You can now close PhotoImpact 4 and open the Ulead Gif Animator which came with it, but operates as a separate program.

Ours is such a simple animation that we can use the Animation Wizard which guides you through making the animation, so at the screen you see when the program is loaded, choose Animation Wizard. The first screen of the Wizard is the one where we load the frames. Click on Add Image, and the usual file browser will open. If you put your three frames in the same folder there is no need to add them one-by-one. Select all three, as shown below, by clicking on them while holding down the CTRL key. They will all be listed in the filename box, and when you click on Open to return to the Wizard, all three will be listed there too.

Click the Next button, and at the next screen select Photo-oriented (Dither) because ours is a picture animation and not text.

Click Next again to go to the Frame Duration Screen (right). This screen controls the length of time (in 1/100ths of a second) that each frame is displayed before going on to the next one. The longer the frames are displayed, the slower the animation will be. The red figures show the speed of the frame change set, but don't really give you much of an idea what your animation will look like in practice. Snow globes usually look best running at speeds around 12-15. I have selected 15 here, but we shall be able to change that from within the animation program if it does not look right.

Next takes you to an information screen, which is worth reading if this is your first time with Gif Animator, and Finish on that screen will take you into the main program where the frames will be listed and one screen of the animation will be visible. We can now test the animation. Click on the Start Preview button at the top of the workspace, and you will see your animation in action.

Do not worry that the base appears to have vanished into the background. The Animator shows transparent colours as black, and so the base appears to have been swallowed up too, but it will not be transparent when the animation is running in your browser. Check that only the snow is moving. If anything else is in motion you will have to go back to PI4 and remake at least one of the frames.

If there is anything wrong you can often diagnose which frame is out of alignment by clicking one by one on the filenames in the frame list (left). The one selected there is the one visible in the workspace, and if you click on them one after the other, changing the order in which you select them, it usually becomes obvious which one is out of line, and in what way - whether it is moving left, right, up or down.

You must correct it then delete the faulty frame from the animation. Use Layer/Add Images to import the corrected frame. If it is not in the right place in the list, select it so that it is highlighted and use the Up and Down arrows on the top toolbar (right) to move it in the list. In fact, the order does not matter in our snowglobe, but in many animations it is crucial.

In the box below these arrows set Web Browser Decide, and in the one below that you can test other frame speeds. When you are satisfied that your animation is working perfectly, use File/Save As and save the animation.

There is another option we can use, to make the finished animation load more quickly by optimizing the file size. Click on this button on the top toolbar, which will take you to the Optimization Wizard. At the first screen select Yes to have the palette colours optimized.

At the next screen you can reduce the file size considerably by opting for less colours. As you have already saved the animation in its raw state, you can experiment with this and see whether there is any noticeable degrading of your globe with fewer colours. If at the end, when you replay the optimized version you do not like the settings you chose, reload your original animation and try again with more colours. If you stick with 256 colours, you will not make much saving on the file size. At this screen also select Yes to the Dither question.

At the next screen, select Yes to the question about redundant pixels. The question about comment blocks will depend on whether you have put any notes in the animation that you want to keep for future reference. On the top bar of the main screen is a button with a plus sign and ABC. If you click on that you can add notes which are saved with the animation. This question is asking whether you want to discard those to make the file size smaller - something only you can decide.

At the next screen you get a chance to save your decisions as the defaults which will be offered next time you use the optimizer. Do so if you wish, and then click Finish.

You will be given a summary of the loading time and filesize saved by your changes. If you think they are worth it, save the animation again under a slightly different name in case you do not like the result and want to go back to the original one.

Finally, here is my finished snowglobe.

© Carol Brooksbank 2003
This tutorial may not be copied to any other website nor distributed in any way. It may be downloaded for personal use only. Links to my tutorials at http://www.caroluk.co.uk/tutindex/ are welcome.

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