Amazon.com Review
Reading
The GIF Animator's Guide can turn a Web and graphics novice to a GIF-animation expert in a surprisingly short amount of time. This full-color guide first teaches you the basics of creating and editing images, explaining file formats, transparencies, color selection, design principles, and other issues involved with creating an image that you want to animate. Then the author explains how to plan an animation (you focus, for example, on the first frame); choose the effects and techniques to produce the look you want; and insert your animation in an HTML document. Then she delves into using a variety of Windows and Macintosh programs for doing your work: Microsoft Image Composer, Microsoft GIF Animator, Paint Shop Pro, GIF Constriction Set, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, CorelDRAW, and GifBuilder. The author explains each product's interface, provides tips on achieving various effects, and offers shortcuts and potential pitfalls. Appendices on the history of animation, traditional animation techniques, and computer-based animation round out your knowledge of the field of animation. The hybrid CD that comes with the book includes demo or full versions of the discussed software programs, other GIF animation programs, and a gallery of GIF animations.
Product Description
With easy step-by-step instructions for desktop applications including Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop, this book will teach you how to create and edit GIF89a animations to enhance your Web site. Whether you are a beginner or experienced Web developer, it will answer your questions about creating and animating GIFs.
The GIF Animator's Guide is designed both to be easy to use and to provide all the important information about creating good-looking graphics and animations using a variety of popular programs -- freeware, shareware, and commercial -- for both Windows and Mac computers. The book includes valuable information about animation, computer graphics, and GIF standards so that you can easily create animations for your Web page.
You'll also learn how to optimize animations by using the 216-color palette, planning for transparency, offsetting images, and setting time delay.
The CD bundled with The GIF Animator's Guide includes Microsoft GIF Animator, Paint Shop Pro, GIF Construction Set, GIFBuilder, Ulead GIF Animator, and save-disabled versions of Photoshop 4 and Illustrator 7. It also includes a large gallery of unique and copyright-free GIF animations that you can plug into your own Web pages.
