What's New?

Improved interface - version 2.0 sports a brand new graphical interface that takes you through the optimization process, step-by-step.

Color reduction options - now users have complete control over how Animation SmartSaver removes color redundancies from their animated GIF files.

Improved logging function - create unique log files for each optimization process you run.


About GIF

GIF is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format, an image file format created by CompuServe for conveniently storing and displaying image libraries online. Because of its near-photographic quality and relatively small file size, GIF has become one of the most widely used image file formats on the Internet today. GIF has undergone two major revisions since its inception in 1987, the most recent being the GIF89a specification.

GIF uses the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) compression method to store and reduce single or multiple images within the file by up to 40% of their original size. These images can contain up to 256 colors, and they do not lose any of their original quality when undergoing compression, which can reduce an image by as much as 40% of its original size. Even though GIF is a “lossless” format, images that are imported from other file formats and converted to GIF may lose some of their quality in the transition from True Color to 256-color. GIF files also possess transparency attributes so that one color in the image is not displayed. This allows users to create clear backdrops for their images, letting a web-page’s background colors show through. GIF also supports image interlacing, allowing users to watch the image “fade-in” as it downloads.

If multiple images are stored within a GIF file, they can be viewed sequentially much like a slide show or a small animated movie. The way they appear is defined by control extensions built into the file. With the appropriate tools, such as Ulead GIF Animator, you can set these controls yourself.

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How GIF animation works

GIF animation takes advantage of the GIF format’s built in capabilities to store and display more than one image file. Unlike conventional film where the speed of the animation is defined by the speed of the film, these images each have an associated set of controls that dictate how, when, and for how long the image is displayed on the screen. Also unlike conventional film, the images contained within an animated GIF need not be the same size. Each image layer, or cel, can be any size you want, and can be positioned where you want regardless of the locations of the other cels in your animation.

The animation produced by the GIF file is produced in exactly the same manner as the method used in film: motion is created by rapidly displaying a sequence of similar images. While the methods used to produce this effect in both film-making and GIF animation differ greatly, the end result is the same - still images are brought to life before your eyes.

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Why optimize?

Optimizing animated GIF files can significantly reduce your overall file size, thus reducing download time from the Internet and making the images on your website more "user friendly." Animation SmartSaver is the perfect tool to accomplish this. It scans each image layer in the animation and removes redundant colors (or places vital colors into the global color palette and out of the local image layer palettes) as well as image redundancies (places in each layer that are identical to the layers either before or after it). Optimizing your animation files in this way can have significant results (sometimes reducing your file sizes by as much as 200%) without sacrificing the integrity of your images. The method Animation SmartSaver uses to reduce your image files guarantees that your final animation remains unchanged in appearance.

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Optimizing a folder of images

To optimize a folder of images:

1	In the Source tab, select the By folder option and click the Browse button next to the By folder entry line.

2	Locate the folder that contains your image files and click Ok. The folder location is entered into the entry line.

3	In the Destination tab, select a method for optimization. Evaluate scans the image files and gives you a detailed summary of the file size reduction for each image file. Replace original files and Create new files optimizes the folder contents and generates new image files to either replace the originals or to be placed in a different folder.

4	In the Options tab, select whether you want Animation SmartSaver to automatically remove redundant colors (Retain original visual quality) or to arbitrarily limit the number of colors used in the GIF animation file (Reduce colors to achieve better compression). You can also choose to remove all the comment blocks from the animations to further reduce their sizes.

5	In the Reports tab, select Display report window to view a summary of the file size reduction for each image in the folder you are optimizing, or select Create log file to have Animation SmartSaver generate a text file containing this data.

6	Click the Start button to begin optimizing.

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Optimizing a website of images

To optimize a website:

1	In the Source tab, select the By folder option and click the Browse button next to the By folder entry line.

2	Locate the parent folder for your website and click OK. The folder location is entered into the entry line.

3	Select the Include subfolders option. Animation SmartSaver will then scan all the folders within the parent folder for GIF animation files and optimize them as well as the ones located in the parent folder.

4	In the Destination tab, select a method for optimization. Evaluate scans the image files and gives you a detailed summary of the file size reduction for each image file. Replace original files and Create new files optimizes the folder contents and generates new image files to either replace the originals or to be placed in a different folder.

5	In the Options tab, select whether you want Animation SmartSaver to automatically remove redundant colors (Retain original visual quality) or to arbitrarily limit the number of colors used in the GIF animation file (Reduce colors to achieve better compression). You can also choose to remove all the comment blocks from the animations to further reduce their sizes.

6	In the Reports tab, select Display report window to view a summary of the file size reduction for each image in the folder you are optimizing, or select Create log file to have Animation SmartSaver generate a text file containing this data.

7	Click the Start button to begin optimizing.

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Optimizing select files

To optimize select image files:

1	In the Source tab, select the By files option and click the Select Files button. The Select Files and Browse dialog boxes open.

2	Locate the folder that contains the image file you want to optimize and click OK. The path for that file is entered into the Select Files list.

3	To add additional files, click the Browse button and locate them, or enter the file's name and path in the entry line and click the Add button. Each time you select a file, its name and path are added to the Selected Files list. When you've selected all the files you want to optimize, click OK to close the Select Files dialog box and return to Animation SmartSaver.

4	In the Destination tab, select a method for optimization. Evaluate scans the image files and gives you a detailed summary of the file size reduction for each image file. Replace original files and Create new files optimizes the folder contents and generates new image files to either replace the originals or to be placed in a different folder.

5	In the Options tab, select whether you want Animation SmartSaver to automatically remove redundant colors (Retain original visual quality) or to arbitrarily limit the number of colors used in the GIF animation file (Reduce colors to achieve better compression). You can also choose to remove all the comment blocks from the animations to further reduce their sizes.

6	In the Reports tab, check Display report window to view a summary of the file size reduction for each image in the folder you are optimizing, or check Create log file to have Animation SmartSaver generate a text file containing this data.

7	Click the Start button to begin optimizing.

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Evaluating before optimizing

One of the handiest tools in Animation SmartSaver is the Evaluation option. This lets you get a preview of exactly how much of the 'fat' is pared away from your animated GIF files before actually committing to optimizing them. The evaluation report window shows you the following:

Total files selected - the number of files in the designated folder or individually selected files.

Total size savings - the cumulative amount of file size reduction in the optimized files.

Original file size vs. Optimized file size - a comparison for each file selected, showing file sizes in kilobytes.

Size savings - the number of kilobytes removed from the original during the optimization process, as well as the percentage of the total file size removed.

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Optimizing copies vs. originals

When optimizing your animated GIF files, you have the choice to optimize the original image files or create optimized duplicates. By optimizing the original files, you save on both disk space and work as you don't need to reorganize your web pages to point to the duplicates. On the other hand, once you optimize your originals there is no going back and editing them again - the optimization process is permanent, and once image layers within an animation have been optimized, it's impossible to extract them and successfully use them for other purposes. Therefore, if you want to leave your original animation files intact, you should optimize them through duplication. When you do this, you can either save the duplicates to the same directory as the originals by retaining their original name and appending the '_ss' suffix to them, or to save them to a completely different folder with their original file names. That way, you can organize them however you want and you will always have your originals to fall back on should anything happen to the copies.

When optimizing  image files:

1.	On the Destination tab, select the Replace original files option to optimize the original files or select the Create new files to optimize duplicates of the originals.

2.	Select the Append "_ss" to the original file name option if you want to save the duplicate files to the same folder as the originals. Otherwise, select the In folder option and click the browse button to choose the destination folder.

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Color reduction

Every GIF image file contains within it an index table that defines the number of colors that the image contains as well as exactly what colors each index represents. Each 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). An image with a 256-color palette, then, could have a color index up to 1024 bytes long.

One of the key components to optimizing animated GIFs is color reduction. By removing the number of colors from each image layer and placing them on the global palette (the single, large palette each image in the animation can reference rather than having to use their own individual palettes), you can significantly reduce the size of each file. In addition to remapping local colors to the global palette, Animation SmartSaver removes any redundant colors (colors with the same color values occupying more than one location in the color index) and any duplicated static colors between image layers (those portions of each image layer that are identical).

In Animation SmartSaver, there are two methods with which you can reduce the number of colors in your animated GIF files: allow it to automatically calculate which colors are redundant as well as remove them (Retain original visual quality on the Options tab), or do it manually yourself (Reduce colors to achieve better compression). The safest method is the former, which guarantees that your images' appearance won't change. However, if you do it manually, you may get some inadvertent color remapping which could significantly alter your animations' appearance. Select the Dither option to compensate for this by duplicating missing colors with a mixture colors available in the global palette.

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Creating log files

When Animation SmartSaver optimizes folders or locally stored websites, you can generate log files that contain information identical to that found within the Report window. This is especially useful for website management where you can keep detailed records of exactly how each image file you use has been modified. To create log files each time you optimize your website, simply select the Create log file option on the Reports tab and assign the file a name and location using the browse dialog box, opened by clicking the browse button.

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Source

Select the animated GIF files you want to optimize.

By folder - allows you to select an entire folder. If you select the Include subfolders option, then any subfolders will also be included in the optimization.

By files - allows you to manually select which files you want to optimize.

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Destination

Select the method by which you want to optimize your animated GIF files.

Evaluate optimization results - scans the selected image files and reports on the file size reduction without actually taking any action. This is good for previewing how effective optimization will be on a particular folder.

Replace original files - performs the optimization process directly to the original image files, thus overwriting the original images and replacing them with the pared down ones. Use this method only if you are sure you won't need to work on the originals at a later time.

Create new files - duplicates the original image files and then carries out the optimization process on them. The optimized duplicates are then saved either in the original directory with a distinguishing suffix attached to the file name (_ss), or saved in a different location retaining their original file names.

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Options

Define the method for color reduction in each selected image file. This removes redundant colors from the image as well as remaps colors from each image layer to the global palette, thus reducing each image layer's local color palette or removing it entirely (both of which contribute greatly to file size reduction).

Retain original visual quality - allows Animation SmartSaver to automatically determine the best way to remap colors, guaranteeing that the optimized images' appearances won't change from the originals.

Reduce colors to achieve better compression - allows you to manually select the number of colors used in each animated GIF file, as well as set dithering (which compensates for absent colors by 'rebuilding' them using colors existing in the file's global color palette). This method can reduce file sizes even more than letting Animation SmartSaver doing it automatically, but this method can't guarantee original visual quality. In many cases, images optimized by this method will degrade considerably.

Remove all comment blocks - strips the comment blocks out of each animation to further reduce file size. This is a consistently effective way to make your animation files smaller, but you shouldn't choose this option if you want to keep the information contained within the comment blocks (especially copyright information).

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Reports

Displays a summary of the optimization process. This is essential for seeing the effects of GIF optimization.

Display report window - gives you a breakdown of exactly how much data was removed from each GIF file selected as well as the total size savings.

Create log file- generates a text file containing the information contained in the report window after each optimization.

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About Animation SmartSaver

Animation SmartSaver is a revolutionary tool for streamlining web animation. Using advanced file optimization techniques, Animation SmartSaver cuts away the extraneous and redundant data from your animated GIF files, leaving you with images as sharp and clear as the originals but with less bandwidth wasting data.


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Without the proper tools to handle the job, creating great-looking, bandwidth-efficient web graphics can be next to impossible. If you're looking to design faster web sites, create better web graphics and be more productive while doing it, then you'll love Ulead Web Utilities. This complete line of affordable products will help you design, produce, optimize and manage your web images more easily than you ever thought possible. Simply download one of the programs from the Ulead website and try it out; you'll see why no Web designer's toolkit is complete without these products.

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Selecting file by file

In the Select Files dialog box, you can add or remove files from the list of images to optimize. To use this dialog box:

1	Locate the folder that contains the image file you want to optimize by clicking the Browse button. In the resulting dialog box, select the file you want to add to the Select Files list and click Open. The path for that file is entered into the list box.

2	To add additional files, you can either click the Browse button and locate them, or enter the file's name and path in the entry line and click the Add button. Each time you select a file, its name and path are added to the Selected Files list. When you've selected all the files you want to optimize, click OK to close the Select Files dialog box and return to the Animation SmartSaver dialog box.

3	To remove a file from the list, select it and click the Remove button. If you want to start all over again in the selection process, click the Remove All button to empty the Select Files list.