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Optimizing in PSP7

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marysue

Technical User
Nov 2, 2003
1
US
I have PSP7 and have trouble saving gifs. Specifically, when I save it, and it goes through the optimizer, it changes some of the colors of the gif. Are my settings off, or is this something that others have experienced?
 
I think there's a problem on your end. When you create a graphic, it has the default extension of .psp and, unless you have changed it, will have 16+ million colors available. To save as a .GIF, you have to reduce the amount of colors to 256 (or less). Obviously, if your image was created using a 16 million color pallet and you change to a 256 color pallet, your going to get some color change.

The only time I use a GIF is when I need a transparent background.

There's always a better way. The fun is trying to find it!
 
In addition to what tviman posted, you might want to double check to see if "none" is checked on the transparency tab. If it is not then you might have some issues with transparency when you don't want any color to be transparent.

mike
 
GIFs are limited to 256 colours - so if your image has more than 256 to start with, some are going to be changed.

If you start with an image with the full 16 million colour pallette (even if you're using less than 256 of them) PSP has to somehow reduce that pallette size. The three methods if offers - Optimised Median Cut, Optimised Octree and Standard Websafe - can all change the colours used, sometimes quite dramatically (Optimised Octree seems to suffer the least, but try all 3 and see which you like best). If particular colour choices are important to you, reduce the colour depth of your image first (from the menu: Colours/Decrease Colour Depth/256 Colours (or less)), then correct any colours that have gone awry with Colours/Edit Pallette. When you export the GIF, select "Existing Pallette" on the Colours tab.

Remember that the fewer colours you specify in the pallette, the smaller the file will be.

-- Chris Hunt
 
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