One excellent technique
uses an image-processing program such as Adobe Photoshop and progressively applies a filter to the
same image over a series of frames. Figure 9-18 shows the individual frames created with Photoshop??™s
Lighting Effects filter. When animated, a spotlight appears to move across the word.
You need an animation program to compress the separate frames and build your animated GIF file. Many
commercial programs, including Adobe??™s Fireworks, can handle GIF animation. QuickTime Pro can turn
individual files or any other kind of movie into an animated GIF, too. Most animation programs enable you
to control numerous aspects of the animation: the number of times an animation loops, the delay between
frames, and how transparency is handled within each frame.
TIP TIP
NOTE NOTE
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Designing and Crafting Core Pages Part II
FIGURE 9-18
The five images shown are frames of an animated GIF image that are compressed into one file using an imageediting
program.
If you want to use an advanced animation tool but still have full backward compatibility, check
out Flash, from Adobe. Flash is best known for outputting small vector-based animations that
require a plugin to view, but it can also save animations as GIFs or AVIs. See Chapter 25 for more information.
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