GIF format

You can export your Expression Design artwork in a GIF file format by clicking Export on the File menu. After you give the file a name and tell Expression Design where to save it in the Export dialog box, select GIF from the Save as Type list, and then click the Save button.

Expression Design displays the Export Image Settings dialog box, in which you can specify image dimensions, and so on. For more information about the Export Image Settings dialog box, see Exporting bitmapped images. The Export Image Settings dialog box also offers options specific to the GIF file format.

• Palette  You can specify a color palette for the GIF image. The color palette is determined by the number of bits per pixel in the image. For example, an 8-bits per pixel image contains a maximum of 256 colors. The Optimized panel picks the most common 256 colors in the image. Web Safe uses a standard palette of 256 colors that 8-bit color monitors can display without dithering. The Grayscale panel uses 256 levels of gray.
• Dithering  When a color in your document does not match the color palette exactly, you can select Error Diffusion to simulate the color. Alternately, you can select Solid to turn off dithering and simply map all colors to their nearest equivalent in the palette.
• Transparency  When your image includes areas that are transparent, you can choose whether they should also be transparent in your exported GIF image. If you clear the Transparency check box, the transparent areas are set to solid white. If you select this check box, you can select the Alpha field to determine how transparent an area must be before it appears fully transparent in the final GIF. (Note that pixels in the GIF file format can only be fully transparent or fully opaque. If you need partially transparent areas, consider using a file format such as PNG.)