Thread: problems changing .jpg to .gif images

When I try to change .jpg images to .gif, using either PIXresizer, Pixillion Image Converter, or Office Image Convert, the colors in the converted .gif file are at best covered with like a dull, grey film or at worst, full of holes and grey dots. My budget requires that I use free programs. Does anyone know anything I can do, other than having to repaint all the colors with Paint.net?
Thanks.

Have you tried to .png to see what its like.

.png looks the same way, made by either of the programs. I need to convert them to make an animation. Don't I need them to be in .gif? But when make the picture using a text box in BV, then make a screenshot using ScreenHunter, it makes a nice .jpg with bright colors. But the jpg's won't animate in UnFREEz, only gif's.

Try using a program like Gimp
http://www.gimp.org/

Same thing with Gimp.

http://www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/non...-software.html

Try that one.. and by tradition.. gifs have fewer pixels than jpeg..so.. instead of converting them to gif.. leave them as jpeg and just reduce the pixels and the size. Then if you want to animate them.. layers and then save as a gif but keep the 16 million dpi when you reduce it so you dont lose the color

Karen

Could you explain what you mean by "if you want to animate them.. layers"? You seem to have left out an important step that I don't know about.

animations are done in two ways.. frame by frame or by layers placeholding the frames. In flash this is also a SPRITE a movement. If you do jpeg.. in layers and slightly change each layer you will get a movement. when you save you export it as a gif to maintain the layers.. then the image will move as you wish...

if its a gif to start with and you save it as jpeg.. you lose the animation and cannot change it back.

i would assume you knew this if you were trying to ANIMATE it.

Karen

Originally Posted by dovidshmuel

Could you explain what you mean by "if you want to animate them.. layers"? You seem to have left out an important step that I don't know about.

GIF images that moves actually had been frames overlapping another with varied changes. picture a man walking w/ his right foot on as frame 1 and another picture of him walking w/ his left foot on as frame 2. if set in GIF you see it walk continously when animated.

There are free GIF animators/trial version. But editing each frame without changing color is best done with adobe photoshop. Good luck mate.

It's obvious that I lack a lot of information. Is there some free program that allows me to first animate the pictures as jpeg layers and then convert the whole animation to gif (if that's what you meant, Karen)? UnFREEz only allows me to upload gif files and once they are all uploaded, it makes an animation of them.

animation is actually a bloody work. basically if you want a waving flag, you have to sketch each movement per frame. I did that last monday and although I made it moved, I failed to cook for dinner. No software I knew could make custom GIF animation by instant effort.

Thanks, Flyer. I guess I'll stick to recoloring the colors, until I learn differently.

Here's a tip. Have you heard about Wacom graphic tablet? it's like a mousepad touchscreen used by graphic artists where you could sketch and the result is directly transferred to the PC. Anyway that's the way they do GIF animations for sure. Good luck mate.

Meanwhile try non-animated GIF image for the meantime. I'll give you a ring when I have won an auction for a cheap wacom unit at ebay. I will give my 1st sample free as promo.

My budget insists that it's got to be free. (We're both posting at the same time.)

there's a site for free gif images. although not so good are free. or try posting at google search for the image you wanted. when you sort out those images, there's always animated ones there where you could copy.

ok what exactly do you want to do, as you have not really explained, your animation is it like karens in her signature or something else. like a text or image animation as there are many techniques to doing curtain items. converting jpg to gif will always lose some color and detail. jpg will not animate but you can use them to make a gif animation so you would need separate images for each frame.
if you could show a example of what you are trying to do from a web page you may have seen it would be easier to explain the answer.

When I was trying to make the avatar, 20:20, that I just uploaded next to my name (take a look), the colors of the numbers had like a grey film over them. I had to repaint over the colors to make them bright after the individual images were made into gif's. Karen had said that converting jpg to gif causes a color loss, so I was resigned to having to paint over the colors, but she also said something about reducing the pixels of jpeg's, animating them as layers and then making the whole thing a gif (which I don't know how to do).

I made the "20:20" originally as text boxes in BV, then made them into jpg by a screenshot using ScreenHunter. UnFREEz requires gif's, so I converted them to gif's using PIXresizer, and the colors are greyed out. (Why the colon in the avatar doesn't blink here is another problem, posted in another thread. It does blink in a previewed page.)

Well depends on gif properties perhaps. mine doesn't animate too. Watdaflip does, we should ask him mate.

so you just want that sort image to blink from one color to another or different colors.

No. The whole thing stays green and black, only the colon (the two dots) in the middle are supposed to blink (it's a digital clock with the time of 20:20). I made it from two shots, one of 20:20 with the colon and one without the colon.

Ok like this you mean

Right on, Alien Dude! You got it to blink. You have to tell me how you did that. Three problems: (1) the colon should change from green to black, not from green to red; (2) you'll notice that the green numbers "dull-out" during the second image (when the colon is red), so you have the same problem; (3) when you tell me how you got it to blink, you should probably do so in the thread that's addressing that problem at http://www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/blu...me-forums.html.
We're close to problem resolution.

Ok will do

So the problem is solved. My problem was I didn't realize that the free program ScreenHunter, with which I was making the screenshots, has an option to save it as a gif also. So I did it again, saving them as gif's, making the animation with UnFREEz, and the colors were fine and bright. Would have saved me a lot of work if I knew this before.