjoy changing the background black to
a bright pink and stripping out all the stray bits of off-black with the
color replacer in 3 seconds.. One trick I used to do with PSP is find an
extra index and draw a "watermark" with it. (If the image had a large
black section, I would find a nice unused pink and draw with it)  When I
finished, I would simply change the color of the index I drew with to be
the same as the surrounding color.  That way, the watermark was
"invisible" in the picture, but viewable by changing the index color back
to something that stood out.)

As for animated gifs, the best program to use in my opinion, by far, has
to be Ulead's Gif Animator (http://www.ulead.com/)  The newer versions
allow for drag-n-drop of other gifs into your animation, or you could
simply import into your animation using the <Insert> key. It also does a
good job of shrinking animations (one image I had was reduced from 16K to
5K, but that was a rare case.. you can expect a reduction of usually 1 or
2K on a 16K image.. assuming your image was maximized to begin with) The
extra space is magically found by taking out portions of your frames that
are identical to the last frame and replacing with transparent pixels
(Remember, the size of a GIF relys primarily on how many times the color
changes, so if a complex section of the image can be replaced by a block
of transparent pixels, you save a LOT of space.  Of course, it has a few
other tricks up it's sleeves, but the main advantage is ease of use and
nice small animation sizes.

Pat

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