# Off-Topic Discussion > The Lounge > Tech Talk >  >  ImageReady .gif quality problems...

## Oneironaut Zero

I dunno why, but all of my .gifs that I've been making in Adobe ImageReady have been coming out with really bad color quality - like the number of colors being used has dropped significantly.

What usually looks like this:



Now often looks like this:


Anybody know why this might be happening?

[Edit]
I do a lot of image stretching, to get them to fit certain sizes. Do you think this might have anything to do with it?[/Edit]

[Edit x2]
Oh, and it looks just fine, when I'm actually in ImageReady, editing it. It's only when I "Save Optimized As" a .gif, that the quality gets screwed up.[/Edit x2]

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## ninja9578

Optimized usually saves much smaller files since they are designed for the webs, so they use indexed colours

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## Oneironaut Zero

> Optimized usually saves much smaller files since they are designed for the webs, so they use indexed colours



I see. Is there any way to manipulate the amount of colors that are indexed? It does make sense, though, since I just went through and saved another copy of it, without really changing anything, and it looks much better. Uploading that one to photobucket now. It's still not like perfect movie quality, but it looks a hell of a lot better than the last one I posted.

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## slash112

its not that bad quality.

and how big is the file actually, the one on your sig. because any page of a thread which you have posted in, my comp lags.

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## Marvo

Come now, it's only 8 megabytes. Every member on this forum uses 8 megabyte signature pictures  :smiley:

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## Man of Steel

Looks like pretty good quality to me. Though at 2.75 megabytes it damn well should be! It took me ages to get it cached, loading a bit more of it every time I viewed one of your posts, and lagged until I did, but now that it's cached, it's fine. 

I'm going to have to make myself one of those.

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## Oneironaut Zero

Hmm. Does it really cause that much lag?  ::?: 

It's _kinda_ slow to load for me, while pages are loading (but then, many of the pages I haven't posted on seem to take just as long, so I really can't see too much of a difference). If it's too much of a problem, though, I can always try to shorten it? 

Oh, and as you can see, the next time I saved it, it saved with better quality, which is the one I have in my sig now. I'm still going to have to fix the part where the "Oneironaut" blinks, but I'm too lazy to do it right now.

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## Merlock

An 8 MB signature...?
I have a 10 MBit connection and it takes a noticeable amount of time to load.
It's probably brutally maiming slower connections and just torturing and slowly killing dial-up.  :Voodoo Doll: 

As for the colours, did you try changing colour modes?

Though that won't help the fact that it's generally best to avoid enormous things like that in signatures or avatars, heh.

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## Oneironaut Zero

Shit.

Ok, ok. I'll trim it down some and take a clip or two out of it, and see how big the file is after that. (-_-)

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## slash112

ok, i just realised that its only when i pass your signiture, its not like the whole page, so its not that bad. its like when i scroll past it, the scrolling slows down and half of the screen stays, and the rest keeps scrolling if you know what i mean, but its not terribly bad. but i like the sig though. and is it just me or is the animation the same as the film for part of it, then its like tons of frames missing for another part of it?

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## Oneironaut Zero

> ok, i just realised that its only when i pass your signiture, its not like the whole page, so its not that bad. its like when i scroll past it, the scrolling slows down and half of the screen stays, and the rest keeps scrolling if you know what i mean, but its not terribly bad.



Yeah, that's pretty much the same way it affects me. My sig loads a bit slowly, but the rest of the page seems to go at its normal rate. I dunno.  ::?: 





> but i like the sig though.



Thanks!





> and is it just me or is the animation the same as the film for part of it, then its like tons of frames missing for another part of it?



If you mean how some camera shots are missing or some of the sequence is missing, then yeah, I cut some of the scenes down a bit. But if you mean like the frame-by-frame rate, then yes to that too. When I save it from VirtualDub, which is where I cut the video from, I have to "decimate by 2" which means it only processes every other frame in the video, not every frame. So, depending on how quick the movements are in the video, some of them can seem a bit choppy at times.

If I don't decimate, though, everytime I play back the .gif, it goes really slow. Doing that is the only way I can get the .gif to play at a speed that's closest to the actual video.

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## slash112

oh, yea it was the frame rate i was talking about, and that explains it

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## Oneironaut Zero

Ok, made it smaller and took out some of the less-necessary parts, which cut the file in half. Best I could do.  ::?:

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## Man of Steel

Much better.  :smiley:

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## slash112

yea thats much better, no lag, and it doesnt look like im watching a slide show now lol, its very smooth now.

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## Oneironaut Zero

Haha. Cool.  Thanks, everyone.

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## Marvo

Yay it's 3.7 MB big. Still wtf big, though I don't care, I'm on a 20 Mb connection.

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## Oneironaut Zero

> Yay it's 3.7 MB big. Still wtf big, though I don't care, I'm on a 20 Mb connection.



You're late. I expected more of your dissent hours ago.  ::roll:: 

Did my "WTF big" Sig slow you down?  ::chuckle::

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## Marvo

My point is, why do we have a limit on avatar size, when we can just put whatever in our signatures?

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## Oneironaut Zero

> My point is, why do we have a limit on avatar size, when we can just put whatever in our signatures?



Dunno, man. I'm a mod, not admin.  :smiley:

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## Goldney

> My point is, why do we have a limit on avatar size, when we can just put whatever in our signatures?



This is a good point, I would definitely prefer to have larger avatars and a limit on what can be put in sigs...

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