Creating a GIF?

[Arawn]

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

[parksie]

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

[Arawn]

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?

[parksie]

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.

[jim mcnamara]

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

[parksie]

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.

[Arawn]

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