Optimizing Animations

[Cartman]

I've been playing around with WS' new animation feature and it's great. But, it builds animation layers like one of those flip books and the more pages in the flip book, the bigger the file size. Is there a program that can optimize animations once they're made? Or, do you have to optimize each of the individual components prior to making the animation?

I've found lots of cool animations on the Web, but it appears that nobody paid attention to optimization and they are huge!

I can optimize regular graphics in Photopaint. But, when I try to do it with animated .gifs, it keeps wanting to save it as a .jpg and as one graphic without the layers and the animation is gone.

I also have PhotoShop Elements. But, can't seem to find a way to optimize graphics there either.

Any suggestions? Or, is it a moot point after the animation is made? :?:

[Mary B.]

Paint Shop Pro comes packaged with an animation program that has options for optimizing. Do you have PSP?

[Cartman]

No, I don't, Mary. Just the programs I mentioned above.

I enjoy using the drag and drop thingie to make animations, but I guess I'll have to keep the larger multi-graphic images small.

Reason I asked is that I made a couple of animated greeting cards for my card shop and didn't pay attention to the file sizes and some were a bit bigger than I had anticipated. This, of course, I noticed after I got rid of the individual graphics. LOL Since I was just fooling around, I didn't keep them. They're alright, because they load directly from the server rather than on a page, but ... I think next time I'll optimize, as I go before it's too late!

[Fred]

Karen - Here is a site I use. It may be what you need -
http://www.gifworks.com/index.html

What Is GIFWorks?
It's an online GIF image editor. This unique tool is completely on-line -- nothing to download or install. Better yet, it's ABSOLUTELY FREE -- no prepaid tokens or subscriptions.

What can I do with GIFWorks?
Create your own special effects with any GIF -- even animated ones! Resize it, colorize it, optimize it, and jazzercise it -- then save it and take it with you. You name it and you can do it! If you have any feature suggestions let us know

[Cartman]

This might just be the ticket. I'll check it out. Thanks, Fred! :)