how to make an avatar

[mkrishnan]

as i look at this thread, i just now realized something. animated .gifs are not working in safari. they are not moving. They look fine on my pc but not here. Is there a setting or sumthing that i need checked that i'm missing.

Are you using PithHelmet or any other add on that might be killing animation?

I had never made an animated GIF before in PSE3, so I wanted to give a try. This will also be funny because of how much better iGary's version will be. But Puckhead, you're more than welcome to use this if you want it.

 

[efoto]

Are you using PithHelmet or any other add on that might be killing animation?

I had never made an animated GIF before in PSE3, so I wanted to give a try. This will also be funny because of how much better iGary's version will be. But Puckhead, you're more than welcome to use this if you want it.

That is pretty nice stuff mkrishnan, I reallly like it. I have never done one before either so asking this may be waaaay overdone, but can the trasition fade a little bit more smoothly? and perhaps once it has gone from rainbow to blue it could go back to rainbow transitionally, instead of 'starting over'.

Like I said, I really like it as is and have no idea if this is possible or not, so don't go solely by my questions/suggestions. Nice work.

 

[mkrishnan]

...can the trasition fade a little bit more smoothly? and perhaps once it has gone from rainbow to blue it could go back to rainbow transitionally, instead of 'starting over'.

Yeah, actually, it isn't too hard to do that. You just have to have more transitional steps. I don't think there's a canned easy way to make it reverse at the end instead of looping, in PSE, but you can also do that easily with more layers. I'll take one more pass (I was smart and saved the .PSD file! ).

Well, here is a take, but this file is too big, AFAIK, to be an avatar. And I have not been able to find a good way to downsize it without it looking pretty bad....

 

[efoto]

Yeah, actually, it isn't too hard to do that. You just have to have more transitional steps. I don't think there's a canned easy way to make it reverse at the end instead of looping, in PSE, but you can also do that easily with more layers. I'll take one more pass (I was smart and saved the .PSD file! ).

Well, here is a take, but this file is too big, AFAIK, to be an avatar. And I have not been able to find a good way to downsize it without it looking pretty bad....

That is exactly what I was talking about, nice work I really like it

I didn't think there was another way to 'repeat' other than cycling back to the beginning, but what I meant to say was if you faded back to the beginning like you faded into the middle if you will. You seem to have accomplished what I was getting at, so disregard my confusing banter and keep up the good work.

As far as the file size goes....if you decrease the quality a little bit, and then decrease the overall image size, you should have the appearance of 'quality' at the lower size with both steps decreasing the overall filesize of the image. I'm not sure exactly how this impacts the image, but could you try saving it in other file formats or does it have to be saved as is?

 

[mkrishnan]

I'm not sure exactly how this impacts the image, but could you try saving it in other file formats or does it have to be saved as is?

Is there such a thing as an animated JPEG? I thought animated GIFs have to be GIFs.

 

[efoto]

Is there such a thing as an animated JPEG? I thought animated GIFs have to be GIFs.

To my knowledge an animated GIF is the only way, I was asking if there was a possibility to save in other formats, I know of none.

 

[mkrishnan]

To my knowledge an animated GIF is the only way, I was asking if there was a possibility to save in other formats, I know of none.

If you stick with GIF, PSE lets you adjust the number of colors and/or color space, and the amount of dithering, to get the image down in size. But with this one, in order to get it down to <20k, it would require some pretty bad looking artifacts. Maybe some other program can do it more effectively? The big issue with animated GIFs is the number of frames...this one has about 40, although half of them are duplicates.

 

[efoto]

If you stick with GIF, PSE lets you adjust the number of colors and/or color space, and the amount of dithering, to get the image down in size. But with this one, in order to get it down to <20k, it would require some pretty bad looking artifacts. Maybe some other program can do it more effectively? The big issue with animated GIFs is the number of frames...this one has about 40, although half of them are duplicates.

I have never done this before, so this question may be stupid....just give it to me straight, no sugar - Why do you need half of the frames to be duplicates?

 

[mkrishnan]

I have never done this before, so this question may be stupid....just give it to me straight, no sugar - Why do you need half of the frames to be duplicates?

So that it fades from the blue apple back to the striped apple. The loop is something like:

1 (striped) 2 3 ... 20 (blue) 19 18 ... 2

And then it loops back to 1 again.

 

[efoto]

So that it fades from the blue apple back to the striped apple. The loop is something like:

1 (striped) 2 3 ... 20 (blue) 19 18 ... 2

And then it loops back to 1 again.

Exactly as I expected, a straight-forward answer, thanks

I had somewhat assumed something like that was the reasoning, but it's nice to have a little explanation to further my understanding.