optimisation programs

Please tell me what programs you use to optimise/crunch animated gifs. What do you think is the best program to use?

I need as many answers as possible. Thanks.

I haven't bothered with Animated Gif's for a few years but here's a page with links to a few products:

http://hometown.aol.com/royalef/toolbox.htm

Orkar

Thanks! at least now I have a starting point.

image ready (from photoshop)
flash

Another couple to add to the list...

Fireworks & ULead GIF animator.

What package are you using to create the GIFs, or are you trying to optimize existing ones?

It's better if you have the original source files (such as fireworks, flash or photoshop), and then tweak the export parameters (no. of colours & palette, amount of dithering & compression) to hit the required file size.

Last week i had to redo 40 banners as i was only told afterwards that they had to be 12k (i was working to 15k).
I tried reoptimsing the GIFs but 'cos all i could do was decrease the number of colours, they looked crap... but luckily i had a separate fireworks file for each one, so it was a lot easier to reduce the file size and still have them not looking so crap :)

hope this helps,
Andy

I have been using Adobe ImageReady and I have been completely happy with it... but the marketing department swears there are better programs to use (they just dont know what they are) ;)

I tested the following programs on a 468x60 banner which had been optimised (as far as it could go) to 14k in ImageReady...

Advanced GIF Animator - rubbish
Animagic GIF Animator - got same results as ImageReady
Barbarosa GIF Animator - got same results as ImageReady
SuperGIF - got a 14k imageready file down to 11k (http://www.boxtopsoft.com/)
Zoner GIF Animator - got same results as ImageReady
A Smaller GIF - got a 14k imageready file down to 12k
GIF Movie Gear - got same results as ImageReady
GIF Cruncher - got a 14k imageready file down to 10k (http://www.digfrontiers.com/)
and about 11 others which failed to download or were totally useless.