Creating a GIF?

Does anyone have any info/links/tutorials on creating a gif from a memory dc? tia

An old version of GD used to be able to do it.

Anyway, you have to pay Unisys a $5000 licence fee in order to create GIFs. Use PNG instead, it's a far superior format in its own right, as well as being free.

www.libpng.org

Hmm.. my only problem with ping is it's support under IE seems to be rather sketchy.. I was hoping to come up with similar results to the "Save for web" option in photoshop. I tried jpeg, but it looks like crap. Anyone have any experience with photoshop scripting?

It works ok with IE if you don't ask too much of the transparency features ;)

Then again, you could always use a browser that actually supports the features they claim to.

A bunch of us wrote stuff to support Winfract a LONG time ago.

Since the version of GIF Winfract creates is limited to 256 colors, it doesn't fall under the licensing problem. In so far as I know.

You can download the Winfract (FractInt really) source and copy the GIF routines.

http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/fractint.html

GIF can only do 256 colours anyway, I thought?

Anyway, I just checked. GIFs themselves are ok, but *compressing* them is not allowed. Which basically defeats the purpose of using them.

It's the LZW patent that causes trouble.

Thanks Jim, I'ma check that out here after lunch, sounds promising. But I think the Photoshop scripting is actually going to cover what I want. Most of the tutorials I've found simply save a layered psd with the "Save for Web" option. So I get to learn something new this week :)