Also does anyone know how to make flash export gifs that are not god awful? Why does it feel like dithering the shit out of flat colors?? CHANGING THE SETTINGS DOES NOTHING. ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH
I have discovered I can go Flash: Export Avi > Photoshop: Import video frames to layers.
It works just fine and I don’t notice any major drops in quality, so I suppose it will work for these garbage animations I’m doing lmao.
I’m not going to replace the main file so the desc and comments make sense in context, but here’s a better gif.
@LemonDrop
I do this kind of thing a lot in Photoshop, Lemon, I know all of these things. And I know all of those colors do not need to be there. In photoshop if I reduce the number of colors in an image, the antialiasing just takes a hit, not the solid colors, which is as it should be. The problem here though is no matter how many colors I tell flash to give the output gif, it always poops this kind of dithering all over the animation.
Here’s a zoom.
Grey: #666666
Why is Flash jamming all of these colored pixels in when the base grey displayed in flash is fine, and comes through into the gif just fine?
Grey: still #666666
I can export gifs from photoshop with much more control over the output (it’s photoshop, so the finer control makes sense) and this kind of dithering is necessary in only extremely low color situations, but why doesn’t flash do something at least slightly similar? Furthermore why does it vomit all over the place without giving the user the option to adjust this? This is ridiculous lmao.
@Exedrus
I may end up doing that if I can’t make flash do things for me. I can probably set up a script for photoshop that imports an image sequence into a frame animation. I’m just annoyed this is an issue at all.
@UnpeeledWasp
I remember wrestling with this issue ages ago, although I can’t recall the exact solution. If worst comes to worst, you could just export all the frames into individual images, then use GIMP to stitch them together into a gif. That’s what I’ve been doing. The process isn’t quite as easy as using Flash, but GIMP does seem to at least sanely give priority to more frequent colors when switching over to an indexed pallet.
@UnpeeledWasp
Except there is not 8 colors there. You may think there are because that’s what the vectors represent, but due to the antiailising the edges of the lines and how they are being blended down are generating many more colors than just 8 depending on their current alpha value and the neighboring color blended on to. For just the black lines on white that could take up all 256 available colors right there if you’re unlucky enough, but since there are different shades of grey and some blue you’re pretty much guaranteed to need dithering.
For example, the first frame of the image (just took a screencap of the flash itself) has the following colors for me:
And flash might just even add more colors because it has the ability to do much closer sampling given that it has the raw vector data right there while rendering to a gif.
This does not mean however that flash did a very good job at quantizing the image, it should’ve just sacrificed some of those very unimportant edge colors and used dithering there rather than for the dominant ones. I think what flash is doing is that it sees those edges are the delta between each frame, and thinks they are the more “important” area of the image. If you think about most images, the thing moving would be important rather than the stationary background that is just there for one frame, but who knows what logic it’s using. You’d expect that kind of bias to be a setting somewhere but eh I’ve never used flash.
tldr if you want basic images that fit perfect in gifs do like what pixel artists who make gifs do and make sure not to use AA, otherwise find some better converter.
@Background Pony #0766
Gifs can have up to 256 colors, however the colors aren’t on any set palette. I can save a gif with 8 colors and have all 8 be the exact same color as displayed in the document in Photoshop, (colors just pulled out of my ass, just random RGB values).
Flash has no excuse for using a limited palette and dithering gifs to achieve a near representation of a given color other than maybe saving space. Why can’t I just tell the program to not worry about filesize?
@CogWeaver
That’s how I’ve been doing it for the last few things I’ve done, but shit me if I’m not lazy. Half the time the quality is still ass, just a different kind of ass. I’m dying this is awwwful.
Yeah you can’t really make gifs from Flash. Try Photoshop, or maybe find a converter online to take files from Flash and make gifs out of them. That’d be how I’d do it.
It works just fine and I don’t notice any major drops in quality, so I suppose it will work for these garbage animations I’m doing lmao.
I’m not going to replace the main file so the desc and comments make sense in context, but here’s a better gif.
Edited
I do this kind of thing a lot in Photoshop, Lemon, I know all of these things. And I know all of those colors do not need to be there. In photoshop if I reduce the number of colors in an image, the antialiasing just takes a hit, not the solid colors, which is as it should be. The problem here though is no matter how many colors I tell flash to give the output gif, it always poops this kind of dithering all over the animation.
Here’s a zoom.
Grey: #666666
Why is Flash jamming all of these colored pixels in when the base grey displayed in flash is fine, and comes through into the gif just fine?
Grey: still #666666
I can export gifs from photoshop with much more control over the output (it’s photoshop, so the finer control makes sense) and this kind of dithering is necessary in only extremely low color situations, but why doesn’t flash do something at least slightly similar? Furthermore why does it vomit all over the place without giving the user the option to adjust this? This is ridiculous lmao.
@Exedrus
I may end up doing that if I can’t make flash do things for me. I can probably set up a script for photoshop that imports an image sequence into a frame animation. I’m just annoyed this is an issue at all.
I remember wrestling with this issue ages ago, although I can’t recall the exact solution. If worst comes to worst, you could just export all the frames into individual images, then use GIMP to stitch them together into a gif. That’s what I’ve been doing. The process isn’t quite as easy as using Flash, but GIMP does seem to at least sanely give priority to more frequent colors when switching over to an indexed pallet.
Except there is not 8 colors there. You may think there are because that’s what the vectors represent, but due to the antiailising the edges of the lines and how they are being blended down are generating many more colors than just 8 depending on their current alpha value and the neighboring color blended on to. For just the black lines on white that could take up all 256 available colors right there if you’re unlucky enough, but since there are different shades of grey and some blue you’re pretty much guaranteed to need dithering.
For example, the first frame of the image (just took a screencap of the flash itself) has the following colors for me:
5538: \( 0, 0, 0,255\) \#000000 black 179: \( 6, 6, 6,255\) \#060606 srgba\(6,6,6,1\) 20: \( 6, 12, 15,255\) \#060C0F srgba\(6,12,15,1\) 49: \( 9, 9, 9,255\) \#090909 srgba\(9,9,9,1\) 102: \( 12, 12, 12,255\) \#0C0C0C srgba\(12,12,12,1\) 11: \( 12, 25, 31,255\) \#0C191F srgba\(12,25,31,1\) 103: \( 15, 15, 15,255\) \#0F0F0F grey6 144: \( 19, 19, 19,255\) \#131313 srgba\(19,19,19,1\) 10: \( 19, 38, 47,255\) \#13262F srgba\(19,38,47,1\) 158: \( 25, 25, 25,255\) \#191919 srgba\(25,25,25,1\) 19: \( 25, 51, 63,255\) \#19333F srgba\(25,51,63,1\) 39: \( 28, 28, 28,255\) \#1C1C1C grey11 127: \( 31, 31, 31,255\) \#1F1F1F grey12 12: \( 31, 63, 79,255\) \#1F3F4F srgba\(31,63,79,1\) 126: \( 38, 38, 38,255\) \#262626 grey15 6: \( 38, 76, 95,255\) \#264C5F srgba\(38,76,95,1\) 52: \( 44, 44, 44,255\) \#2C2C2C srgba\(44,44,44,1\) 5: \( 44, 89,111,255\) \#2C596F srgba\(44,89,111,1\) 93: \( 47, 47, 47,255\) \#2F2F2F srgba\(47,47,47,1\) 144: \( 51, 51, 51,255\) \#333333 grey20 22: \( 51,102,127,255\) \#33667F srgba\(51,102,127,1\) 107: \( 57, 57, 57,255\) \#393939 srgba\(57,57,57,1\) 8: \( 57,114,143,255\) \#39728F srgba\(57,114,143,1\) 215: \( 63, 63, 63,255\) \#3F3F3F srgba\(63,63,63,1\) 10: \( 63,127,159,255\) \#3F7F9F srgba\(63,127,159,1\) 29: \( 66, 66, 66,255\) \#424242 grey26 69: \( 70, 70, 70,255\) \#464646 srgba\(70,70,70,1\) 7: \( 70,140,175,255\) \#468CAF srgba\(70,140,175,1\) 211: \( 76, 76, 76,255\) \#4C4C4C srgba\(76,76,76,1\) 20: \( 76,153,191,255\) \#4C99BF srgba\(76,153,191,1\) 31: \( 79, 79, 79,255\) \#4F4F4F grey31 110: \( 82, 82, 82,255\) \#525252 grey32 9: \( 82,165,207,255\) \#52A5CF srgba\(82,165,207,1\) 18: \( 86, 86, 86,255\) \#565656 srgba\(86,86,86,1\) 93: \( 89, 89, 89,255\) \#595959 grey35 6: \( 89,178,223,255\) \#59B2DF srgba\(89,178,223,1\) 274: \( 95, 95, 95,255\) \#5F5F5F srgba\(95,95,95,1\) 20: \( 95,191,239,255\) \#5FBFEF srgba\(95,191,239,1\) 20071: \(102,102,102,255\) \#666666 grey40 1420: \(102,204,255,255\) \#66CCFF srgba\(102,204,255,1\) 28: \(105,105,105,255\) \#696969 DimGray 34: \(111,111,111,255\) \#6F6F6F srgba\(111,111,111,1\) 55: \(114,114,114,255\) \#727272 srgba\(114,114,114,1\) 39: \(124,124,124,255\) \#7C7C7C srgba\(124,124,124,1\) 106: \(127,127,127,255\) \#7F7F7F grey50 27: \(133,133,133,255\) \#858585 grey52 1: \(140,140,140,255\) \#8C8C8C grey55 90: \(143,143,143,255\) \#8F8F8F grey56 4043: \(153,153,153,255\) \#999999 grey60 66: \(159,159,159,255\) \#9F9F9F srgba\(159,159,159,1\) 3: \(165,165,165,255\) \#A5A5A5 srgba\(165,165,165,1\) 41: \(175,175,175,255\) \#AFAFAF srgba\(175,175,175,1\) 1: \(178,178,178,255\) \#B2B2B2 srgba\(178,178,178,1\) 84: \(191,191,191,255\) \#BFBFBF grey75 28: \(204,204,204,255\) \#CCCCCC grey80 46: \(207,207,207,255\) \#CFCFCF grey81 62: \(223,223,223,255\) \#DFDFDF srgba\(223,223,223,1\) 96: \(239,239,239,255\) \#EFEFEF srgba\(239,239,239,1\) 27963: \(255,255,255,255\) \#FFFFFF white
And flash might just even add more colors because it has the ability to do much closer sampling given that it has the raw vector data right there while rendering to a gif.
This does not mean however that flash did a very good job at quantizing the image, it should’ve just sacrificed some of those very unimportant edge colors and used dithering there rather than for the dominant ones. I think what flash is doing is that it sees those edges are the delta between each frame, and thinks they are the more “important” area of the image. If you think about most images, the thing moving would be important rather than the stationary background that is just there for one frame, but who knows what logic it’s using. You’d expect that kind of bias to be a setting somewhere but eh I’ve never used flash.
tldr if you want basic images that fit perfect in gifs do like what pixel artists who make gifs do and make sure not to use AA, otherwise find some better converter.
Edited because: kay
Gifs can have up to 256 colors, however the colors aren’t on any set palette. I can save a gif with 8 colors and have all 8 be the exact same color as displayed in the document in Photoshop, (colors just pulled out of my ass, just random RGB values).
Flash has no excuse for using a limited palette and dithering gifs to achieve a near representation of a given color other than maybe saving space. Why can’t I just tell the program to not worry about filesize?
Gifs have a lot less colors than normal images I think only 256 colors so some of the colors get converted bad.
That’s how I’ve been doing it for the last few things I’ve done, but shit me if I’m not lazy. Half the time the quality is still ass, just a different kind of ass. I’m dying this is awwwful.
There must be a plugin or something.
What?