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Related Manuals for Ulead GIF ANIMATOR 5
Summary of Contents for Ulead GIF ANIMATOR 5
- Page 1 User Guide Ulead Systems, Inc. March 2001...
- Page 2 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or storing in a retrieval system, or translated into any language in any form without the prior written permission of Ulead Systems, Inc. Software license The software described in this document is furnished under a License Agreement which is included with the product.
- Page 4 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE Ulead GIF Animator is a powerful GIF animation tool for creating high impact animation for Web pages, presentations, and multimedia titles. From composition, editing, and applying special effects, you can do them all in GIF Animator. GIF Animator also gives you total control over optimization, allowing you to make animations compact and Web-ready while retaining excellent image quality.
- Page 5 Ulead PhotoImpact versions. editable when you bring them (*.ufo file format) Yet, UFO files saved in GIF Animator 5 can back into the GIF Animator workspace. be opened again in GIF Animator 5 or Ulead PhotoImpact 6 only.
- Page 6 Cross-application integration • From within GIF Animator, send objects to other image editors such as Ulead PhotoImpact 6, Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro for further editing. • Photoshop layers and PhotoImpact objects can now be opened as individual objects in GIF Animator.
- Page 7 • Compress by file size or compression ratio. Improved output options • Save objects as layers in Ulead PhotoImpact 6 UFO and Photoshop PSD file formats. • Export projects as True Color Flash animations in BMP or JPEG formats.
- Page 8 Once you’ve installed GIF Animator, take a moment to register online. Just point your Web browser to the Ulead Web site (http://www.ulead.com). Becoming a registered user entitles you to product and information updates, as well as technical support if you encounter any problems with the GIF Animator program.
- Page 9 GETTING STARTED Before you start creating your animation projects, select File: Preferences [F6] to customize GIF Animator and specify how you want to work with your animations. For instance, you can define a standard delay time for displaying frames in your animation, choose the Web browser to use when previewing your work, set up the number of undo levels, and more.
- Page 10 In the Plug-in Filters tab, select a check box. Next, click Browse to link GIF Animator to the plug-in folders of other programs (such as Ulead GIF-X.Plugin or Adobe Photoshop), and access that program’s plug-in filters. Then, you can apply the plug-in filters to your animation project from within GIF Animator.
- Page 11 GIF ANIMATOR AT A GLANCE Everything you need to build great animations is included in GIF Animator’s single, WYSIWYG interface. With its drag-and-drop capabilities and the power to import files from more than 30 different file formats, the sky is the limit to what GIF Animator can help you create.
- Page 12 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE In GIF Animator, going through three different working modes - Edit, Optimize, and Preview - is essential to complete an animation. While creating an animation, click to switch between these three tabs in the workspace as needed.
- Page 13 GIF ANIMATOR AT A GLANCE Optimize mode is where you can work on compressing and compacting your animations before saving them as animated GIF files. Optimize your animations to come up with good quality images yet with smaller file sizes for fast transmission on the Web.
- Page 14 When you drag an animation or video file from another program into GIF Animator 5, the program provides options to determine how to insert these frames into the current workspace.
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Page 15: To Create An Animation
TUTORIAL When you create an animation, it is important to plan beforehand the sequence of ‘scenes’ before you actually start composing the contents of the animation. Also, make sure that you can get avail of all the objects that you need, or that you are capable of creating them. This short tutorial walks you through the steps on how to create an animation from start to finish. - Page 16 When you start out with a blank animation, you • Online Tutorial - Links you to the GIF can select a canvas size and color. The color Animator tutorial section in Ulead’s Web site. will be added as an independent object in the new project.
- Page 17 CREATING AN ANIMATION PROJECT The Animation Wizard provides a quick and easy way to create an animation project. It guides you step by step through the process of setting a canvas size, adding images (or video), up to customizing playback options for your animation. Use the buttons found at the bottom of the Animation Wizard window to move forward or backward through the steps.
- Page 18 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE GIF Animator supports a wide range of image, animation, and video file types which you can directly open in the program. When you open a media file, a new project will be created and the file contents will be added to the project. The canvas size will be based upon the original dimensions used by the media file.
- Page 19 CREATING AN ANIMATION PROJECT Since animated GIFs are widely used in creating banner ads for Web pages, GIF Animator tries to provide you with preset canvas sizes that are ideal for use in banner ads. Ready-to-use canvas sizes that can be selected from GIF Animator’s presets include the following: Canvas Size (in pixels) Banner type Canvas Size (in pixels)
- Page 20 Directly drag image files or a video file from Windows Explorer to GIF Animator workspace. • Copy and paste - You can create an image object from an image editor such as Ulead PhotoImpact or Adobe Photoshop first. Then simply copy [Ctrl+C] it to the clipboard and paste [Ctrl+V] it into the frame you want in GIF Animator.
- Page 21 WORKING WITH OBJECTS To add image objects from a video file: 1 Select the frame where you want to add image objects in the Frame Panel. (For details on Frame Panel, see page 33.) 2 Select File: Add Video, or click the Add Video button.
- Page 22 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE Insert a blank object Transparency slider Creates a new object based on the canvas size. You can Click this button and then drag the slider use it as a background color or other imaging purposes.
- Page 23 WORKING WITH OBJECTS Tool Panel provides a series of tools for editing and viewing objects in your animation project. The following sections describe each tool in detail. Selection Tool - Rectangle Pick Tool Text Tool Selection Tool - Ellipse Paintbrush Tool Selection Tool - Magic Wand Eraser Tool Selection Tool - Lasso...
- Page 24 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE Notes: • In the Object Manager Panel, you can also directly click there to select objects. • As you select objects, the Object Manager Panel highlights the active objects in blue accordingly so you can also directly work on these objects in the Object Manager Panel.
- Page 25 WORKING WITH OBJECTS Tips: • Frequently, you will want to make some of the GIF image transparent. To do so, simply create a selection area first. Then, select: Edit: Make Selection Area Transparent [Del] (or click the Selection Options button and then select Make Selection Area Transparent. •...
- Page 26 Text is an inherently straightforward tool for delivering your message in the animation you create. In GIF Animator, creating text objects is easy. You can even further customize the text object in Ulead PhotoImpact (6) for more advanced effects. Attribute Toolbar - Text Tool To create a text object: 1 Click Text Tool in the Tool Panel.
- Page 27 WORKING WITH OBJECTS Tips: • A fast way of editing the text object in Ulead PhotoImpact 6 is to select Edit: Favorite Image Editor - Ulead PhotoImpact 6. See page 30 for details. • Saving the animation project as a UFO file is also recommended. So, you can create more versatile text effects in Ulead PhotoImpact (6) later.
- Page 28 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE Eraser Tool allows you to directly remove parts (colors) of an image object. You can also decide the degree of transparency in the erased area, making an interesting overlapping effects (especially when there are other objects in the workspace).
- Page 29 To change the color of either the foreground color or background color, simply click one of the color boxes and select a new color in the Ulead Color Picker dialog box. Another way of selecting a color is to use the Eyedropper Tool. Simply click on the color that you want on the...
- Page 30 Ulead Color Picker dialog box During object editing, sometimes you might need another image editor such as Ulead PhotoImpact 6 to create more advanced effects. To help you easily open an image editor from GIF Animator, select Edit: Favorite Image Editor - Organize Favorite Image Editor to locate the path of the program.
- Page 31 WORKING WITH OBJECTS A shadow can be separated from its attached object, and thus becomes a stand-alone object so you can have more control of it. This also allows you to edit both the object and the shadow as individual objects in your animation. To do so, select Object: Split Shadow while an object with a shadow is selected.
- Page 32 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE This command automatically spreads selected objects in a frame to its succeeding frames. Each selected object will then be inserted into a frame. This command is particularly useful when there are multiple objects in a frame, and you want to spread them evenly into other existing or new frames.
- Page 33 WORKING WITH FRAMES An animation project comprises a number of frames, and each frame contains several objects. The whole animation is produced in a way based on the variation in frame changes. Therefore, GIF Animator provides a storyboard-like Frame Panel that helps you visually organize all the frames in a chronological sequence.
- Page 34 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE • To change the sequence of frames, use the navigation controls or directly drag them within the Frame Panel. • Right-clicking a frame pops up a menu for quick access to frame-related commands. In the course of the animation, each frame must be “removed” from the screen once it has been displayed.
- Page 35 WORKING WITH FRAMES Tweening adds or updates frames between two key frames so the first key frame can gradually “evolve” into the second frame. All newly added in-between frames serve as the transitional frames during tweening. To do tweening between two frames: 1 Select the object(s) you want to tween in the workspace or in the Object Manager Panel.
- Page 36 Over the past few years, banner ads have been considered an effective and inexpensive way of online advertisement in the Internet world. There are several ways to create striking banner ads, one of which is to have animated text. Ulead’s GIF Animator lets you easily do this with the banner text feature.
- Page 37 BANNER TEXT To apply effects: 1 In the Effect tab, select from the lists how you want your banner text to enter and exit the scene. 2 Enter the number of Frames to set how long you want each effect to take place in the scene.
- Page 38 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE GIF Animator lets you apply wild plug-in effects directly to the frames in your animation project rather than having to open each frame in an outside editor to apply effects there. You can apply the effect to a single frame or to a range of selected frames.
- Page 39 USING VIDEO F/X Video F/X is a collection of special filters for GIF Animator. Borrowed from Ulead’s award- winning digital video software, MediaStudio Pro and VideoStudio, they are professional level video transition and filter effects. Each effect automatically creates a string of new frames once it is applied, so it’s usually best to have only one or two frames at most in your project...
- Page 40 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE To apply a Video F/X filter effect: 1 Select the starting frame where you want to apply the video filter. Video F/X: 2 Click the Video F/X menu and select a transition effects type of video filter. For example, you can select Camera Lens: ColorShift.
- Page 41 OPTIMIZING YOUR ANIMATION In the time where the download duration of Web pages are of utmost importance, creating quality animations with small file sizes are of great concern. A constant headache for Web designers, this burdensome problem is solved by GIF Animator. With GIF Animator, striking a balance between the quality and size of an animated GIF file is easily achieved with the tools available.
- Page 42 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE • Compress by Size - This compression method in GIF Animator allows you to determine the desired target file size for the animated GIF file or assign a compression ratio to use when optimizing the animation.
- Page 43 OPTIMIZING YOUR ANIMATION Depending on the need of your GIF animations (for example, file size, appearance and other qualities), the optimization process can greatly vary. In GIF Animator, the Attribute Toolbar in the Optimize mode offers plenty of optimization options. All options here are arranged and displayed based on the complexity level, starting from the left (Preset, the most basic) of the Attribute Bar all the way to the right (Color Palette, the most advanced).
- Page 44 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE • Set dither at 100 to get the best color gradient result for photo-realistic images. Setting it at 0 works best for line-arts images. However, higher values increase the file size. • The Auto-remove garbage pixels button should be always enabled (pressed) when dithering.
- Page 45 PREVIEWING YOUR WORK Previewing is a way of checking how your work will really look in a browser. This lets you see whether your animation project has turned out the way you planned. GIF Animator provides a quick and simple way to check your masterpiece. The best thing about the Edit mode is that you can edit and preview your work on the same workspace.
- Page 46 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE The Preview Mode is where you can check your work and to give an idea on how your animation will appear when viewed in a Web browser. However, when you switch to this mode, the editing tools and some menu options will be unavailable at this point.
- Page 47 • UFO File - UFO stands for Ulead File for Objects format which can be edited using Ulead PhotoImpact (6). Select a frame and save it in UFO format file then you can edit the objects and base image independently of each other using Ulead PhotoImpact (6).
- Page 48 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE To save as separated image files: 1 Select File: Save As - Image Frames. The Save As dialog box opens. 2 Locate the folder to which you want to save the file, then enter the base name of the image sequence.
- Page 49 SAVING & EXPORTING 4 Enter a subject or description for the file (this information will only be available to you when working with the file in Subject menu selected video editors). 5 Click Options. The Video Save Options dialog box opens. 6 Set the video options - you can adjust the frame size to be larger or smaller than the original animation, set the frame rate (to...
- Page 50 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE Sometimes you may want to open and edit your animation with other applications. In this case, you need to save it using a format which the other programs can read. The process of saving a file in such manner is referred to as “exporting”...
- Page 51 SAVING & EXPORTING To export as a Packaged Animation: 1 Select File: Export - As Animation Package (EXE). 2 Select a Message box style from the list of those provided (or select the None option to forego this). This creates a virtual notepad or greeting card in which to play your message and animation.
- Page 52 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE The Index Editor provides advanced customization features (especially for detailed pixel editing) for the current animation project in GIF Animator or an existing GIF file. The Index Editor is particularly useful for experienced GIF users who require more control over the GIF file size, precise pixel editing, removing redundant pixels, and other GIF attributes.
- Page 53 INDEX EDITOR For the current animation project, select File: Save As - GIF File. Then, select the Open in Index Editor option and enter a file name. Next, click the Save button. The current animation project will be saved using this file name, and the Index Editor opens. Notes: •...
- Page 54 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE In a GIF animation file, all images in each frame together contain an index table that defines the number of colors within the frame and exactly which colors each index represents. Every color in the maximum 256-color ‘spectrum’ has its own unique identification, which is stored in the image’s color index (the color palette).
- Page 55 SHORTCUTS Command Shortcut Command Shortcut File Menu Edit Menu Ctrl+N Undo Ctrl+Z Open Image Ctrl+O Redo Ctrl+Y Save (As UGA File) Ctrl+S Ctrl+X Save As GIF File Ctrl+Shift+S Copy Ctrl+C Save As Image Frames Ctrl+E Copy Merged Shift+Ctrl+C Add Image Paste Ctrl+V Optimization Wizard...
- Page 56 ULEAD GIF ANIMATOR USER GUIDE...