But you can probably find the thread through the search feature in the top right of this site because SBN has a really great search system.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3035804&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

You can size down by compressing and also limiting the size of the image.

For example: If you were intending to make the clip into a Fan Post type of piece, the best thing you can do is to host it outside the server (youtube for example) and embed your clip into your post. Keeps this side lean.

However…

If your intent is to embed an inline comment “animation”, there are 3 factors that will influence load times.

Loadtime is determined by three factors:

1. Number of frames in the animation: the fewer the frames, the faster-loading the animation. Remember that if you can use a frame more than once it will extend the length of your animation without extending load time.

2. The file size of each individual frame. GIF animation frame size is determined by the same rules that govern GIFs in general: low bit depth and long runs of flat color make the leanest files. Highly dithered or photographic images make the slowest, fattest files.

3. Frame optimization. With highly optimized frames, each new frame is able to reuse most of the background of the previous frame, so that only the new or moving part of the next frame needs to be downloaded.

I like Photoshop for making these because you are able to control and setup your frames exactly as you like. Converter programs wont have that “artistic eyeball test” when compressing and optimizing.

In the OP I mentioned that I heard two programs recommended in a previous Fieldgulls post but couldn’t remember them.

I figured out that the first one is GIMP. I’ll give it a shot sometime and report how it performs vs. Image Ready.

Ok, I spent about 90 minutes today using some of the advice here and experimenting with Image ready. The result was that I made a passably decent looking .gif which contained 53 frames, at a 120×120 resolution, and a 191 KB filesize (3.6 kb per frame).

For future reference, if anyone looks up this thread later, here are some things I learned that helped me get there.

#1: Resize > Crop. It seems counter-intuitive, but if you have to choose between cropping an image or crunching it down with resize, choose resize if you can. Files that are resized are smaller than cropped ones. This surprised me because I would have assumed they’d be the same, but as it turns out resize is significantly more efficient. That helped get my file size down today because before I was half-resizing and half-cropping. Of course, if you have to crop then do it, but if its an either/or situation, resize as much as you can get away with.

#2: 0% Dither. The default for images is 100% dither. If you reduce it to 0%, you cut the file size almost in half! The trade off is fuzzy lighting, but if you are editing a fairly static gif with not much light changes (like pretty much any baseball or football gif), it only hurts the quality very slightly. In some cases, there were a few gifs I worked on that looked better at 0% than 100%! Even reducing the dither to 50% can cut the filesize by a third, but I personally think 0% is the way to go if you can get away with it.

#3: For image ready: Use the “4-up” tab on the image viewer. It allows you to see multiple settings at a time and how they look vs. each other.

#4: Turns out gif making is just like video editing, it doesn’t matter what source you use or how big it is, the final product will still be the same size. For that reason, its best to use the best quality images and if possible ones that are processed quickly. I think Bitmap is perfect, since Bitmap format is high quality and processes the fastest of any type I tried. JPEG or whatever is fine too, just make sure its 100% quality images you are working with.

#5: “Lossy” setting should be kept a 0. Fuck lossyness. Very little savings in filesize and much quality lost.

#6: “90 colors” is a very good setting (in Image Ready, choose “selective” in the optimize box). I couldn’t tell the difference really between 90 and 256, and 90 is significantly smaller. Much lower than 90, and the quality starts to take a big hit. So I think 90 is kind of a magic number of sorts for efficiency.

I think that sums it up. Thanks everyone for your input.