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How To Make Web Animations With A Photo Background
Introduction
The main formats for presenting graphics on the web all have advantages
and disadvantages.
This is illustrated in the following table:
| Format |
Animation |
Max. Colors |
Transparency |
Good for Photos |
Good for Continuous Tone Images |
| GIF |
Yes |
256 |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
| JPEG |
No |
16,777,216 |
No |
Yes |
No |
| PNG |
No |
16,777,216 |
Yes* |
Adequate |
Yes |
Now one obvious thing that you can see by reading this chart, is if you
want animation you need to use GIF, but
if you want to present photographs you need to use
JPEG (or perhaps PNG).
But what if you want to show an animation on top of a photographic background?
There's no obvious solution in the chart!
Fortunately, as far as web design is concerned,
there is a solution: take advantage of
GIF's
transparency option, plus a bit of clever
HTML coding,
to place the transparent GIF on top of a
JPEG background.
In this tutorial, I'll show you how (in three chapters):
- Selecting Graphics
First, we'll get some GIF animations,
and a nice background.
- Slicing Up The Background
Next, I'm going to slice up the background into segments. The idea
is that each GIF animation can be placed
over a separate segment.
- Putting It All Together
Finally, we'll put it all together, to look like one combined
graphic, using
HTML.
Related Books:
- GIF Animation Studio (Web Studio Series)
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By Richard Koman
O'Reilly
Paperback (184 pages)
Product Description:
GIF animation is bringing the Web to life -- without plug-ins, Java programming, or expensive authoring tools. This book details the major GIF animation programs, profiles work by leading designers (including John Hersey, Razorfish, Henrik Drescher, and Erik Josowitz), and documents advanced animation techniques. A CD-ROM includes freeware and shareware authoring programs, demo versions of commercial software, and the actual animation files described in the book.
List Price: $39.95
Lowest New Price: $6.95
Lowest Used Price: $0.77
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Buy It Now
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- The Gif Animator's Guide
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By Sandy Eddy Schnyder
MIS-Press
Paperback (322 pages)
Book Description:
With easy step-by-step instructions for desktop applications including Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop, this book will teach you how to create and edit GIF89a animations to enhance your Web site. Whether you are a beginner or experienced Web developer, it will answer your questions about creating and animating GIFs. The GIF Animator's Guide is designed both to be easy to use and to provide all the important information about creating good-looking graphics and animations using a variety of popular programs -- freeware, shareware, and commercial -- for both Windows and Mac computers. The book includes valuable information about animation, computer graphics, and GIF standards so that you can easily create animations for your Web page. You'll also learn how to optimize animations by using the 216-color palette, planning for transparency, offsetting images, and setting time delay. The CD bundled with The GIF Animator's Guide includes Microsoft GIF Animator, Paint Shop Pro, GIF Construction Set, GIFBuilder, Ulead GIF Animator, and save-disabled versions of Photoshop 4 and Illustrator 7. It also includes a large gallery of unique and copyright-free GIF animations that you can plug into your own Web pages.
List Price: $39.95
Lowest New Price: $19.80
Lowest Used Price: $0.36
Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks
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Related Software:
- Artful GIF Animator
Create from scratch, import from AVI, edit and optimize your animated GIF images to develop animations for web sites. Drag and drop JPEG, BMP, GIF, ICO and even AVI files into the program and then edit and preview frames on the fly - while you are editing a frame, it animates the resulting picture. Tune up the individual position and edit the color palette for each frame, optimize animated GIFs with five different color reduction methods.
Related Web Sites:
- Clip Art Inc.
This site has a large collection of royalty-free clip art and animations, including GIFs.
- Clipart.com
 Our subscription-based service provides access to more than 2.6 million clipart images, photos, fonts, and sounds.
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How To Make Web Animations With A Photo Background:
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