Saving Gif without losing colors

This section is for suggesting features and capabilities that you would like to see in Impict, Help & Manual's integrated screenshot editor and enhancer.

Moderators: Alexander Halser, Tim Green

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Darren Albert
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2006 2:25 am

Saving Gif without losing colors

Unread post by Darren Albert »

Please prioritise the ability to save GIF's without losing colors. Sometimes when I save as a .gif the colors are retained, other times they aren't. This is a randomness with the program it seems, as I've performed the exact same operation one day only to get different results the next day. Today I'm experiencing a complete inability to save .gif files without losing colors. I purchased TNT only to find it too will not save .gif files with all the colors (and this is as simple as the color red being saved as black or dark grey).

Would love a fix on this.

In the meantime, I want to point out that using .ipp/.png images works a charm and produces a smaller file size to boot. The reason I ask for a fix is certain clients specifically request .gif's as their standard so it would be handy to use only one software program for this.

Cheers guys!
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Darren,

When you save as GIF you automatically reduce the number of colors to 256 because this is the maximum number that GIF supports. Since the 4.3 update Help & Manual and Impict actually do a much better job at reducing colors than before (if you haven't updated do so now for a big improvement) but since its a fixed algorithm it still isn't and can't be perfect.

The only way to get really good color reduction is to use an interactive color reduction function like that available in Corel Paint Shop Pro, which is also generally highly recommended for image editing for help files. PSP allows you to play with a number of different color reduction modes to get just the right one for your image before converting to GIF. It does this so well that you can generally even reduce full-color photos to 256 colors without it being visible. The whole program only costs about $70.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Martin Wynne
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Location: West of the Severn, UK

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Tim Green wrote:PSP allows you to play with a number of different color reduction modes to get just the right one for your image before converting to GIF. It does this so well that you can generally even reduce full-color photos to 256 colors without it being visible. The whole program only costs about $70.
Hi Tim, Darren,

No argument about the value of PSP, but for about half that you can have Any Image (
http://www.fmjsoft.com/anyimage.html ) which does a great job of converting image formats and reducing colour depth. It has a very convenient batch mode.

Martin.
Darren Albert
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2006 2:25 am

Gif and color reduction

Unread post by Darren Albert »

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replies. I also have Fireworks and Photoshop available to me, so I have no need to purchase more software - though thanks for the advice, it is excellent for others who currently do not have adequate image software.

There was a post on this some time ago by someone else having the exact same issue, and the same recommendation was given to them that you've just given to me - use a different program. I'll give you some additional information as to why this really is something for you guys to look at.

I'm sure any program that reduces colors should still be able to display core colors, such as red, green and blue (correct me if I'm wrong, but even displays with only 16 colors can do that). I've been taking screenshots of one individual software system for months now - the toolbar along the top has basic green, blue and red in some of it's icons. Sometimes impict saves these colors perfectly - others it doesn't - even when it's the exact same screenshot. For example, I've taken a screenshot and it has saved it correctly. Next I've taken the exact same screenshot with different text data, and it has then saved it with red as black, blue as dark grey and so on - the only differance being basic text such as an A instead of a B in a certain field. Same screenshot, same settings, just different output. If the problem was Impict reducing colors, Impict would fail to save the image correctly 100% of the time, which it doesn't.

Finally, after posting yesterday, I thought ok, I'll use impict's screen capture (because it is good!) and what I'll do is capture the image, resize it in Impict, save it as a .bmp, then open it in Photoshop and just re-save it as a .gif to retain the colors. What occurred was when the .bmp was opened in Photoshop, I discovered it too had the red, green and blue colors reduced to black and greys, indicating the problem extended beyond .gif's.

Anyway, I'll leave that with you - I have since decided to use .png's as my standard format as I don't have time to play around with this issue anymore, just thought you guys might like the additional information.

Cheers.
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Darren,
I'm sure any program that reduces colors should still be able to display core colors, such as red, green and blue (correct me if I'm wrong, but even displays with only 16 colors can do that). I've been taking screenshots of one individual software system for months now - the toolbar along the top has basic green, blue and red in some of it's icons. Sometimes impict saves these colors perfectly - others it doesn't - even when it's the exact same screenshot.
It's a little more complicated than one might imagine at first glance. 256-color PDFs and PNGs use what is called "indexed color", which is a pallet of 256 single colors. If the original image contains a relatively closely-spaced gamut of colors mapping them to 256 equivalents can work quite well. If they don't then even seemingly "simple" colors can be off by quite a lot. And the computer is dumb, it has no way of knowing which colors are important for you and should be "protected" and which colors can be off by quite a lot without this being very visible. This is why interactive color reduction is generally the best solution.

Note that this is just a very simple description of color representation in indexed pallets -- it ignores other technologies like "dithering". If you Google on it you will get more information than you ever wanted... :)

By the way, before standardizing on PNG for all your images please read this guide on image sizes:

http://helpman.it-authoring.com/viewtopic.php?t=4228
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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