How To Change the load order of PhotoGIF™ and control whether PhotoGIF™ or Compuserve GIF is the default file format plug-in for opening GIF files.
DANGER! WARNING! DANGER! DANGER! DANGER WILL ROBINSON! BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER... MAKE A BACKUP OF PHOTOGIF™ NOW!! (I mean it when I say that.)
I've gotten a lot of questions in the past about why PhotoGIF™ has always been rude and over-ridden Adobe's Compuserve GIF plug-in as the default method for opening GIF files. The answer is pretty simple, before PhotoGIF™ became rude, I got a lot more questions about why it DIDN'T over-ride Adobe's Compuserve GIF plug-in so you didn't have to go out of the way to use PhotoGIF™.
Now, in Photoshop 4.0 Adobe has gone and changed things so the previous nasty hack (the leading spaces in front of the plug-in name, not much of a hack) to get PhotoGIF™ to over-ride their Compuserve GIF plug-in doesn't work anymore. Me and probably a couple of guys at Metatools are miffed. KPT used that little hack too in a few of their plug-ins.
Never fear, there is now a "New and improved hack" in place to do the same thing... hence the "00 PhotoGIF 2.1" in your file format menu. Zero's still come first in Adobe's list. These new factory settings will force Photoshop to load PhotoGIF™ before Compuserve GIF and also to use PhotoGIF™ as the default method for opening _ALL_ GIF files. (You can still use Compuserve GIF from the 'Open' menu by checking 'Show all formats' and selecting it from the file format menu. It just takes a little extra effort.)
Since, in the past, there have been some requests to make this 'rude' feature of PhotoGIF™ a preferences setting - something that really isn't possible because of the mechanisms involved - I'm including a set of 'PiPL' resources that you can use to control PhotoGIF™'s load order.
You will need RezEdit, check your favorite Info-Mac mirror site for that demonic free little utility, to do this.
The two RezEdit resource files in this folder, "Load Before Compuserve GIF" and "Load After Compuserve GIF", each contain one resource of type 'PiPL' with an ID number of 16000. These correspond to the resource of type 'PiPL', ID 16000 (the only one) in the PhotoGIF™ plug-in. By replacing the 'PiPL' resource in PhotoGIF™ with either of the included 'PiPL' resources, making sure not to change the resource ID number or ending up with multiple 'PiPL' resources in the plug-in, you can control the load order of PhotoGIF™.
If you want it to over-ride the Compuserve GIF plug-in, you don't need to do anything at all. It already does. If you want it to be polite and not override the Compuserve GIF plug-in simply replace the 'PiPL' in PhotoGIF™ with the one in the file named "Load After Compuserve GIF", and if you decide you want to change it back replace it again with the 'PiPL' in the file named "Load Before Compuserve GIF".
One should take head first that ResEdit is a notoriously aggravating and potentially lethal to software utility. Fiddle with the wrong thing and you killed it. ResEdit has a bad day and it killed it. Make a backup before you do anything, because there is a pretty decent chance you will really need it.
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