How to export animated gif with good quality by using Flash

[perth]

Recently, I encounter the difficulty in exporting good quality of animated gif with Flash. I have tried a few setting in the publish setting to make the animated gif looks better. However, it never reachs my expectation. Furthermore, i produce better quality animated gif by using Photoshop. However, the animation feature in Photoshop has its limitation. Therefore, I wonder is there any way to get a good quality of animated gif by using Flash?

Any advice???

My best publish setting for export gif in Flash (but still not good compared to Photoshop):

Dimensions- Match Movie
Playback #1- Animated
Playback #2- Loop continuously
Options #1- Optimize
Options #2- Smooth
Transparent- Opaque (Will auto set to 128 colors most likely)
Dither- None
Palette Type- Adaptive
Max Colors- 99999

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Use GIF files to export drawings and simple animations for use in web pages. Standard GIF files are compressed bitmaps.

An animated GIF file (sometimes referred to as a GIF89a) offers a simple way to export short animation sequences. Flash optimizes an animated GIF file, storing only frame-to-frame changes.

Flash exports the first frame in the SWF file as a GIF file, unless you mark a different keyframe for export by entering the #Static frame label in the Property inspector. Flash exports all the frames in the current SWF file to an animated GIF file unless you specify a range of frames for export by entering the #First and #Last frame labels in the appropriate keyframes.

Flash can generate an image map for a GIF file to maintain URL links for buttons in the original document. Use the Property inspector to place the frame label #Map in the keyframe in which to create the image map. If you don’t create a frame label, Flash creates an image map using the buttons in the last frame of the SWF file. Create an image map only if the $IM template variable is present in the template you select.

Select File > Publish Settings, click Formats, and select GIF Image.
For the GIF filename, use the default filename or enter a new filename with the .gif extension.
Click GIF.

Dimensions
Enter values for width and height in pixels for the exported bitmap image, or select Match Movie to make the GIF the same size as the SWF file and maintain the aspect ratio of your original image.

Playback
Determines whether Flash creates a still (Static) image or an animated GIF (Animation). If you select Animation, select Loop Continuously or enter the number of repetitions.

To specify a range of appearance settings for the exported GIF file, select one of the following options:

Optimize Colors
Removes any unused colors from a GIF file’s color table. This option reduces the file size without affecting image quality, but slightly increases the memory requirements. This option has no effect on an adaptive palette. (An adaptive palette analyzes the colors in the image and creates a unique color table for the selected GIF file.)

Interlace
Incrementally shows the exported GIF file in a browser as it downloads. Lets the user see basic graphic content before the file completely downloads and can download the file faster over a slow network connection. Do not interlace an animated GIF image.

Smooth
Applies anti-aliasing to an exported bitmap to produce a higher-quality bitmap image and improve text display quality. However, smoothing might cause a halo of gray pixels to appear around an anti-aliased image placed on a colored background, and it increases the GIF file size. Export an image without smoothing if a halo appears or if you’re placing a GIF transparency on a multicolored background.

Dither Solids
Applies dithering to solid colors as well as gradients.

Remove Gradients
(Default is off) Converts all gradient fills in the SWF file to solid colors using the first color in the gradient. Gradients increase the size of a GIF file and are often poor quality. To prevent unexpected results, select the first color of your gradients carefully if you use this option.

To determine the transparency of the application’s background and the way alpha settings are converted to GIF, select one of the following Transparent options:

Opaque
Makes the background a solid color.

Transparent
Makes the background transparent.

Alpha
Sets partial transparency. Enter a Threshold value between 0 and 255. A lower value results in greater transparency. A value of 128 corresponds to 50% transparency.

To specify how pixels of available colors are combined to simulate colors not available in the current palette, select a Dither option. Dithering can improve color quality, but it increases the file size.

None
Turns off dithering and replaces colors not in the basic color table with the solid color from the table that most closely approximates the specified color. Turning dithering off can result in smaller files but unsatisfactory colors.

Ordered
Provides good-quality dithering with the smallest increase in file size.

Diffusion
Provides the best-quality dithering but increases file size and processing time. Works only with the web 216-color palette selected.

To define the image’s color palette, select one of the following Palette types:

Web 216
Uses the standard 216‑color, web‑safe palette to create the GIF image, for good image quality and the fastest processing on the server.

Adaptive
Analyzes the colors in the image and creates a unique color table for the selected GIF file. Best for systems displaying thousands or millions of colors; it creates the most accurate color for the image but increases file size. To reduce the size of a GIF file with an adaptive palette, use the Max Colors option to decrease the number of colors in the palette.

Web Snap Adaptive
Is the same as the Adaptive palette option except it converts similar colors to the web 216-color palette. The resulting color palette is optimized for the image, but when possible Flash uses colors from the web 216-color palette. This produces better colors for the image when the web 216-color palette is active on a 256‑color system.

Custom
Specifies a palette that you optimized for the selected image. The custom palette is processed at the same speed as the web 216-color palette. To use this option, know how to create and use custom palettes. To select a custom palette, click the Palette folder icon (the folder icon that appears at the end of the Palette text field), and select a palette file. Flash supports palettes saved in the ACT format that some graphics applications export.

To set the number of colors used in the GIF image, if you selected the Adaptive or Web Snap Adaptive palette, enter a value for Max Colors. A smaller number of colors can produce a smaller file but can degrade the colors in the image.
Click OK.

[happytissue]

its really very cool and informative info u have shared very helpful detailed info

[jackkelly]

thanks for this post u have here

[lennonrowen]

It's really nice sharing about the exporting animated gif by using the flash.

[davidglenn]

nice stuff here god share with us