Using the Gif Optimizer

Paint Shop Pro's Gif Optimizer is a terrific tool that has alleviated the necessity of a plug in or other software to optimize gif images.

You can get to the Gif Optimizer from the File menu. File>Export>GIF Optimizer. You'll need to have an image open when you do this.

When the GIF Optimizer dialog first opens you are on the transparency tab. If you don't want any transparency just leave it set to none. If you set transparency already for the image you could check that option to be sure the transparency you set stays.

If you choose Areas that match this color, then you'll also want to think about Tolerance. Tolerance is how far from the original color you want to go before transparency stops.

To demonstrate this I've drawn a line on a white canvas and zoom way in to show that although at normal size your line looks solid, it's really not at the edges. Images are generally that way. There is a gradient area that makes the image appear smooth edged.

So, when we talk about Tolerance we're talking about the gray areas.

The next tab is Partial Transparency tab. Partial transparency is not actually allowed in GIF images. This tab allows you to choose what will happen to pixels in your image that are partially transparent. I personally don't ever do anything with this tab.

The next tab is the colors tab. Here is where you choose how many colors you want in your image and whether you want dithering or not. You can choose what method of optimization you want. As you work through the tabs you'll be able to see the effect your choices are having on your image.

Standard/Web Safe will use a 216 color palette.

Optimized Median Cut chooses color with an accuracy of about 5 bits per channel when reducing the number of colors in the image. I have never found this particular color selection method to be very good.

Optimized Octree is what I use for the most part for web graphics and is accurate to about 8 bits per pixel when optimizing colors.

The format tab allows you to choose how your images appear as they are downloaded. Non-interlaced images download one line at a time. Interlaced images download in passes. Each pass more detail is added until the image becomes clearer with each pass.

If you choose 87a for the version, you're image will have no transparency. If you choose version 89a then your image will have transparency if you specified that it should.

On the final tab, Download Times, you'll be able to see how long it will take for you image to download on the web. If it is too long a time you can go back and make changes to your previous decisions and try again.

If all that is feeling a bit much you can always use the wizard to make most of the decisions for you. The wizard is straight forward and easy to use.

You'll still get a chance to see a preview of your image before the final save.

If you'd rather, you can just go to File>Save As and choose gif as the file type. When the save as dialog opens you'll see an Options button on the bottom right corner of the dialog. If you click on that you will see the dialog above. You can then make choices that will occur every time you save an image in that way. You can also choose to use the optimizer from here.

Copyright Vikki Olds, All Rights Reserved