Expert: LizaL - 3/11/2005

Question
Hi Lizal

On occassion I receive "cute" emails with .gif pictures (moving pictures) I have a collection of them in a folder on my desktop that I have gathered from different sources on the Internet. However, sometimes when I receive e-mails with these cute things and I RIGHT click on the, the only option is to save as a Bitmap...
how can I save it and make it a .gif because when I save it as a .BMP, and go back anf look at what I have saved.... its just a "still" picture and is not moving as it was in the email I received... Thanks in advance

Answer
Hi Nina,

Actually, what's happening with your images is correct, but with a caveat or two. It's not as simple as just right-clicking and changing the file format.

I'll try and explain:

The animated GIFs you download by right-clicking are animated when you see them online, but that's because they've been designed that way in a program that supports multi-frame animation. Then they're embedded in a file (the Web page, in this case) that will support animation. In other words, the creator of the file has placed those animated GIFs in the file, and the program they've used support animation.

So when you see them, they move and do all sorts of stuff.

With that in mind --

Downloading something by right-clicking on it is simply a way of capturing a file, and not necessarily its functionality. In the case of an animated GIF, you're only going to capture the separate frames of the animation, since this method of downloading (that is, right-clicking) doesn't support multi-frame animation.

You'll capture the frames, but not the actual programming "behind" the frames that makes them run.

Does that make sense? Here's what happened to me, when I right-clicked on an animated ad:


1. This is the dialog box I get when I try to open the file in Photoshop.
http://little-works.com/all_experts/anim_gif.png


2. When I open it up in my Preview program on my Mac, I see that there are actually two frames to this file. But since that Preview program doesn't support animation, I will only be able to see the two frames as separate files.
http://little-works.com/all_experts/anim_gif_frames.png


Now that said, you CAN open Adobe ImageReady (which is a companion program to newer versions of Photoshop) and save the file as an optimized GIF. If you have Photoshop 6 or later (I think version 6 supports this; I know version 7 and CS do), you can click at the very bottom of your tool Photoshop tool palette and "jump" over to ImageReady. Here's the button to use:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/jump.png


ImageReady, among other things, will let you create and edit basic animations. So I could open this file in Photoshop, convert it to 8-bit RGB color (under the Image pulldown menu, then select Mode, then RGB color). Then I could push the very bottom button on the tool palette, which will switch me to ImageReady.

When the file opens in ImageReady, I need to ensure that all the frames are there (using the Animation palette, which is found under the Window pulldown menu). Then I can go to the File pulldown menu and select Save Optimized As... and choose a place to save the image and the frames.

http://little-works.com/all_experts/anim_gif_IR.png

That's what it looks like in ImageReady, and when I save it, I'll get this dialog box:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/save_optimzed.png



Whew! It's not as simple a process as we'd like to believe, huh! But suffice it to say that these little GIFs are created using specific programs, and those programs will "run" only under the correct conditions.

But if you have ImageReady, you do have the option of using that to try and capture and save these things on your desktop, and that's about all you can do.

Hope this helps! Please post back if you need me to clarify anything.

Lisa