Have just downloaded Gimp for mac. All I want to do is to make sparkles in a picture I'm working on. Haven't done anything like this, so a VERY basic lesson, if someone can help me.

I don't have gimp. if it's got layers like photoshop, then ya can onion-skin the sparkle fx, e.g. copy the sparkle layer, then move it around slightly, then make the layer under that invisible, then export the image. if gimp can export tiff files, then those can be converted to a gif-animation using Yves Piguet's free gifbuilder (OS X).

Thank you Miss Nancy for your information. If there's an easier way than Gimp, I'm all for it. Tried to find GifBuild, but couldn't. There is stuff on it, but when I click onto the page, I get other stuff, how ever I'll keep looking. :) In the meantime, here's what I'm working on. I want the star to twinkle. Now, from what I understand, I would keep the 'white' bit of the star on a seperate level and make two pictures, one with the 'white' and one without? Then I save it to 'Gif", but which one? As you can see I have no idea how all of this works and I have no one to call on here. I'm hoping you will show me the way. Thanks so much for your help so far.

Attached Link: http://nyctergatis.com/gifbuilder/

yes, to make the star twinkle, in frame1.gif, it's white, then in frame2.gif it's black, then import those two frames into gifbuilder and duplicate frames 1 and 2 respectively for the desired number of blinks, or else just use 2 frames and loop forever.

Ahhh, Thankyou. It all sounds so easy. I have now downloaded GifBuilder and washed the dogs so am going to try this. By the way, did the picture come out, I can't see it from this end?

no, it doesn't appear in my browser. it must be 200 KB or smaller in order to upload it to this forum.

OPPS......http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/art/emoticons/blushing.gif

 oops! yer emoticon ain't showing up, either.

Isn't it just fun when things don't work out right. :) Have finished my picture, now just have to do the animation. Have saved the picture but haven't put the stars into it yet, didn't know if I have to keep the stars seperate or make one picture with the black star and leave the red star and white star seperate. I'm going to look at the tut. again and see if I can understand it this time. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Yes..... got the smile that time. :b_rolleyes:

Ok... here's what I have so far. As you can see in the picture, the star is in three colours, black, red and white. Now I can get the three colours to work in GifBuilder, but not when I try in a folder. I have saved all 4 parts (stars and picture) in .tiff. Thought that I would put all the bits into Gif. but I think I may have gone wrong with the "program???' I had the stars working in 'Disolve' mode and it looked good (for me). :) I like your pumkin, puts my questions to shame.. LOL So...my questions are:- 1.. Do I put the picture into GifBuilder as well? 2.. How does the progame work. I type in what it say in the tut. but when I 'drag' the little icon into the text, it comes up as a question mark, which is probably what is stopping the whole damm thing. :) 3..The three stars are on top of each other which if I'm just wanting it change colour, is where they should be....yes? Thanks for your help with this, I'd be totally lost if I had to try and work this out myself. Only having had the computer a couple of years and being in the 'older' age group, people like you a great help to people like us. :m_handshake:

render 3 frames (gif images) in gimp: 1 of each star colour. if gimp has options for gif file save, then save as 87a (compuserve gif) and not 89a (transparent gif). open gifbuilder and all windows in gifbuilder. add frames to gifbuilder - they should appear in the list in the frame window on the left. then use one of the dissolve functions. perhaps 4 frames per dissolve. there are no layers in gifbuilder, as there are in photoshop and possibly gimp. one other rumour I heard was that gifbuilder doesn't work too good in tiger. it works better in OS 9 and jaguar IMVHO.

Hey..... I got the stars to work. Now..... how do I get them to work with the picture? When I try to do it in GifBuilder, all I end up with is a picture the size of the stars, as above. I feel we are almost there.

you gotta add the background with the angel and moon to all the star images, then export all of 'em as gif. everything hasta be in the same layer in gifbuilder.

Ok, I'll try that. I'll try and do this before you finish for the night. It's only 9am here.

Hi Miss Nancy, I have done it. Had to open it up in 'explorer', but I could see it working. Now I want to put it in my gallery to see how it looks against the plain one as it looks 'grainy' to me. Do I just download the whole folder (gif and text) or just the picture? I don't have a web page or anything like that, all my pictures go into my gallery.

see how big it is in KB. if 200 KB or less, post it in this thread. I dunno what the size limit is for their gallery. don't post it there until it's finished. it's gonna be grainy if ya didn't select yer colours with extreme care. I dunno if the blue punkinhead animation looks grainy in xp (no feedback here, unfortunately), but it looks smooth in mac OS. I chose the colours using netscape216 in poser, then saved the gif as netscape216 in gifbuilder. the deal with gif-animations is that they're mostly for toons. they ain't too good for photos.

Damm.... this just keeps getting more complicated. :) but I am not going to give up. LOL Have now downloaded netscape 9.... what do I do with it? You say you use it in poser, but I couldn't find anything that could be it. I went to google and found that netscape216 is a colour chart, but other than that I'm lost. Now here's what I have. Mac os x 10.4 (tiger), Poser 6, Photoshop CS2, GifBuilder and Netscape. Maybe I should try something in cartoon form, but that would be something new again and I would probably give up. I can see that this is going to be a steeper learning curve than I thought, but if you don't mind helping to find my way, I shall keep working at it. Is there somewhere in Poser that I can render for GIF, or would that be too easy? :m_confused:

no, ya don't use netscape. the poser colourpicker (OS 9, OS X) has an html colour option, which is informally called "netscape 216", as netscape was the first big browser. in the colour options for gifbuilder, one will see "6X6X6 palette", which is the same thing.

O.K. found the colour chart, which would be the best... 6x6x6 or 'best palette'? Love Homma, know just how he feels.

Ignor that last question, found that 'best palette' didn't work. Can I add colours or palettes to this program?

Maybe I should start again and make it more cartoonish, but I wouldn't know where to start with that :b_confused:

"best palette" (gifbuilder) doesn't work. the only one that displays right in xp is 6x6x6. maybe gimp allows one to draw lines and fill in colours. I do some toons in photoshop that way. but poser is better for nice-looking angel-winged girls in toon colours.

O.K. thanks for that. Will sign off now. Probably be back in about a week after I'v tried all what I have learnt so far. Going to try doing a 'toon' in poser once I'v worked out the settings. I'v seen them there but never used them. Thanks for all your help.

Well, that was a quick week wasn't it. : ) Here it is, my first ever cartoon and animation. I guess now all I need do is some fine tuning. I'll wait till I hear from you incase you have some suggestions on this one before I 'post' it.

it's lookin' good IMVHO if the wings are a solid colour (black) it will reduce file size and allow more frames and movement. I'm detecting some slight colour variation in the wings, but it might just be my monitor. try a different colour scheme for the glow-ball, e.g. blue-green to lite blue-green to white. it might look worse, or it might add more interest to the animation. try adding small movements to the eyes, wings and right fore-arm/hand, as well. in regard to the gallery here: it's mostly viewed by teenage boys, so the images that get the most comments are the ones of giant-boobed nude poser zombie-girls, regardless of how poorly done the renders. so ya need to be prepared for that. if there's a lack of response, it's a reflection of the mentality of the gallery viewers, and completely unrelated to the quality of the image.

Ahhhh... that would account for my 'pretty' pictures only getting a couple of responses. LOL Am going to try all what you have said. The wings do have shades so will 'blacken' them off, and I wasn't too happy with the ball, it seems 'jerky' but maybe doing the colours will fix that. I really didn't try alot of expermentation with it, I was just happy to have it all working. I used only the colours on the netscape palette, but I didn't use a 'hard' brush for the ball and I could see that once done, the 'fuzzy' bits showed up as a strong colour as well.

Well, here is my latest. For some reason the colours haven't come out as they should. I used the clearest colours in the chart. I even tried to make the eyes to move. LOL Looking back on this, I think I should have made the ball move as well. Still no doubt this won't be the last try at this one.

yeah, it appears the "dissolve" effect may be the problem here. maybe skip the eye movement, as it's not gonna be noticeable at this size. possibly try some large-scale movement of right fore-arm, with some small wrist action on the right hand. that's an old stage direction for ladies - lead with the wrist. on my monitor, the ball seems to be going to grey, black, army green and white. the only colour I like in that is white. maybe just blue (0000FF), lite blue (CCCCFF), then white (000000).

OK, I tried all that, but as you can see, the colours still haven't come out right. The right hand side are the colours you gave me and the left are in GifBuilder.

Although the lite blues are similar, the dark blue is coming out black.

Found this in photoshop, should I be doing anything with it.?

if using poser, export as uncompressed qt movie (compression=none), milliions of colours, or as series of uncompressed tiff files. gifbuilder handles the conversion to netscape 6X6X6. it is not easy to select the colours in poser so they come out exactly right in an animation. the selected colour is modified by the direction, colour and intensity of the light. if trying to use photoshop to save a gifanimation or a series of gif files, export as above from poser. save for web in photoshop (gif) using restrictive and no dither if cartoon-like, restrictive and diffusion if photo-like. snap to web colours. n.b. if the image or movie is saved wrong from poser, everything after that will just make it look worse IMVHO.

But if I'm just saving the figure in Poser, then adding the background and balls in Photoshop, I wouldn't have to worry about all that for poser, would I?

right. the more control in photoshop, the better.

You know everytime I try something more, I learn something. I have just found a 'animation' in 'windows' along the top bar. Still not to sure what's making the blue,.. black, but I think it might have something to do with not cleaning up the background, e.g. a full frame of background and then just putting the angel on top and then painting the ball on top of all that. Will try a couple of things when I get home from work this afternoon.

any colour in the original that is not an allowed colour in a gif will appear black.

YES...YES..... It is done. Thank you so much for all your help.What I did to keep the dark blue was 'snap web' 100%. No doubt now that I have crossed that hurdle, there will be some improvements. Looking forward to what to do next.