Corel Painter Help | Exporting animated GIFs

Exporting animated GIFs

To export a frame stack as an animated GIF

Corel Painter lets you export a frame stack as an animated GIF file. The animated GIF format is ideal for displaying simple animations on the web.

You can use a GIF as a link anchor or as an image map. However, you cannot use it as a background.

There are many options available when you save images to a GIF file.

You can apply transparency to the animation and choose a background option. However, you must set up a selection for each frame. For more information, see Getting started with selections.

The Disposal Method options let you specify what happens to an image after it has been displayed (and its frame delay has passed), and before the next image is displayed. The disposal method is significant only when you use transparency that differs between frames.

The Loop option lets you play the animation repeatedly in the client browser. The animation appears in the browser one frame at a time, at the speed at which it is downloaded. In most cases, this is significantly slower than the intended display rate. With the Loop option enabled, the browser will loop the animation after all frames have been downloaded, with the specified delay between frames. Because the animation plays from the browser’s cache, it’s much faster.

If your movie is intended for the web, you should consider reducing its file size so the movie is small enough to download within in a reasonable amount of time. You can minimize file size by doing any of the following:

• Reduce the frame size. You choose the frame size when you create a new movie. If you import an existing animation or video, you cannot resize the frames.

• Limit the number of frames because each frame increases the file size.

• Limit the number of colors. When you reduce the number colors in the image, you are also reducing the size of the color palette, which leads to smaller files.

To export a frame stack as an animated GIF

1 With the frame stack open, choose File

Save As.

2 In the Save Movie dialog box, enable the Save Movie As GIF Animation option.

3 In the Enter Movie Name dialog box, choose a location, type a filename, and click Save.

The Save as GIF Options dialog box appears.

4 Enable an option in the Number of Colors area.

5 In the Imaging Method area, enable one of the following options:

• Quantize to Nearest Color — reduces the number of similar colors in the image without affecting the overall image. This is useful for images with broad areas of a single color.

• Dither Colors — simulates a greater number of colors when only a limited number of colors are available

6 In the Animation Options area, type a value in the Frame Delay box to specify a pause (in 100ths of a second) between frames.

7 In the Disposal Method area, choose one of the following options:

• Default — uses the client browser’s default disposal method

• Background — Restores to the background color the region covered by the image

• None — leaves the image on-screen while rendering the next frame over it

• Previous — displays the imagery of the previous frame to the region covered by the image

You can now use your browser to open the file and view the animation. You can place the animation on a web page using the same HTML image tag you’d use for a simple GIF file.

You can also
Gradually display images in the web browser as they load	In the Misc Options area, enable the Interlaced option.
Enable server-side image map	In the Map Options area, enable the NCSA Map File or CERN Map File option.
Enable client-side image maps	In the Map Options area, enable the Client Side Map File option.
Apply transparency	In the Transparency area, enable the Output Transparency option, and then enable a background option. Move the Threshold slider to specify the selection mask value at which the image becomes transparent.
Repeat the animation	Enable the Loop check box, and type the number of times to repeat the animation. If you want it to repeat indefinitely, type 0.

If you do not set a frame delay, the frames appear as quickly as the system can load and display them. The display of each image (especially with larger frames) varies between computer systems, so the actual animation display rate may be lower. You can use frame delay to approximate a particular frame rate. For example, you capture some one-quarter size video at 8 frames per second (fps). You want 8 frames to appear in one second, so you divide one second (100 hundredths of a second) by 8. The result is 100/8 = 12.5. Discard the decimal portion and enter 12 as the frame delay. Discarding the decimal is the only allowance for the time required to display each image. For a large frame size, you might want to allow more time for display.

If the animation in the browser window stops playing, it’s probably finished the set number of loops. In some browsers, you can get it started again by resizing the window. In all browsers, you can get it started again by reloading the page.