How To
Read an exisiting GIF animation
Use one of these methods to read the images:- Select File | Open
(or click
on the toolbar).
Highlight the GIF file and click OK. - Drag-and-Drop the file from Windows explorer.
Create a new GIF animation
Use graphic software (e.g. MS-Paint or Adobe Photoshop) to prepare each individual frame in a 256-color file (GIF, PCX or BMP format). Name the files in ascending order (e.g. DOG01.GIF, DOG02.GIF etc.). Use one of these methods to read the images:- Select File | Open
(or click on the toolbar).
Highlight all the files containing frames and click OK. (screen shot). - Drag-and-Drop all the frames together from Windows explorer. (screen shot).
Preview the animation
on the toolbar).
on the toolbar).
Screen shot:
insert by drag and drop
By default the animation runs indefinitely. To set a fixed number of iterations
select Animation | Loop count and enter the number of iterations.
Then click on the color you want to become transparent. You can click
inside the image or in the palette window.
See more details and screen shot.
You can add a comment (text) frame in one of the following ways:
Uncheck Options | Animagic comment frame
If the files are not named in ascending order,
you can create the correct animation in one of the following ways:
To convert your images to Netscape's fixed palette,
select Options | Global palette | Fixed
and load the file "netscape.pal". Now when you open an image it will be converted to the
fixed palette.
If the resulting color shift is unacceptable, you should compare the image quality to the
one dithered by your Internet browser when running in a 256 color mode,
then pick the best version.
Insert a new frame
You can insert a new frame in one of the following ways:
on the toolbar).
The new frame will be inserted before the current frame.
Select Edit | Paste after to add a new frame after the current frame.
Create a loop
Check Animation | Loop
(or press 
on the toolbar).
Create a transparent image
Select Animation | Transparent color
(or press 
on the toolbar).
The mouse pointer becomes an eye dropper.
Add comment frame
Comment frames are not displayed by browsers - only by image viewers.
They are useful for copyright messages and other information related to the image.
on the toolbar).
Remove Animagic comment frame
With the registered version you can suppress the comment frame which
is automatically added by Animagic GIF Animator as the first frame.
Reorder frames
Frames are read in in ascending order of file names.
Note that numerical order has priority over lexicographical order. For example,
"file1.gif" will precede "file20.gif".
Avoid dithering
Netscape and Microsoft Internet browsers use a fixed palette when running on a 256
color display. All images are dithered to fit into the fixed palette.
If your image uses only colors from this fixed palette, it will not be dithered.
Avoid animation "smearing"
If the animation is "smearing", that is, each frame leaves a trace behind,
you can most likely solve it by
changing the restore method.
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If more than one file is selected, each file becomes a frame in the animation.
Files can be draged and dropped from Windows explorer.
Screen shots:
file open,
drag and drop
To ensure that all files contain an image with the full animation size,
use Animation | Unoptimize before saving the frames.
Files can be draged and dropped from Windows explorer into the
frame list window. The new frame will be inserted before the frame
pointed by the mouse cursor. To append the new frame, drop the new frame
on the white space below the last frame on the list.
Screen shot:
insert by drag and drop
Reducing color depth can reduce the overall file size at the expense of reduced
color quality.
See example.
The mouse cursor becomes an eyedropper icon. Click on the image or inside the
palette window and select a color. Clicking outside the image cancels the
transparent color.
If the currently selected frame has a local palette, the transparent color
affects only this frame. If the current frame uses the global palette, the
transparent color affects all the frames that use the global palette.
Screen shot:
setting transparent color.
See example
and
see tutorial.
See tutorial.
See example.
See example.
See example.
See example.
See example.
The dirty rectangle optimizations can be undone by using the
Unoptimize operation. The color optimizations are lossy
and irreversible. Therefore, it is a good practice to keep an unoptimized version
of your animation file.
These optimization options take effect when saving the animation to a file.
In frame splitting, frames are split into two smaller frames with zero time delay
between them.
This optimization achieves maximum efficiency in the encoding of the image while
keeping the loss of quality to a minimum.
Each frame in an animation can have a local color palette that is used instead of the
global palette. Local palettes prevent most of the space optimizations and take
extra space, however they can help exceed the 256 color limitation of the GIF format.
Animagic uses local palettes to implement the fade-in and
fade-out effects.
The local palette options take effect when reading new images.
The global color palette is used by all frames which do not have a local palette.
The global color palette can contain a maximum of 256 colors. These 256 colors
must be shared by all the frames of an animation (except frames with local palettes).
This option may help prevent dithering of your images by the user's Internet browser
(see section about preventing dithering).
If a dirty rectangle seems to include parts that are the same as the previous frame,
check the following conditions:
See example.
See example.
See example.
See example.
See example.
See example.
During the 30 days of evaluation period, the program is fully functional.
If the program is not registered within 30 days, the following features will be disabled:
The one additional feature of the registered program over the evaluation version
is the possibility to suppress the Animagic comment frame.
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Commands
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File
Clears the work space for a new image.
New
Opens and reads files of the following types: GIF, PCX, BMP, AVI, TXT.
The new image(s) replace(s) any existing ones.
A new palette is created from the colors in the files
(see palette options).
Files of type .TXT create comment frames.
Open
Saves the current animation as a GIF file. If the "optimize on save"
option is checked, optimizations will be performed on the animation.
The palette size is the smallest needed to contain all the colors that are used
(e.g. if the image uses 14 colors, the palette size is 16).
Save, Save optimized
Saves the current animation under a different file name with no optimizations.
Save as
Saves the current animation under a different file name with optimizations.
Save optimizedRevert
Reverts to the most recently saved version of the file by
reading it from disk.
Save frames
Saves each frame in an individual file. File names are combined from the base name supplied
in the save as dialog and a two digit frame number.
Append frames, Insert frames
Reads image files of types GIF, PCX, BMP, AVI or text files.
The new images are inserted before
(or appended after) the currently selected frame.
Load palette
Loads a palette from a palette file (.PAL) or from a graphic file (GIF, PCX or BMP) and
replace the existing palette.
Store palette
Stores the current palette in a .PAL file.
Exit
Exits the program.
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Edit
The Edit commands work on the currently selected frame.
Use this command to undo the last operation. The number of undo levels is limited
only by the amount of memory that is consumed. The larger the image size and the number
of frames modified, the more memory is consumed (and therefore the number of undo levels
will be lower).
Undo
Copies the currently selected frame (text or graphic) to the clipboard. Cut deletes the frame after copying it to the clipboard.
Cut, 
Copy
Pastes the contects of the clipboard (text or graphic) and inserts it as a new frame before the currently selected frame.
PastePaste append
Pastes the contects of the clipboard (text or graphic) and appends it after the last frame.
Delete
Deletes the currently selected frame, the clipboard is not affected.
Edit Palette
Color palette operations.
Add
Opens a color dialog. The selected color is added to the current palette.
Delete
Places the cursor at the center of the palette window. Click on a palette entry
to delete it from the palette.
Modify
Places the cursor at the center of the palette window. Click on a palette entry
to get the color edit dialog. You can select any on of the existing colors, or create a
new color to replace the palette entry you clicked on.
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Animation
Starts playing the animation.
Play
Stops playing the animation.
Stop
Next frame, Previous frame
Displays the next (or previous) frame.
Reduces the number of colors used by the animation images.
If any frames contain local palettes, the local palettes are merged into one global palette.
Reduce color depth
Selects transparent color. Areas of the image that are colored with the transparent
color show the background color (or the background bitmap of the HTML page) through.
Transparent colorLoop count
Selects the number of iterations an animation loop runs.
By default the loop runs indefinitely.
Sets the frame rate (or speed of animation). The frame rate dialog box allows
the user to select an overall frame rate (or delay time).
This number affects all the frames of the animation.
In addition, the user can select a repeat count for each frame.
Frame rateMerge background
Merges a static background image (with no transparent color) with the frames that
follow it that contain a transparent color.
Merge foreground
Merges an animated background (transparent color) with the
transparent frame that follows (foreground).
Unoptimize
Expands each frame to the full animation size. This feature is useful when performing
certain operations (such as saving or reordering frames) on an animation that
has been optimized.
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Frames
The following operations work on a selected range of frames.
Shift
Shifts the selected frames relative to the animation origin.
If the shifted frames cross the animation space on the left or top,
the frames are cropped.
If the shifted frames cross the animation space on the right or bottom,
the animation space is expanded.
Moving sprite
Shifts each frame in the selected range by a cumulative amount of pixels.
For example, if each step is (4, 5) pixels, the first frame is shifted
by (0, 0), the second frame by (4, 5), the third frame by (8, 10) etc.
This creates a moving sprite. The restore method of the selected frames
is automatically set to Restore to Background.
Crop
Crops the selected frames to the bounding rectangle.
Flip and rotate
Flips, mirrors or rotates the selected frames.
Duplicate
Duplicates the selected frames.
Delete
Deletes the selected frames.
Reverse order
Reverses the order of the selected frames.
Gray scale
Converts the selected frames to gray scale. This function creates
a local palette for each frame.
Insert solid color
Inserts a new frame with a solid color.
Color can be selected from the palette or from the image area.
Set restore mothod
Sets the restore method of the selected frames. In most cases
the correct restore method is selected automatically, however sometimes
you need to adjust the results manually.
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Options
Toggles the loop feature.
When loop is on the current animation runs in a loop.
When it is off the animation runs just one cycle and stops.
LoopOptimizations
Toggles optimization options. Optimizations can significantly reduce the size of the
animation file.
Crop to dirty rectangles
Toggle the dirty rectangles feature. When ON dirty rectangles are calculated.
The dirty rectangle of a frame is the smallest rectangle that contains all the pixels
that are different from the previous frame.
The dirty rectangles feature can reduce file size significantly,
especially when the image does not use a transparent color.
Optimize dirty rectangles
Perform frame splitting and transparent mask optimizations to achieve
further space saving.
Optimize number of colors
Reduces the number of colors to the next power of 2. For example, if the image uses
35 colors it will be reduced to 32 colors. If it uses 32 colors the image will not be
modified.
Local palettes
Toggles local palette options.
Merge
If a multi-frame GIF file contains local color palettes,
they are merged into one global palette.
This usually results in file size reduction but may cause some loss of color quality
if the images are rich in color.
Keep
Local palettes found in multi-frame GIF files are kept.
However the colors of all other frames (from single-frame GIFs and from other image files)
are merged into one global palette.
Create
When multiple image files are read, a local palette is created for each image.
This method may result in a larger file size, but it can prevent color shift.
Global palette
Toggles global palette options.
Cumulative
Colors are added to the global palette from each image as it is read on a
"first come, first served" basis. If the 256-color global palette is full,
any new colors from additional frames are mapped to the closest color already
in the palette.
Optimized
The total number of colors in all the frames is reduced to 256.
The shared global palette is calculated as an optimized palette, that is,
all the frames contribute their colors equally (proportionally to the area)
to the global palette.
With an optimized palette the quality degradation is minimal and even.
Automatic
Starts in Cumulative mode. Automatically switches to Optimized global palette
if the total number of colors exceeds 256. This is the preferred mode
(unless you want to achieve a special effect).
Fixed
Uses a fixed color palette.
All images are converted to use only colors from this palette.
Animagic comment frame
By default, Animagic adds a comment frame with reference to Animagic's web site.
Registered users can disable this feature.
Optimize on save
Apply optimizations when saving the animation in a file using
File | Save command.
Enable undo
Enables the undo feature. This option is useful when you work with very
large files. Disabling the undo feature can speed up processing.
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View
Show dirty rectangles
When checked, shows a focus rectangle (dotted rectangle) around the dirty rectangle.
This feature is useful for verifying that the animation is generated efficiently.
Note that the dirty rectangle of the first frame always includes the whole image.
Show dirty rectangles only
Clears the image outside the dirty rectangle.
Show palette
When checked, the palette window is visible.
The palette window shows the current palette.
When the mouse moves over a palette entry, the window caption shows the index number
and RGB value of that entry.
Show frame list
When checked, the frame list window is visible.
The frame list window shows a list of all frames in the current animation.
The currently selected frame is displayed in the main window.
By changing the selected frame you can display other frames.
Magnifies (or reduces) the displayed image.
Zoom in, 
Zoom out
Resets the zoom ratio to 1:1 (no maginification).
Zoom 1:1
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Effects
Fade in
Inserts extra frames before the currently selected frame so that the image
fades in from a solid color.
The color, the number of frames and time delay for each frame can be selected.
Fade out
Adds extra frames after the currently selected frame so that the image
fades outs into a solid color.
The color, the number of frames and time delay for each frame can be selected.
Dissolve
Add extra frames after the currently selected frame so that it dissolves
into the next frame. Options for dissolving from and into a solid color can
be selected as well.
Banner Scroll
Add extra frames before (or after) the currently selected frame so that it
scrolls in (or out) in the selected direction.
Wipe
Add extra frames after the currently selected frame so that
the next frame
slides in from the selected direction until it replaces the current
frame.
Spiral
Add extra frames after the currently selected frame.
The next frame starts as a small rectangle and grows
until it replaces the current frame.
Blind
Similar to Wipe but with several stripes.
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Help
Shows this file.
HelpAbout
Shows the about dialog, version number.
Register On-line
Starts your Internet browser and goes to the download and registration area on
Animagic Web site.
Registration form
Opens a text editor with the software registration form.
Enter name and password
Displays a dialog for entering user name, company and registration password.
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Evaluation Period
Note:
this section applies only to the unregistered version of the program.
If you
have entered a valid registration key, or if you have paid for and downloaded
a pre-registered program, the evaluation period does not apply to you.
For more details about the registration process, please read the
Frequently Asked Questions
document.
If the program is not registered within 6 months of installation,
file saving will be disabled.
