GIF Tutorial
Tutorial made in GIMP
So, recently I was trying to make this:
, but after the first run-through of making it, it was a little over 100kb. Now, that wasn't good, considering the LJ standards are 40kb. I tried going to "Filters-Animation-Optimize for Gif" and that only reduced the size a tiny bit. I read somewhere that indexing the image would make it smaller, and it'd be good to do 85(rather than the 256? colors) ... but just changing it to 85 colors made it look incredibly grainy and choppy. Not to mention, it still wasn't small enough for LJ. So, here the tutorial starts! We're going to use color palettes!
Click on your base layer. Then go to your main gimp window and choose the color selector tool(the eyedropper), and also make sure that "Add to Palette" is selected:
Now, open up your palettes window(Dialogues-palettes) and make a new palette.
Name it whatever you'd like. Now, go back to your image, and make sure the base layer is sected. Using your eyedropper, select the main parts of your image so that it gets the main colors. To see you may need to turn the rest of your layers to invisible. As you click colors, they should add themselves automatically to your palette. If they don't, click the color, then go to your "Palette Editor" window with your new palette, click the "tab" button, and select "Palette Editor Menu-New Color from FG Menu". That should add it.
Go through your main layers and pick the main colors out of them, along with a few background colors. Save it as a .gif, and see what it looks like. You may end up having to go back in a few times to add a few more colors if it looks too grainy. This way, you're using colors specific to the icon, and not just random colors.
When you think you have the colors you need, save your palette. Now, go to Image-Mode-Indexed. Click "Use custom palette" and then find the one that you just made. Hit okay. Now try saving your image as a .gif. Like I said, you may have to go in and edit a few colors, but hopefully it shrinks the size down for you!
I hope that helped some people! ^__^
So, recently I was trying to make this:
, but after the first run-through of making it, it was a little over 100kb. Now, that wasn't good, considering the LJ standards are 40kb. I tried going to "Filters-Animation-Optimize for Gif" and that only reduced the size a tiny bit. I read somewhere that indexing the image would make it smaller, and it'd be good to do 85(rather than the 256? colors) ... but just changing it to 85 colors made it look incredibly grainy and choppy. Not to mention, it still wasn't small enough for LJ. So, here the tutorial starts! We're going to use color palettes!
Click on your base layer. Then go to your main gimp window and choose the color selector tool(the eyedropper), and also make sure that "Add to Palette" is selected:
Now, open up your palettes window(Dialogues-palettes) and make a new palette.
Name it whatever you'd like. Now, go back to your image, and make sure the base layer is sected. Using your eyedropper, select the main parts of your image so that it gets the main colors. To see you may need to turn the rest of your layers to invisible. As you click colors, they should add themselves automatically to your palette. If they don't, click the color, then go to your "Palette Editor" window with your new palette, click the "tab" button, and select "Palette Editor Menu-New Color from FG Menu". That should add it.
Go through your main layers and pick the main colors out of them, along with a few background colors. Save it as a .gif, and see what it looks like. You may end up having to go back in a few times to add a few more colors if it looks too grainy. This way, you're using colors specific to the icon, and not just random colors.
When you think you have the colors you need, save your palette. Now, go to Image-Mode-Indexed. Click "Use custom palette" and then find the one that you just made. Hit okay. Now try saving your image as a .gif. Like I said, you may have to go in and edit a few colors, but hopefully it shrinks the size down for you!
I hope that helped some people! ^__^