[F8] Animated gif looks ugly???

[cturner]

I am trying to create an animation with some products that my client has. When I create the animated gif in Flash 8 the photos look ugly. I have attached the animated gif to this post. Can someone please tell me how I can make the photos look better? Thanks in advance.

[Schfifty Five]

GIFs only use 256 colors (compared to over 16 million with most other formats) so when you convert photographs to GIFs a lot of color information is lost. There's not much you can do other than use something other than GIFs if possible.

[Thankful]

Yes, Schfifty Five is right... GIFs are limited to 256 colors palette only.

However, if you play with options a little bit, you'll be able to achieve better results. Not in Flash though because its export method doesn't allow you to change anything regarding animated gif's option... or very little.

I will try to explain in an easiest to understand way possible... hope I'll succeed.

I do all my animated GIFs in Fireworks. At the end, when you have to export your file, make sure its palette is set to EXACT , and you put a checkmark next to DITHER option (see attached image):



That will enable 256 (actually 255 colors) but with better looking transitions (read: smoother) between highly contrasted colors.

These are original photos using 16.8 millions of colors:



And this is the final result... animated GIF (256 colors, dithering enabled):



Hope this helps a bit

Best Regards!