tConveo a .GIF without color loss?
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=4568
Printed Date: 13 September 2025 at 12:31am
Topic: tConveo a .GIF without color loss?
Posted By: BlingShyne2
Subject: tConveo a .GIF without color loss?
Date Posted: 03 July 2007 at 5:26pm
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So about a week ago I drew this goofy little cactus guy, and it didn't get accepted into the gallery.
So I was going to completley revise it and turn it into an animation with a few little neat ideas. So anyways, I did it all in .PNG format, and when I had the first slide down I went to change it to .GIF and it went from this:  To this:
 Yes, yes, it's a terrible picture and idea but it's just something little I wanted to put together, anyways, is there anyway to stop this? Or any suggestions on fixing it?
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Replies:
Posted By: Pixel_Outlaw
Date Posted: 03 July 2007 at 5:47pm
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Well not really. Conversion from file to file is not always possible. Consider saving a .bmp to a jpeg then saving the jpeg back to the bitmap. You get the jpeg saved exactly as it is into a bitmap form. File types are structured in a way that data can be stored within parameters. One file type may have more restrictive parameters so data must be cut out or omitted to convert. Converting from a very limited file type like jpeg to a very open file type such as .bmp is flawless or close. However you can't go from a complex data type to a simple data type without omitting or changing data.
Image file types take a wide range of parameters and conversion from type to type may cause chunks of data to be lost. These include color depth, palette, and structure.
This is a simple overview
from bmp jpeg bmp
bmp ( has all data)-> jpeg (color data lost and image converted to small chunks stored in the table section of the file, some of the initial data cut out)->bmp (full conversion of last file)
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Posted By: Monkey 'o Doom
Date Posted: 03 July 2007 at 5:52pm
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Photoshop does good with converting file types. Irfanview is a good free alternative and it gets palettes right when converting to gif, but sometimes it will dither anyways so you need to open the new gif image and then copy-paste from the png. Do a google search to find irfanview. ------------- http://pixelmonkey.ensellitis.com"> 
RPG is numberwang. |
Posted By: jalonso
Date Posted: 03 July 2007 at 7:28pm
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In the future always work in RGB as gifs. Only use .png when really needed. png= pixels no good gif= great in fidelity ------------- |
Posted By: Hatch
Date Posted: 03 July 2007 at 10:01pm
Your png, my gif, your gif. Converted with Photoshop. It's far from perfect, but the color fidelity is way better. Feel free to use it if you want. |
Posted By: Monkey 'o Doom
Date Posted: 04 July 2007 at 9:34am
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The only way photoshop's gif conversion could be distant from perfect is if your browser darkens PNGs. In firefox, the first two images are perfectly identical--a printscreen shows that the two are displayed with equal RGB values and everything.
Don't doubt the photoshop, man. ------------- http://pixelmonkey.ensellitis.com">
RPG is numberwang. |
Posted By: Hatch
Date Posted: 04 July 2007 at 9:58am
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Yup, you're right. In Firefox they're identical.
*sigh* Maybe it IS time to ditch my beloved Safari... |
Posted By: Hapiel
Date Posted: 05 July 2007 at 2:14am
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Originally posted by jalonso In the future always work in RGB as gifs. Only use .png when really needed. png= pixels no good gif= great in fidelity whats wrong with PNG??? ------------- |
Posted By: Blueberry_pie
Date Posted: 05 July 2007 at 2:31am
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It darkens the colours sometimes. Just a wee bit, but still. When it comes to pixel art, GIF files are usually also smaller than PNG files. GIF is palette-based, just like pixel art. I think PNG's compression method is best suited for images containing large areas of one solid colour. ------------- |
Posted By: Hapiel
Date Posted: 05 July 2007 at 2:45am
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Originally posted by Blueberry_pie It darkens the colours sometimes. Just a wee bit, but still. When it comes to pixel art, GIF files are usually also smaller than PNG files. GIF is palette-based, just like pixel art. I think PNG's compression method is best suited for images containing large areas of one solid colour. weird... Here they show an example btw, and the PNG is smaller than the gif.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixelart Originally posted by Wikipedia PNG page PNG supports palette-based (palettes of 24-bit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_model - RGB colors) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyscale - greyscale or RGB images. ------------- |
Posted By: Blueberry_pie
Date Posted: 05 July 2007 at 3:30am
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The palette-based one they're talking about is probably PNG-8 which, like GIF, can only use up to 256 colours. I did some playing around in Photoshop and found that PNG-8 is always about 1kb bigger than the same image in GIF format. Methinks their compression techniques are pretty much the same, and that PNG-8 only has a slightly larger header. So yeah, I think the only real difference between GIF and PNG-8 is that one supports animation and the other doesn't. I'm not sure if there's also colour darkening in PNG-8 or if it only happens with PNG-24 images. ------------- |
Posted By: Monkey 'o Doom
Date Posted: 05 July 2007 at 8:57am
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That's funny, pie. Wikipedia and most other places agree that PNGs should be smaller than gifs--look http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNG#File_size_and_optimization_software - here and http://www.webreference.com/dev/graphics/compress.html - here .
BUT when I tried saving a WIP space ship I had for an old project as GIF, PNG-8, and PNG-24, look what sizes photoshop generated!
 So I downloaded a Irfanview plugin, PNGOUT, and used it on the image. It ended up being 391 bytes with all settings at "Auto." So PNG-8 is smaller than GIF in this case, though not by too much. ------------- http://pixelmonkey.ensellitis.com">
RPG is numberwang. |
Posted By: BlingShyne2
Date Posted: 06 July 2007 at 12:42pm
 In the original I had the background dithered from dark to light with 3 different gray's and learned that .gif's don't like that...
So anyways, I made all the frames in .bmp, took out all of the dithering in the background and made it a solid color (which I kind of dislike but it's all I could do) then when I put the frames together (in animation shop) and saved it to an animated .gif if turned out fine with no pixelation and no effects on my colors.
But anyways, I'm rather happy with how it turned out, I'm going to tweak a few frames, feel free to comment and critique!
 Also, props to Metaru for the link to the free AnimationShop3, that was awesome, that program got lost when my harddrive fried a couple months ago.
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