GIFs are Blurry! 1

[pixelperfect]

Help, please. I am in pixel hell. I was being polite and positive when I took member name to join this group (the triumph of hope over experience).

Does anyone have some words of wisdom on creating clean, sharp, optimized gifs from my Illustrator files? My gif images are used online, so must be minimum k.

On a PC with Windows XP, Illustrator 10 and Photoshop 7.

Have tried many things and still get fuzzy, blurry gifs, although I have experimented with any number of option combinations. Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

Here are some things I have tried.
1. Save as eps and open in Photoshop, save for web as GIF.
2. Save as eps and open in Photoshop, save file as GIF.
3. Make a screen grab of Illustrator file and paste as pixels into Photoshop, then save for web or save file as gif.
4. Same as 3, but made screen grabb at 200% or 400% and apply appropriate scale (50% or 25% respectively) during save for web process.
5. Bring into Photoshop as an EPS or pasted screen grab and apply sharpen edges or sharpen filter, played with contrast, tried the dodge or burn tools. Exported or saved as GIF.

Some of the type on the Illustrator files goes to 9 pt, usually it's 11 or larger, can be bold or not. Looks like somone "moved the camera" ever so slightly. Also, my colors often break up.

It's been strongly suggested that the reason IK produce blurry GIFs is because I keep my screen appearance at a higher resolution than the "average Internet user." It' usually set at 1152x864. Would this make a difference?

What am I missing? ? I am on and around the Internet every day and no one uses fuzzy images except me! Do I need to use Fireworks or ImageMaker or another program? Someone please share your secret (or ideas!) with me!

Thank you!

 

[fizzak]

Forget 1 thru 5, complete waste of time. Especially 3 and 4

In Illustrator go File / Save for web
Same goes for Photoshop

In the Settings area use Gif if you are using solid color vector graphics, use Jpeg if you are using photos. "Rule of Thumb"

If you go Gif set it to Selective. Detemine how many colors you are using 3,5,10? Set the Colors close to that. Watch your image quality and the file size indicator when you mess with the settings to get the best balance. If you really have time you would go into the Color Table and manually remove colors that can't be seen with the naked eye to further reduce size.

When you place the Gif into your HTML, never resize or stretch it or it will fuzz up on you big time. The old "You can shrink but not expand" rule does not apply to Gifs. Maker sure it is exactly the same pixel size as when you saved it.

Another tip for you, If you want to bring Illustrator art to photoshop, Just copy and paste. Set the resolution to whatever you want. 72dpi for web, 300+ for printing.