| Active GIF Creator 2.23 | Tutorial
Site: http://www.wsoft-lab.com/products/agif/ E-mail:agif@wsoft-lab.com Active GIF Creator 2.23 is the program you need to create great looking animations for the Web and presentations. It has the following features: - makes animated GIF-files from a set of BMP, JPEG, ICO, PCX, PNG, TGA, Adobe Photoshop PSD files and Windows Metafiles; - edits images using internal image editor; - imports frames from other GIF-files; - imports images from clipboard; - duplicates, merges, crops, resizes, rotates and flips frames; - defines GIF-files global parameters: logical screen size, background color index, number of loops in animation; - defines offset, transparency, interlacement, delay, title and value "how to remove" for each separate image; - applys effects for images; - adds and removes text commentaries; - edits color palettes; - optimizes size of GIF-files; - shows GIF size and download time for different speeds of modems; - saves images of GIF-file as a set of BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF or TGA-files; - exports and imports bitmap strips, AVI-files and ANI-files (animated cursors); - creates 3D button images; - allows to preview your GIF-file on Web pages with different backgrounds; - creates GIF-files from command line in batch mode; - creates maps for tag <map> in HTML; - supports localization tools for different languages. GIF-file contains multiple images. These images are created with the help of internal image editor, or any graphic application such as Windows Paint, Adobe Photoshop and so on. Animation in GIF format is realized as a sequence of images, which differs slightly from each other. It gives an illusion of a motion. This tutorial shows you the basic principles of creating, editing and optimizing a GIF animation with Active GIF Creator (AGIF).
Getting started - How to add frames - How to import image from clipboard - How to reorder frames - How to preview animation - How to control animation parameters - How to use frame operations - How to create 3D button - How to use file operations | Optimization - Optimal number of frames - Size and offset of image - Using dialog "Optimize" Internal image editor - How to edit frames - How to use image collections | Individual preferences - Customize Toolbars - Localization - How to create image collection
###### Back to Top Getting Started Add frames Select menu item Image/Add or click the toolbar button . You can select BMP, JPEG, GIF, ICO, WMF, EMF, PCX, PNG, TGA or PSD-files for insertion. Sample directory [located in the \tutorial\samples subfolder of where Active GIF Creator was installed] contains files named green.bmp, yellow.bmp and red.bmp. Select the green.bmp file and Active GIF Creator will add new frame with image from selected file. Repeat this operation for files yellow.bmp, red.bmp and second time yellow.bmp. Now you have four frames in the list. See also FAQ. ###### Back to Top Pasting images from clipboard Active GIF Creator has possibility to import any images created in other programs using the clipboard. To paste an image from clipboard select menu item Image/Paste Image or click the button on the Standard Toolbar (if you put this button there in the Customize Toolbars dialog). Note. The separate image in GIF-file can not contain more than 256 colors, so clipboard image with big number of colors will be transformed to 256-colored image. Reordering frames When you add new images they appear at the end of image list. You can move them in any place of the list. To move image up in the list select menu item Image/Move Up or click the toolbar button . To move image down in the list select menu item Image/Move Down or click the toolbar button . You can also change position of an image in the list by dragging the list item to new place, using mouse with pressed left button. To remove image from the list select menu item Image/Delete or click the toolbar button . Previewing the animation To preview animation select menu item Animation/Animate or click the toolbar button . Image on this button will be changed to . Animation in Active GIF Creator continues until you stop it or begin editing actions. To stop animation select menu item Animation/Animate or click the toolbar button . ###### Back to Top Editing animation parameters Number of loops in animation You can edit this value with help of spinedit Looping on page Global of Attribute Toolbar. [If Attribute Toolbar is not present on screen - switch it on by selecting menu item View/Attribute Toolbar]. In addition to loop counter there is a checkbox Infinite, which in checked state makes counter unavailable. There are another ways to change loop counter: select menu item Animation/Loop Counter or click the toolbar button . Value of delay Each image in GIF file has individual value of delay measured in one-hundredths of a second. For example, value 25 means a quarter of a second. You can edit value of delay with help of spinedit Delay on the page Image of Attribute Toolbar. There are another ways to change delay: select menu item Animation/Delay or click the toolbar button . You can define delay value for selected frame, or single value for all frames simultaneously. For our example, we may set delays in green and red frames as 300 (3 seconds) and in two yellow frames as 50 (half of a second). Now we have the following result : Using attribute "How To Remove" This attribute is used for definition of image mapping at the time of browsing GIF-file. It locates on the page Image of Attribute Toolbar and has the following values: - Web Browser Decides (browser removes the image in the way it decides); - Do Not Remove (the image is not removed, the next image will be displayed over it); - To Background Color (replaces the image with the web page background color); - To Previous State (replaces the image with the image preceding it). Default values of loop counter, delay, attribute "How To Remove" for new GIF are defined on the tab New in dialog window invoked by menu item File/Preferences (or by "hot key" F6). ###### Back to Top Frame operations Compose List of images has checkboxes to display images from different frames simultaneuosly on editing stage. It helps you to see how one image is placed relative to other image. For this operation set check on demanded images in the list and view the result on the tab Compose. Current image is always displayed. Duplicate If there is a necessity in two or more identical frames, select the necessary image and use menu operation Image/Operations/Duplicate, or click the toolbar button . Merge You can create a new image consisting of two and more images. For example, one image can be used as some background and other images will be placed on this background in any places. To merge images use menu operation Image/Operations/Merge or click the toolbar button . See also FAQ. Crop image Sometimes there is a necessity to use some part of an image as new image. It can be made by selecting a necessary fragment with the help of menu operations Image/Operations/Crop or by click on the toolbar button . Resize You can change size of any frame in dialog window, which will appear after activating menu item Image/Operations/Size or by pressing on the button , placed on the tab Image. Rotate and flip With the help of Active GIF Creator it is possible to make image rotation on 180 degrees or to the left and to the right on 90 degrees. It is also possibly to flip images in a horizontal and vertical plane. These operations are available for execution in the menu items Image/Operations/Rotate and Image/Operations/Flip. Effects To use a set of tools for image modification select Image/Operations/Effects or click the toolbar button . Select tab with desired effect and edit its parameters, then press button Apply to see effect action. After pressing this button you can set new effect parameters and see how they change the image. Button Extract displays current image without new effects superposition. Button Fix fixes current image with applied effect. It allows you to apply several effects to the image sequentially.
###### Back to Top Button creator To create 3D button images select menu item Tools/Button. Select wanted template and edit parameters of the button, caption, light source, shade.
###### Back to Top File operations Load file To load GIF file select menu item File/Open, or click the toolbar button . To import bitmap strips, ANI and AVI files select menu item File/Import. Save file To save your animation select menu item File/Save, or click the toolbar button . If it is new file (has not name yet) then standard windows Save Dialog will appear to define file name and folder it will be stored to. You can save GIF file with different names by selecting File/Save As. You can save GIF frames as set of BMP, TIFF, JPEG- files, as AVI, or ANI file (animated cursors). To do it select menu item File/Export and then BMP, TIFF, JPEG, AVI, ANI as file filter. Preview GIF-file on Web page To preview your GIF-file on Web page select menu item Tools/Web Page and set color of background or background image for Web page and color of text. ###### Back to Top Optimization in Active GIF Creator The optimization of GIF-files is important for using animated images on Web-pages. Web-pages contain both text and graphic images. Total download time in the greater degree will depend on download time of graphic images than text. Therefore it is necessary to do GIF-files small, but sufficient for save of necessary quality of animation. Active GIF Creator has set of tools for GIF-files optimization: - set optimal number of frames; - reducing sizes and use offsets for separate images; - using dialog "Optimize GIF". Optimal number of frames. GIF file contains multiple images. Each image has individual value of time delay it will be shown. The more number of frames leads to better quality of animation, but increases size of GIF file. So it is important to find balance. Size and offset of image. Sizes of source bitmap images influence the size of destination GIF, as images are stored in full size with any size of logical screen [Logical Screen defines the workspace for GIF view]. If only part of animated picture will be changed you can create small images and define their offsets on logical screen. Offset of image of frame may be modified in page Image of Attribute Toolbar, or by selecting menu item Image/Attribute/Offset, or image dragging by mouse. The great feature of GIF format is a use of images with different sizes. You can position each image in any place. It makes it possibly to use small images to animate only some parts of a picture. You may use operation Image/Operation/Crop to cut demanded part of an image. ###### Back to Top Using dialog "Optimize GIF". To use this dialog select File/Optimize, or click the toolbar button (or by "hot key" F5). Upper part of shown dialog contains two lines: file size and download time of original and optimized files. Second line shows file size and download time for current settings of checkboxes. Six checkboxes define conditions of optimization. You can use different combinations and see how they influence size of optimized file. Combobox Modem speed allows you to see download time for different modems. Crop areas of transparent images. Transparent image may contain extra background area around visible part of image. This extra area consumes extra space in GIF file so it is possible to find the smallest rectangle for image and redefine offset for cropped frame. Remove redundant pixels. For animated pictures there is a frequent situation, when different frames use the same colored pixels. For example, each frame contains the same background or some subimage is used simultaneously in several or all frames. With the help of this operation pixels which are used in several frames are deleted. It allows to reduce the sizes of individual frames and, hence, download time of the whole GIF-file will be decreased. Pixels deleted from a transparent image are present at the previous frames. The result depends on using pictures itself very much. Sometimes total size of the GIF-file can even be increased! Therefore efficiency of this type of optimization checked up in this manner: you switch it on and off. Note: images which you see in the frames after such operation can be strange for you, but you should know that pixels will be combined with pixels from the previous frames. For example, you have the result of optimization of a GIF-file consisting of 5 frames:
But the final view of this GIF-file in the browser will be looked as: You can restore images in frames of optimized GIFs with help of menu item File/Restore Frames. Remove image comments and titles. Comments you can add to GIF file and titles of frames consumes extra memory. So you can remove this data and decrease size of GIF file. You can remove only comments or only titles or all data, checking flags in Optimization dialog Sort color map by usage and remove unused entries. For more images, not being photos, the amount of colors used for reproduction frequently is less 256. So it is possible to remove them without any loss for images. Note that color palette may contain one of the following number of entries: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256. It means, that after removing unused entries size of color palette may be reduced, or may be not. It depends on the number colors in source palette and number of unused colors in image. Look at two GIF-files - they do not differ, but left uses a full color palette in 256 colors, and right - palette consisting only of 16 colors. And also this images has different file sizes.
Move colors from local palettes to global palette. Optimization by this option is a try to eliminate all local palettes by moving color enties from local palettes to global. If it is impossibly to move all color entries to global palette, then such local palette remains. When you add new image it may use local palette or global palette. It depends on setting of combobox Palette on page New in dialog File/Preferences. ###### Back to Top Internal image editor Editing frames Active GIF Creator contains a set of graphical editing tools similar to MS Paint. For editing of an image select the tab Edit and you will see a set of tools in a right part of the window. To select some tool press it by the left mouse button. The following tools are available: - marquee - lasso Selection part of image with pressed key Ctrl creates the copy, which can be moved to some other place. - zoom (zoom the image: 1, 5 or 9 times) - eraser (this tool has rectangle forms of four sizes) - pen - brush (this tool has round and rectangular forms of three widths) - spray (this tool has shapes with three diameters) - text (with this tool you can add any text drawn with selected font) - fill - get pixel color - line - curve Tools Line and Curve have three widths. - rectangle - polygon - round rectangle - ellipse Tools Rectangle, Polygon, Round Rectangle and Ellipse have three types of drawing. For all tools there is a possibility to select pen and background color from a palette located at the bottom of the main window. To select color of the pen press the left mouse button on the desired color in the palette. To select background color press the right mouse button. During drawing it is possible to use left or right mouse button - button defines the color which will be used: pen or background color. You can edit global and local color palettes in menu items Global/Global Palette and Image/Attributes/Local Palette, or by means of Attribute Toolbar. Mouse double-click on editor color palette invokes edit color palette dialog too. ###### Back to Top Using image collections Image collections allow you to have a large set of different fragments of images and insert them into edited frames. You can use collections supplied with the program or create your own collections. To set collections use menu item Tools/Image Collections. You will see the dialog box with a list. Elements of the list are filenames with the bitmap strips. You can add and delete items, sort list and check/uncheck marks in the list items. The checked item means: that window with appropriate set of images is visible on screen now. You can move this window with images and change its size. Now select tab "Edit" in a central part of the main window and press any image in the window with a collection. Image will be inserted into the left upper angle of the current frame (similarly to operation "paste from clipboard"). Move it to desired place and continue editing. Note that color palette of inserted image will be transformed to the current palette of the edited frame. ###### Back to Top Individual preferences Customize Toolbars After installation of Active GIF Creator standard toolbar contains set of tools by default. With the help of dialog window View/Customize Toolbars it is possible to place any set of tools to standard toolbar. For this purpose drag desired tools with the help of left mouse button to the toolbar and remove unnecessary tools by dragging them off the toolbar. Localization Active GIF Creator supports internationalization. Program interface may be seen in one of human languages. It includes menus, screen messages, all texts used in interface. To change language press toolbar button . Select a language and press OK. Creation of image collection Image collection is stored as bitmap strip. Bitmap strip represents a set of images of small sizes which are located like a sequence of frames in a film. Gather the images necessary to you and insert them, as frames, into single GIF-file. To create bitmap strip start operation File/Export and select file type bitmap strips. Now you can use separate images from this bitmap strip for insertion to editing frames (see menu item Tools/Image Collections). ###### Back to Top Copyright ©2000-2005 WSoft Lab. All rights reserved. GIF is a Service Mark of CompuServe Inc.