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Related Manuals for Ulead GIF ANIMATOR 4.0
Summary of Contents for Ulead GIF ANIMATOR 4.0
- Page 1 USER GUIDE...
- Page 2 Ulead Systems, Inc., the Ulead logo, Ulead GIF Animator, VideoStudio and MediaStudio Pro are trademarks of Ulead Systems, Inc. All other product names and any registered and unreg- istered trademarks mentioned in this manual are used for identification purposes only and remain the exclusive property of their respective owners.
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Page 3: Table Of Contents
Table of Contents Welcome to GIF Animator What’s new in this version Getting started GIF Animator at a glance Customizing how you work Creating a new animation Working with the Layer pane Editing image layers Duplicating image layers Cropping and resampling images Retouching image layers Merging image layers Other editing tools... -
Page 4: Welcome To Gif Animator
Welcome to GIF Animator Welcome to Ulead GIF Animator, the industry standard for GIF animation. From its drag-and- drop simplicity to its numerous customization options, GIF Animator takes all the hard work out of building web-animations while giving you room to flex your creative muscles. Its built- in, top-notch optimization engine makes your animation compact and web-ready in seconds while retaining its overall quality. - Page 5 Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro can now be used directly within GIF Animator for enhancing image layers. GIF Animator comes with more than 30 custom video filters and effects, borrowed from Ulead’s award- winning MediaStudio Pro, and is also capable of both importing and exporting video files.
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Page 6: What's New In This Version
What’s new in this version This version of GIF Animator contains some significant improvements and additions to the last version, including: New work modes – An improved user interface lets you do your layout, edits and touch-ups all directly within the main pro- The four work modes in GIF Animator: Compose, gram window. -
Page 7: Getting Started
D:\setup.exe and click OK ( where D is the letter of your CD-ROM drive). Once you’ve installed GIF Animator, take a moment to register online. Just point your web browser to the Ulead web site ( HTTP ). Becoming a registered user ULEAD... -
Page 8: Gif Animator At A Glance
GIF Animator at a glance Everything you need to build great animations is included in GIF Animator’ s single, what-you- see-is-what-you-get interface. With its drag-and-drop capabilities and the power to import files from more than 30 different file formats, the sky’s the limit to what GIF Animator can help you create. -
Page 9: Customizing How You Work
Customizing how you work With the Preferences dialog box, GIF Animator lets you customize how you work. For example, you can define how images are converted from high color formats down to the basic GIF color palette of 256 colors, append a personalized comment to each animation, and set up the number of undo levels available while working. -
Page 10: Creating A New Animation
Creating a new animation Getting started with GIF Animator is a snap. All animations consist of a series of ‘stacked’ images, with each image being a single ‘frame’ in the animation. You can build frames (called layers in GIF Animator) by inserting individual images manually or by inserting portions of digitized videos. -
Page 11: Working With The Layer Pane
Working with the Layer pane Understanding how to work with image layers (also called frames or cels) in the Layer pane, is the key to understanding how animations are built in GIF Animator. Once you comprehend the basics of image layers, everything else is easy. Image Layer Modes: You can set the Layer Mode through the View: Layer Pane - Mode submenu. -
Page 12: Editing Image Layers
Editing image layers When building animations, you’ll often find that the work you did in your image editor to prepare the images was not quite right - perhaps the colors didn’t quite convert from high color to 256-color as well as you had hoped and visual residue was introduced into the layers, or maybe the frames are too large. - Page 13 Retouching image layers GIF Animator comes with a small, built-in image editor that you can use while in Edit mode. While not a full-fledged image editor, it does let you make minor corrections and adjustments to your image layers. This is especially handy for cleaning up resampled layers and scanned images that may have residue.
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Page 14: Cropping And Resampling Images
Cropping and resampling images Another common situation when building GIF animations is to discover, after working on your image layers in an outside editor, that they are too large to display properly on a web page. One way to remedy this is to pare away the excess space around the core animation using the Crop tool. -
Page 15: Merging Image Layers
Merging image layers There are two ways to merge images in GIF Animator. Simple cross-layer merging allows you to combine one image layer with another, creating a new image layer that is a hybrid of the two. Background merging allows you to select multiple layers and then merge each one with a common background layer. -
Page 16: Other Editing Tools
Other editing tools GIF Animator comes with other tools to help you edit image layers, offering you a complete and convenient toolkit to use for your projects. Aligning images: To change an image’s physical alignment, you can use GIF Animator’ s built-in trans- form tools. -
Page 17: Working With Layer Attributes
Working with layer attributes Each image layer has its own set of ‘controls’ that dictate how that image layer is displayed; you can decide whether or not it has a Local Palette, define its general position, and select which color is the transparent color. All the attributes assigned to an image layer, however, work in conjunction with the other layers, and together they create the properties of the animation as a whole. -
Page 18: Positioning Images In The Workspace
Positioning images in the Workspace Each image layer contains its own set of attributes that pertain only to that layer, even though the attributes may be the same for every layer. One of the more important attributes is the ability to position image layers anywhere within the Logical Screen. To position image layers: 1 Select the layer you want to position from the Layer pane list. -
Page 19: Setting An Image Layer's Transparency
Setting an image layer’ s transparency One of the special features about the GIF file format is the transparency attribute, which allows you to select a specific color and then make it effectively invisible to all dedicated GIF viewing software, including web browsers. This lets you create custom shapes that don’t conflict with the content of your web pages. -
Page 20: Removing Image Layers
Removing image layers In the course of the animation, each image layer must be ‘removed’ from the screen once it has been displayed. The removal method affects the overall appearance of the animation - some web browsers, however, don’t support all the removal methods available. You can set an image layer’... -
Page 21: Other Image Layer Attributes
Other image layer attributes The final three image layer attributes are Delay, Wait for user input, and Interlace. Like all the image layer attributes, their presence is required by the file format (GIF89a), but only one has any visible effect on an animation as it plays in a web browser. They are described below: •... -
Page 22: Using Plug-In Filters
Using Plug-in Filters GIF Animator lets you apply wild plug-in effects directly to the image layers in your animation rather than having to open each layer in an outside editor to apply effects there. You can apply the effect to a single layer or to a range of selected layers. Any Adobe Photoshop 32-bit compliant plug-in can be used in GIF Animator. -
Page 23: Using Video F/X
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 transitions and filter effects. Each filter automatically creates a string of new image layers once it’s engaged, so it’s usually best to have only one or two image layers at most in... -
Page 24: Saving Gif Images
Saving GIF images There are a number of ways to save your work. The first step, obviously, is to save it as an animated GIF file. However, GIF Animator offers you other output methods to meet your specific needs. You can save the image layers of an animation individually, export the anima- tion as a stand-alone executable file, or even output it as a digital movie file. -
Page 25: Exporting Image Layers
Exporting image layers Sometimes you may want to open the image layers in your animations outside GIF Animator in order to edit them - the Export function lets you do that quickly and easily. You can also export your work as a stand-alone packaged animation. This file can be conveniently played in any Windows environment outside of your web browsers, making it ideal for sending animated greetings, birthday wishes, and fun messages to friends and family. - Page 26 CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator, and then modifying them. Similarly, you can create your own files from scratch and then save them to the ‘Msgfiles’ folder in the GIF Animator 4.0 directory. 3 Select a Sound file to play along with your animation.
- Page 27 To export as a video file: 1 Click the File: Export - As Video File menu command. The Save Video File dialog box opens. 2 Enter a filename for the new video and the location to which you want to save it. 3 Select the type of video file you want to create.
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Page 28: Appendix I: About Gif Animation
The way they appear is defined by control extensions built into the file. With an appropriate tool, such as Ulead GIF Animator, you can set these controls yourself and bring your web site to life with exciting cartoons, banner ads, glowing bullets,... -
Page 29: Appendix Ii: Gif Color Palettes
Appendix II: GIF color palettes Every GIF image file contains an index table that defines the number of colors within an image and exactly which colors each index represents. Every color in the 256-color ‘spectrum’ has its own unique identification, which is stored in the image’s color index (the color palette). In GIF files, every color in the index requires 3 or 4 bytes of data to define it (depending on how it was originally stored). -
Page 30: Appendix Iii: Creating Compact Animations
But if you can get away with cutting out a few layers here and there then you should do it. Ulead GIF Animator allows you to greatly reduce the file sizes of the individual layers through a third method: optimization. When you select the File: Optimization Wizard command, GIF Animator analyzes the image layers in your animation, compares them with one another, and then removes all the redundant pixels that the layers share with one another. -
Page 31: Appendix Iv: Glossary
Appendix IV: Glossary Logical Screen Aspect ratio Keeps the basic intrinsic shape of the image The dimensions of the animation as a whole. layers as they are resized. Looping Broken frame The number of times that an animation plays. Any image layer that has been previously Can be set to a finite number or for infinite optimized and is subsequently missing pixels. - Page 32 Included in Web.Plugins are: Button Designer, Background Designer, Shadow Designer and more. • Ulead Type.Plugin 1.0 — Make your text and images blaze with fire, shimmer with ice, glow with neon brightness, sparkle like glass, and more.