.gif animations are "bigger this time"

[Peter Wagner]

About six months ago I created a set of 12 .gif animations in ImageReady for various ad spots. Back then, they were all under 12k when I clicked the "Optimized" tab or when I "Save Optimized". They had 22 colors and 34 frames of animation.

The files have not changed at all in these last 6 months.

Now when I open the files and click either "Optimized" or choose to "Save Optimized" it tells me in the status bar that those same animations will be over 50k! There have been ZERO changes to the files and all the Optimize settings are exactly the same.

And even when I cut out half the frames (down to 17 from 34) and take out most of the colors (down to 2 from 22) they're still 40-something kilobytes.

Has anyone else had this happen?

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Peter

[Photo Help]

Peter,

My guess is that you are editing the GIF files you created 6 Months ago and you no longer have the original PSD you used to make the GIF's.

You won't be able to optimize the GIF as much as you could the original master file.

[Robert Blackwell™]

I've never experienced a dramitic change in file size as you explained, but 50k sounds about righ I think.

Were you using PS6 6 months ago? Have you applied any patches?

Just asking, not sure why this would happen in the first place, just trying to find something for you to blame ;o)

[Peter Wagner]

Photo Help - That's the thing... I AM working with my original .psd files!

But clicking on Optimize many months ago with all the same settings yielded amazingly optimized sizes that looked great. Again, making no edits to the .psd file they are 5 times larger.

Robert Blackwell - I used PS7 back then and still am. No plug-ins or patches applied.

[Photo Help]

Peter,

Can you post your file to a web site for us to look at?

Did you use...

"Optimize Animation"?

The Lossy setting?

Dithering?

If nothing changed in the file than I guess you must have changed the way you optimized it.