Getting Started
Add frames
Select menu item Image/Add or click the toolbar button . You can select BMP, JPEG, GIF, ICO, WMF, EMF,
PCX, PNG, TGA or PSD-files for insertion.
Sample directory [located in the \tutorial\samples subfolder of where Active GIF Creator
was installed] contains files named green.bmp, yellow.bmp and red.bmp.
Select the green.bmp file and Active GIF Creator will add new frame with image
from selected file. Repeat this operation for files yellow.bmp, red.bmp
and second time yellow.bmp. Now you have four frames in the list. See also
FAQ.
Pasting images from clipboard
Active GIF Creator has possibility to import any images created in other
programs using the clipboard. To paste an image from
clipboard select menu item Image/Paste Image or click the button
on the Standard
Toolbar (if you put this button there in the Customize Toolbars dialog).
Note. The separate image in GIF-file can not contain more than 256 colors, so
clipboard image with big number of colors will be transformed to 256-colored image.
Reordering frames
When you add new images they appear at the end of image list. You can move them in any
place of the list.
To move image up in the list select menu item Image/Move Up or click the toolbar button
.
To move image down in the list select menu item Image/Move Down or click the toolbar button
.
You can also change position of an image in the list by dragging the list item to new
place, using mouse with pressed left button. To remove image from the list select menu item
Image/Delete or click the toolbar button .
Previewing the animation
To preview animation select menu item Animation/Animate or click the toolbar button
.
Image on this button will be changed to .
Animation in Active GIF Creator continues until you stop it or begin editing actions.
To stop animation select menu item Animation/Animate or click the toolbar button
.
Editing animation parameters
Number of loops in animation
You can edit this value with help of spinedit Looping on page Global of
Attribute Toolbar. [If Attribute Toolbar is not present on screen - switch it on
by selecting menu item View/Attribute Toolbar].
In addition to loop counter there is a checkbox Infinite, which in checked
state makes counter unavailable.
There are another ways to change loop counter: select menu item Animation/Loop Counter
or click the toolbar button .
Value of delay
Each image in GIF file has individual value of delay measured in one-hundredths of a
second. For example, value 25 means a quarter of a second. You can edit
value of delay with help of spinedit Delay on the page Image of Attribute Toolbar.
There are another ways to change delay: select menu item Animation/Delay or click the toolbar
button .
You can define delay value for selected frame, or single value for all frames simultaneously.
For our example, we may set delays in green and red frames as 300 (3 seconds) and in two
yellow frames as 50 (half of a second). Now we have the following result :
Using attribute "How To Remove"
This attribute is used for definition of image mapping at the time of browsing
GIF-file. It locates on the page Image of Attribute Toolbar and has the following values:
- Web Browser Decides (browser removes the image in the way it decides);
- Do Not Remove (the image is not removed, the next image will be displayed over it);
- To Background Color (replaces the image with the web page background color);
- To Previous State (replaces the image with the image preceding it).
Default values of loop counter, delay, attribute "How To Remove" for new GIF are defined on
the tab New in dialog window invoked by menu item File/Preferences (or by "hot key" F6).
Frame operations
Compose
List of images has checkboxes to display images from different frames simultaneuosly on
editing stage. It helps you to see how one image is placed relative to other image.
For this operation set check on demanded images in the list and
view the result on the tab Compose.
Current image is always displayed.

Duplicate
If there is a necessity in two or more identical frames, select the necessary image and
use menu operation Image/Operations/Duplicate, or click the toolbar button
.
Merge
You can create a new image consisting of two and more images. For example, one image can
be used as some background and other images will be placed on this background in any
places. To merge images use menu operation Image/Operations/Merge or click the toolbar button
. See also
FAQ.
Crop image
Sometimes there is a necessity to use some part of an image as new image. It can be made
by selecting a necessary fragment with the help of menu operations Image/Operations/Crop
or by click on the toolbar button .
Resize
You can change size of any frame in dialog window, which will appear after activating
menu item Image/Operations/Size or by pressing on the button , placed on the tab Image.
Rotate and flip

With the help of Active GIF Creator it is possible to make image rotation on 180 degrees
or to the left and to the right on 90 degrees. It is also possibly to flip images in a
horizontal and vertical plane. These operations are available for execution in the menu
items Image/Operations/Rotate and Image/Operations/Flip.
Effects
To use a set of tools for image modification select Image/Operations/Effects or
click the toolbar button .
Select tab with desired effect and edit its parameters, then press button Apply
to see effect action. After pressing this button you can set new effect parameters and see
how they change the image.
Button Extract displays current image without new effects superposition.
Button Fix fixes current image with applied effect. It allows you to apply several
effects to the image sequentially.
Button creator
To create 3D button images select menu item Tools/Button. Select wanted template
and edit parameters of the button, caption, light source, shade.
File operations
Load file
To load GIF file select menu item File/Open, or click the toolbar button
.
To import bitmap strips, ANI and AVI files select menu item File/Import.
Save file
To save your animation select menu item File/Save, or click the toolbar button
.
If it is new file (has not name yet) then standard windows Save Dialog will appear to define
file name and folder it will be stored to. You can save GIF file with different names by
selecting File/Save As.
You can save GIF frames as set of BMP, TIFF, JPEG- files, as AVI, or ANI file (animated
cursors). To do it select menu item File/Export and then BMP, TIFF, JPEG,
AVI, ANI as file filter.
Preview GIF-file on Web page
To preview your GIF-file on Web page select menu item Tools/Web Page and set color of
background or background image for Web page and color of text.
Optimization in Active GIF Creator
The optimization of GIF-files is important for using animated images on Web-pages.
Web-pages contain both text and graphic images.
Total download time in the greater degree will depend on download time of graphic images than text.
Therefore it is necessary to do GIF-files small, but sufficient for save of necessary
quality of animation.
Active GIF Creator has set of tools for GIF-files optimization:
- set optimal number of frames;
- reducing sizes and use offsets for separate images;
- using dialog "Optimize GIF".
Optimal number of frames.
GIF file contains multiple images. Each image has individual value of time delay it will
be shown. The more number of frames leads to better quality of animation, but
increases size of GIF file. So it is important to find balance.
Size and offset of image.
Sizes of source bitmap images influence the size of destination GIF, as images are stored
in full size with any size of logical screen [Logical Screen defines the workspace for
GIF view].
If only part of animated picture will be changed you can create small images and
define their offsets on logical screen. Offset of image of frame may be modified in page
Image of Attribute Toolbar, or by selecting menu item Image/Attribute/Offset,
or image dragging by mouse. The great feature of GIF format is a use of images with
different sizes. You can position each image in any place. It makes it possibly to use
small images to animate only some parts of a picture. You may use operation
Image/Operation/Crop to cut demanded part of an image.
Using dialog "Optimize GIF".
To use this dialog select File/Optimize, or click the toolbar button
(or by "hot key" F5).

Upper part of shown dialog contains two lines: file size and download time
of original and optimized files. Second line shows file size and download
time for current settings of checkboxes.
Six checkboxes define conditions of optimization.
You can use different combinations and see how they influence size of optimized file.
Combobox Modem speed allows you to see download time for different modems.
Crop areas of transparent images.
Transparent image may contain extra background area around visible part of image. This
extra area consumes extra space in GIF file so it is possible to find the smallest rectangle
for image and redefine offset for cropped frame.
Remove redundant pixels.
For animated pictures there is a frequent situation, when different frames use the same
colored pixels. For example, each frame contains the same background or some subimage is
used simultaneously in several or all frames. With the help of this operation pixels
which are used in several frames are deleted. It allows to reduce the sizes of
individual frames and, hence, download time of the whole GIF-file will be decreased.
Pixels deleted from a transparent image are present at the previous frames. The result
depends on using pictures itself very much. Sometimes total size of the GIF-file can
even be increased! Therefore efficiency of this type of optimization checked up in this
manner: you switch it on and off. Note: images which you see in the frames after
such operation can be strange for you, but you should know that pixels will be combined
with pixels from the previous frames.
For example, you have the result of optimization of a GIF-file consisting of 5 frames:
But the final view of this GIF-file in the browser will be looked as:

You can restore images in frames of optimized GIFs with help of menu item File/Restore
Frames.
Remove image comments and titles.
Comments you can add to GIF file and titles of frames consumes extra memory.
So you can remove this data and decrease size of GIF file.
You can remove only comments or only titles or all data,
checking flags in Optimization dialog
Sort color map by usage and remove unused entries.
For more images, not being photos, the amount of colors used for reproduction frequently
is less 256. So it is possible to remove them without any loss for images. Note that
color palette may contain one of the following number of entries: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64,
128, 256. It means, that after removing unused entries size of color palette may be
reduced, or may be not. It depends on the number colors in source palette and number of
unused colors in image.
Look at two GIF-files - they do not differ, but left uses a full color palette in 256
colors, and right - palette consisting only of 16 colors. And also this images has
different file sizes.
Move colors from local palettes to global palette.
Optimization by this option is a try to eliminate all local palettes by moving color enties
from local palettes to global. If it is impossibly to move all color entries to global
palette, then such local palette remains.
When you add new image it may use local palette or global palette.
It depends on setting of combobox Palette on page
New in dialog File/Preferences.
Internal image editor
Editing frames
Active GIF Creator contains a set of graphical editing tools similar to MS Paint.
For editing of an image select the tab Edit and you will see a set of tools in a
right part of the window. To select some tool press it by the left mouse button.
The following tools are available:
- marquee
- lasso
Selection part of image with pressed key Ctrl creates the copy, which can be moved
to some other place.
- zoom
(zoom the image: 1, 5 or 9 times)
- eraser
(this tool has rectangle forms of four sizes)
- pen
- brush
(this tool has round and rectangular forms of three widths)
- spray
(this tool has shapes with three diameters)
- text
(with this tool you can add any text drawn with selected font)
- fill
- get pixel color
- line
- curve
Tools Line and Curve have three widths.
- rectangle
- polygon
- round rectangle
- ellipse
Tools Rectangle, Polygon, Round Rectangle and Ellipse have three types of
drawing.
For all tools there is a possibility to select pen and background color from a palette
located at the bottom of the main window. To select color of the pen press the left mouse
button on the desired color in the palette. To select background color press the right
mouse button. During drawing it is possible to use left or right mouse button -
button defines the color which will be used: pen or background color.
You can edit global and local color palettes in menu items Global/Global Palette
and Image/Attributes/Local Palette, or by means of Attribute Toolbar.
Mouse double-click on editor color palette invokes edit color palette dialog too.
Using image collections
Image collections allow you to have a large set of different fragments of images and
insert them into edited frames. You can use collections supplied with the program or
create your own collections.
To set collections use menu item Tools/Image Collections. You will see the dialog
box with a list. Elements of the list are filenames with the bitmap strips. You can add
and delete items, sort list and check/uncheck marks in the list items. The checked item
means: that window with appropriate set of images is visible on screen now. You can move
this window with images and change its size.
Now select tab "Edit" in a central part of the main window and press any image in the
window with a collection. Image will be inserted into the left upper angle of the current
frame (similarly to operation "paste from clipboard"). Move it to desired place and
continue editing.
Note that color palette of inserted image will be transformed to the current palette of
the edited frame.
Individual preferences
Customize Toolbars
After installation of Active GIF Creator standard toolbar contains set of tools by default.
With the help of dialog window View/Customize Toolbars it is possible to place any
set of tools to standard toolbar. For this purpose drag desired tools with the help of
left mouse button to the toolbar and remove unnecessary tools by dragging them off the toolbar.
Localization
Active GIF Creator supports internationalization.
Program interface may be seen in one of human languages. It includes menus, screen
messages, all texts used in interface. To change language press toolbar button
. Select a language and press OK.
Creation of image collection
Image collection is stored as bitmap strip.
Bitmap strip represents a set of images of small sizes which are located like a sequence
of frames in a film.
Gather the images necessary to you and insert them, as frames, into single GIF-file. To
create bitmap strip start operation File/Export and select file type bitmap
strips. Now you can use separate images from this bitmap strip for insertion
to editing frames (see menu item Tools/Image Collections).
Copyright ©2000-2005 WSoft Lab. All rights reserved.
GIF is a Service Mark of CompuServe Inc.
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