optimizing a gif

how do i shring a gif without losing to much quality?

Make it RGB first, then back to GIF

What i want to do is is shrink the file size.
thanks paavo

If the image you're saving is a photo or has move than 256 colors, save it as a JPEG. It will reduce the file size. If not, try saving using different color settings, 256, 128, 64, etc and see which is the best.

There's no right technique, just need to experiment a bit.

? its a gif

To create small gif size you have to understand how its compression work...

In a gif file the bitmap (pixel row and lines) are recorded from right to left and from top to bottom (the smae way we read text). Giving this the compression work on idetical color...

Exemple

Even if your image is 250 pixel in width, iff all those pixel are the smae color it will not make a bigger file.

Try this....

Make r 250 by 250 images, onw with only verticle line and thw other with horizontal line... The Verticle file will take more space since it as more color change.

As you can see gif get smaller on flat color (gradien will be huge). So the best image are those with less color andd flet surces (Clip art are a good exemple).

Gif File size depend on the image...

You may also be able to map some of the colours to tranparency - also use selective optimisation to further compress parts of the image that are not the focus of attention.

Just as an aside, Paavo, what relation do you think RGB has to GIF images and file size? It sounds like you think that RGB is a file type rather than a colour space? Not getting at you just curious about your train of thought.

If you want the best image quality/optimization for a gif, here's the save for web options I use.

Every GIF I save I use "selective" for the colors and "diffusion" dithering.

For the amount of colors, that varies by image. Just see what is best. An image could take only 16 colors to look good, or it could take all 256 of the GIF color range.

You can also use the "lossy" feature. Usually a 4 or 5 lossiness will result in a slightly smaller image without sacrificing much quality. Anything further on the lossy scale will probably look ugly.