Easy way to resize animated .gifs?

[Ai Haibara]

I don't suppose there's an easy way to resize an animated .gif, is there? A relative wants me to put an animated .gif on her phone and set it as the wallpaper... which works, but the phone doesn't scale the image to fit the display, so it pads the screen with a gray border that looks terrible alongside the image.

Easier than disassembling the image, manually resizing it, and reassembling it, anyway.

[johns0]

Google animated gif resizer,i found a few sites there.

[jagabo]

VirtualDub can import an animated GIF, filter it (eg, resize), then export as animated GIF again. I think you need one of the additional input plugins. The VirtualDub page here links to a pack with several. Install them all.

[racer-x]

Just tested it with Gimpshop (free) and it worked fine. I normally use ImageReady, but that comes with PhotoShop.

[Ai Haibara]

Hmm... wonder if that's also available in the standard GIMP, which I use (along with Photoshop Elements).

Thanks, everyone. I'll try all the suggestions.

(Wonder if ffmpeg/mencoder could do something with it, as well... I know SUPER had an option to save a video to animated GIF, but I don't remember if that was actually ffmpeg or mencoder underneath it all, doing that.)

[DarrellS]

Microsoft Gif Animator...

http://misterwiki.host22.com/downloads/gifsetup.zip

It's free.

I use Gif Movie Gear by Gamani but it costs $40 or $50 now. You can open Photoshop files (PSD) as multiple frames and open AVI files. You can save as AVI, SWF or GIF files.

[Ai Haibara]

You know, I'd actually been thinking about MS' GIF animation program, today, and whether or not it might even be able to do it as well... experimented with it a couple of times in the past, and it's probably still installed on one of the old 9X towers.

Edit: Some tests:
VirtualDub (both x32 and x64 versions): As far as I know, I have all the input plugins installed (one of the first things I made sure to do when setting VDub up on this system ). Test image loaded, seemed to play okay in VD, added resize filter. But when I tried to export it to a new GIF, VD would throw the error message, "Cannot initialize rendering parameters: Cannot start filter chain: The 3D accelerator device is not available."
Just for fun (seriously!), I tried loading it in AVIDemux... which wanted to think it was an MPEG and would then be unable to load the file.
GIMP: Not sure what to do.

Found this while looking through the Google search results. Seems to work okay (not expecting great results from scaling an animated GIF up, of course), and no signs of malware, so far. (I used to like working with all sorts of simple little utilities (command-line or otherwise) that I'd just stumble upon in the far corners of the web. These days, I have to be paranoid... )

[jagabo]

VirtualDub (both x32 and x64 versions): As far as I know, I have all the input plugins installed (one of the first things I made sure to do when setting VDub up on this system :)). Test image loaded, seemed to play okay in VD, added resize filter. But when I tried to export it to a new GIF, VD would throw the error message, "Cannot initialize rendering parameters: Cannot start filter chain: The 3D accelerator device is not available."

I haven't seen that with VirtualDub.

[Ai Haibara]

Yeah, I've never seen it before, either. Both those versions of VirtualDub have worked without any errors for me so far on this system (Vista64), though I'm not sure why a GIF would require a 3D accelerator.

[ks47]

I’ve used this method to convert video to GIF in VirtualDub. The problem you’re having in VD might be related to export setting as indicated in this site. Since you already have the GIF, I think you can batch crop images in Irfanview as explained here to create a new size GIF. The website has taken down, for some reason, the related football video/gif which explained better.

http://www.inat.org/page4.html

TS

[jagabo]

Jeez, that's a complicated guide for something that can be done completely in VirtualDub in a few steps:

File -> Open Video File (open GIF)
Video -> Filters -> Add -> Resize (set size)
File -> Export -> Animated GIF

[T-Fish]

Adobe ImageReady (comes with photoshop)
open gif
resize
save

[racer-x]

ImageReady is great, but you can do the same thing with GimpShop and its free.

1) Open GIF
2) Resize
3) Save

Example:

before




after

[Ai Haibara]

I don't know if I did it right (admittedly, with standard GIMP, but as far as I know GIMPShop is mostly just an alternate interface for The GIMP). I tried basically the same steps, but it only ended up creating a resized non-animated GIF with the first frame.

[racer-x]

Never tried the plain Gimp before. I downloaded GimpShop because it's supposed to be a hacked version of Gimp made to look and act like PhotoShop. I'm very familiar with PhotoShop and hence the interest there..........

When saving, you are presented with the choice of keeping it animated or flattening it down to one layer. See screenshot:

[Ai Haibara]

I didn't get that option - in fact, it looked as though GIMP had already reduced it to one frame when I tried resizing it.

[DarrellS]

Never tried the plain Gimp before. I downloaded GimpShop because it's supposed to be a hacked version of Gimp made to look and act like PhotoShop. I'm very familiar with PhotoShop and hence the interest there..........

When saving, you are presented with the choice of keeping it animated or flattening it down to one layer. See screenshot:

Will GimpShop install on XP 64bit? My friend has Photoshop 5 but it will not install on XP 64bit. He had no problem installing Photoshop on XP Home but it would not install on 64bit.

[racer-x]

Tried to install GimpShop 2.2.8 on Vista 64 and will not launch. I would assume it would also be a problem for XPx64.

[Ai Haibara]

The standard 32-bit GIMP works for me under Vista64 (using the builds from here - they do have an experimental 64-bit version, but I haven't tried it). Have you tried Run as Administrator or the Compatibility settings (though I'm not sure if the latter would really make a difference...)?

[racer-x]

Just installed the latest "plain" Gimp 32-bit version 2.6.7 on Vista 64. Works fine and was able to resize animated GIF in the same way as GimpShop. Maybe your version of gimp is outdated........

I also downloaded some cool plugins for it. So far it looks interesting, though it is rather slow and un-stable at times.

[Ai Haibara]

Only by one version - I'm using 2.6.6.

Wonder if whoever built GimpShop compiled it (or at least used an installer) in a way that's just outright incompatible with x64 systems...

[p_l]

Easy and online: http://www.gifworks.com/image_editor.html

[DarrellS]

I was able to install Gimpshop on my friends 64 bit XP but I have to say, it looks nothing like Photoshop. I guess a photoshop user could get used to it if he played with it long enough. It took me months to learn Photoshop 5 and I only pretty much know how to do basic stuff.

Sure would've been nice if someone would've hacked Photoshop to install on XP 64 bit (or any other 64 bit OS). I don't really understand why it won't install since XP 64 can run most other 32 bit programs.



Ran into another XP 64 problem yesterday. Went to view a video folder in thumbnail view and none of the thumbnails would show up. Found a hack that said it would work but could cause problems but it didn't work. Tried running an instance of 32 bit explorer from the syswow folder but that didn't work either. He has two computers networked and he can't even view the folders on the 64 bit machine in thumbnail view from the 32 bit XP machine. I assume that thumbnail view will just not work in XP 64 and this might be the worst OS made. I know you have to tell Windows where to install the codecs because they don't have a clue where to put them themselves.

[Ai Haibara]

Worst OS made? Nah - I'm sure we could establish something worse.

I wonder if Photoshop Elements has any trouble working with x64 systems, then. I've been considering picking up the latest version (I haven't upgraded that past v3 for a while)... but even if that doesn't work with x64, I'll just use it with the 32-bit systems.

Now getting it to work with my old Wacom tablet... that could be a different story. I haven't even tried getting it to work with Vista64, either...

Never tried GimpShop, really. I think I wanted to, on a semi-older system, but could never get it to work... and hadn't had an issue with using Gimp proper, anyway. (Plus, I had Elements around, if I did want to use Photoshop. )

[ahhaa]

Paint Shop Pro has Animation Shop included; it imports every file type you can imagine, and has fine control over frame attributes, such as various types of resizing.

[DarrellS]

Worst OS made? Nah - I'm sure we could establish something worse.

I wonder if Photoshop Elements has any trouble working with x64 systems, then. I've been considering picking up the latest version (I haven't upgraded that past v3 for a while)... but even if that doesn't work with x64, I'll just use it with the 32-bit systems.

Now getting it to work with my old Wacom tablet... that could be a different story. I haven't even tried getting it to work with Vista64, either...

Never tried GimpShop, really. I think I wanted to, on a semi-older system, but could never get it to work... and hadn't had an issue with using Gimp proper, anyway. (Plus, I had Elements around, if I did want to use Photoshop. )

Photoshop Elements will work on Vista 64 and Windows 7 so I assume it will work on XP 64 (at least in 32bit mode). That is probably the route my friend will go. I bought him and his wife a $69 Wacom tablet for Christmas (couldn't afford to splurge and get them the $99 version with Elements included). He can use the tablet on the Dual Core XP machine but it would be nice if he could use it on the I7 XP 64 machine.

[Ai Haibara]

Photoshop Elements will work on Vista 64 and Windows 7 so I assume it will work on XP 64 (at least in 32bit mode). That is probably the route my friend will go. I bought him and his wife a $69 Wacom tablet for Christmas (couldn't afford to splurge and get them the $99 version with Elements included). He can use the tablet on the Dual Core XP machine but it would be nice if he could use it on the I7 XP 64 machine.

Ah, good. One less thing to worry about.

Wonder if Wacom has any x64 drivers for their more recent tablets (and for older ones like mine... I really should take a look at their current lineup... have to stop merely using old software and hardware. ).

[racer-x]

Not sure which version of PhotoShop you're having trouble with in XP-64. I run Photoshop 7 in my XP-64 install without issues, so I assume anything newer should also work.

If anyone is looking for a good free image editor, I'd recommend Paint.NET. It runs in 32-bit or 64-bit mode. It is multithreaded and will use all your cores. There are ton's of free plugins for it. After Photoshop, Paint.NET is my favorite. Gimp would rank a distant 3rd for me because of the quirky interface, slow response and instability.

[DarrellS]

Photoshop Elements will work on Vista 64 and Windows 7 so I assume it will work on XP 64 (at least in 32bit mode). That is probably the route my friend will go. I bought him and his wife a $69 Wacom tablet for Christmas (couldn't afford to splurge and get them the $99 version with Elements included). He can use the tablet on the Dual Core XP machine but it would be nice if he could use it on the I7 XP 64 machine.

Ah, good. One less thing to worry about.

Wonder if Wacom has any x64 drivers for their more recent tablets (and for older ones like mine... I really should take a look at their current lineup... have to stop merely using old software and hardware. ).

I haven't tried hooking the Wacom up to the 64bit machine yet but I plugged it into the 32 bit machine and it worked right out of the box. I didn't need to load any drivers (although if he wants all the extras then he'll need to install the drivers and software). My Aiptek is the same way. I just plug it in and it works since XP has the drivers. I believe I had to install drivers when I was using Windows 98.

Not sure which version of PhotoShop you're having trouble with in XP-64. I run Photoshop 7 in my XP-64 install without issues, so I assume anything newer should also work.

He has Photoshop 5.5 and it will not install on the XP 64 bit machine. Says the OS is not supported. I don't think he would pay $1000 for a newer version even if he wasn't unemployed right now. He'll just have to use it on the computer with XP 32 bit. Photoshop 7 is a CS version right? I believe they will all install on a 64 bit machine but I'm not sure if they will run in 64bit mode or just 32bit.

[racer-x]

Photoshop 7 is a CS version right? I believe they will all install on a 64 bit machine but I'm not sure if they will run in 64bit mode or just 32bit.

No, Photoshop 7 is the last version befor CS. CS1 would be version 8 in reality. As far as I know all versions of Photoshop are 32-bit only and would only run as 32-bit mode on a 64-bit OS.

Anyway, Paint.Net can do virtually anything that Photoshop can do when you install all the free plugins for it. It can also do many things that Photoshop can't do. It will run in 64-bit mode and is multithreaded. It's also free, so it will fit in with anyone's budget.