GIF file builder: tips   The GIF file builder constructs any type of image stream that the GIF standard allows. Starting with plain images without any frills, you can combine these in space and in time to create even very complex image sequences. Your web pages will never look the same again!   Image viewer The GIF file builder does not have its own image viewer, but uses an external program. If you do not have a preferred GIF viewer installed yet, try IrfanView. This freeware program reads and writes a wide range of graphic formats, and has basic editing capabilities. Unlike most GIF viewers it also supports dynamic images. But, like most GIF viewers, it does not support plain text extensions. To work properly with the GIF file builder you should disable the Ask to rename if incorrect extension option of IrfanView. You find this option on the Others 1 tab of the Options > Properties menu.   Color table management A problem you are likely to encounter when creating GIF animations is that the individual images that make up the animation have different color tables. This leads to an unnecessary large file size for the animation and makes life difficult for the program that has to put the animation on the screen. An image editor that gives you full control over the color table is ImageForge, a freeware program that can be downloaded from the CursorArts web site. Unfortunately the freeware version of this editor does not support the GIF format, so that you need a program like IrfanView to convert the output from ImageForge into GIF files. Not a major problem as IrfanView's batch conversion facility is perfectly suited for this. Don't forget to disable ImageForge's Optimize Palette when saving images option, or else the program will override the palette that you have manually assigned to an image. You find this option on the Palette Optimization tab of the Options > Set Preferences... menu.   How it all works together The diagram shows how the GIF file builder, IrfanView and ImageForge can be used to create a GIF animation. Of course variations are possible, but the shown method has so far given me only satisfactory results. At the top of the diagram we start with the individual images for the animation, three in this example. These can be created in any way you like, but should best be in 24 bits color (16.7M colors) bitmap format. The first step is to build the global color palette for the animation. Create a large new image in ImageForge in 24 bits color (16.7M colors) mode, preferably with the same background color as the animation will use. Paste the individual images into this new image, next to each other so that they don't overlap. The only purpose is to have all used colors together in a single image, so there is no need to do the pasting precise. In many cases you don't even have to paste all individual images, but only a representative subset. Reduce the color depth of the new image to 256 optimized colors and save the image's color palette to a file. You can throw away the new image after its color palette has been saved. Now the individual images are loaded in ImageForge, their color depth is changed to 256 optimized colors, and then their color palettes are changed to the palette that you have just extracted from the temporary image. Save the resultant images in bitmap format. As the next step you use IrfanView's batch conversion facility to convert the modified bitmap files to GIF format. And then you are ready to use the GIF file builder to create your animation. (In general this method to give all individual images the same color palette works better than the method that is described in the GIF file builder's help file.)

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