Virtual Byte

Ulead GIF Animator 5.05

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.

- Create and edit with precision
Animation Wizard walks you through creating an animation sequence. Add video or other animation as separate frame objects or image, text, animated text. Use the frame Panel with filmstrip view to easily create object animation.
- Powerful Optimization
Apply various text effects, video effects, transitions and even Photoshop compatible filters . Ensure fast-loading animation by using the optimization wizard to automate compression based on presets.
- Flexible Output
Enjoy a variety of output options by creating True Color AVI, QuickTime, MPEG. Generating HTML files to display GIF animation in web browsers or save objects as multi-layered PhotoImpact and Photoshop files.