How To Design A Banner

Chapter 2: Choosing A File Format

• GIF
• JPEG
• PNG
• SWF

• Only GIF and SWF allow animations (SWF allows quite sophisticated animations, whereas GIF simply allows a series of images to be displayed in series).
  
  
• All the formats can be used to display pictures, although generally GIF, JPEG or PNG would be favored, if this is all your want to do.
  
  
• GIF allows up to 256 colors, whereas JPEG or PNG allow up to 16,777,216 colors.
  
  
• GIF or PNG are better than JPEG for displaying pictures which contain large areas of continuous tone, or very small text. This is because GIF and PNG are lossless formats, whereas JPEG is lossy and can result in loss of small details.
  
  
• JPEG is generally the best format for displaying photographs, although acceptable results can sometimes be achieved using GIF or PNG.
  
  
• There may be restrictions on when you can use some of the formats (especially SWF). This is because some banner rotation scripts and banner exchanges do not work with SWF.
  
  
• The same banner design saved in different formats may produce different file sizes. Again, there may be restrictions on what format is suitable for your banner because of this - as if buying banner advertising or using banner exchanges, there may be limitations on the maximum file size allowed.

• Banner Advertisements (Definition)
  
  
• How To Design A Banner
  
  
• How To Display Banners

• Banner Generator Pro (Advert)
  
  Self-contained program for creating banners.
  
  
  
• Easy Banner Creator (Advert)
  
  Self-contained program for creating professional-quality banners.
  
  
  
• Easy Banner Maker (Advert)
  
  Adobe Photoshop templates for creating banners.
  
  
  
• GIF Animator 5.0
  
  Disclosure: Products details and descriptions provided by Amazon.com. Our company may receive a payment if you purchase products from them after following a link from this website.

  Ulead CD-ROM (Unix) Windows NT/Linux/Windows 98/Windows Me Amazon.com Review: Animated GIFs are the best way to catch someone's eye on the Web without slowing your page down to a crawl. Ulead's GIF Animator is a great tool to create these attention-grabbing designs. While you can make an animated GIF using almost any graphics program, the features you need are often hidden away in a full image editing package. Because GIF Animator is designed just for working with animations, the tools are easy to find and use. The interface is easy to work, as it provides a filmstrip view of all the frames in your animation. You'll also see a list of all the objects across all the frames, so you can work across multiple frames, overlaying one object on another. From the main window, you can edit the images, produce intermediate frames automatically by tweening from one image to another, optimize the color palette to make the file smaller, and preview the final animation. A simple set of editing tools lets you paint, erase, and add text. Excellent integration with programs like PhotoImpact, Photoshop, and Paint Shop Pro means you can work with layers in an image as objects inside GIF Animator, or update your images in another package and automatically see the changes in GIF Animator. There's a set of special effects and transitions, but you can also use Photoshop plug-ins and filters. You can work with video files as well as still images, and import and export a range of formats including Flash. This is the latest version of a classic utility that's packed with features but still easy to use. If you need images that move, make them in GIF Animator. --Mary Branscombe List Price: $49.95* Lowest New Price: $139.97* *(As of 05:06 Pacific 4 Feb 2012 More Info) Buy It Now