GIMP Version: 2.8.14
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: Windows 7
GIMP Experience: Basic Level

List any relevant plug-ins or scripts:
Gimp Animation, RIOT, Save for web

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Hello. I am trying to do a simple animation with 5-7 photos of my young grandson climbing a slide. The pictures are 72 resolution and large: 5184 X 3456 pixels. I had scaled down size, optimized for web,(first with GIMP's optimize, then with RIOT, and Save for Web). None of those helped. When I do playback, everything looks fine. Save with .gif with animation. When put in email, the faces are blotchy and the arms have lines on them. Quality of pictures then very poor. Am I missing steps? Am I doing something out of the proper order? I thank you in advance for any help I can get.
I have attached one of the pictures before anything is done to it.

Pat I think that it has to do with the huge size of the image. Have you tried your steps in a small size? Anyway I had the same problem and I sized the photos dramatically to see everything working all right. Your grandson is very handsome.

I did scale down to about a 5 x 7 inch size but still had the same problem. Does changing the resolution have anything to do with it? How small should the images be for a .gif animation?

Than you about my grandson. I believe he is handsome! I know I might be biased because he's my grandson!

Well, 800 x 600 it works all right. anyway, take a look at this link:
http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/10 ... -psd-34649

you might want to save as .apng instead of .gif
here's the difference, i think because .gif automatically reduces the number of colors and so you get blotchy and lines and poor quality
.gif

.apng

Thank you Issabella and Trandoductin. I will try your suggestions. I do not have a plug in for anpg. Where would I get it if needed and is it difficult to install?

You may see it in this link.
http://littlesvr.ca/apng/
I don't have it, but Trandoductin seems to have it and if he says it's better, then it is. He knows a lot about these matters. Luck!

I didn't need to install anything.
when you export you just need to name the file as a .apng file and then click "Select file type" at the bottom and select "PNG+APNG image" then click Export then click OK then it'll pop up a window where you can check/tick the as animation.

Thank you Trandoductin for the information.

Thank you Issabella.
Thank you also Trandoductin but I have not been able to get apng to work. I installed the plug in for it but I get a message when trying to export that did not have proper extension for file type. Do you have any other suggestions or advice?

Well Pat that is exactly what I got with my APNG attempt ... I thought I followed Trans instructions but ...

"Extension Mismatch. The given file extension does not match the chosen file type. Do you want to save the image using this name anyway?"

So I said OK and that exported file can be played in my Firefox browser. But when I loaded that file in viewtopic.php?f=11&t=12787 it just remained there as text.

It is very frustrating!! I have tried all of the aforementioned suggestions and instructions. I found a tutorial by Molly from 2010 and followed through the changes until the thread ended.You can find it at viewtopic.php?f=10&t=218. Also confusing as the first plug in I downloaded from sourceforge only had 2 files. As Rod also was helping someone, found out there needed to be 3 files. Someone else had this problem. I downloaded Rod's plug in files, placed them exactly where he stated. Still does not work. Still get the error that you mention. I do not get any animation choices in the dialog box. Maybe the plug in is outdated.

Pat. I tried it too to see how it worked. However as you, I didn't get this type of file worked for me. I applied it on a animation project mine. When I wanted to see the result, my computer doesn't recognize it , so it doesn't open. Please Tin, could you tell us what we can do to solve it?
I drop the file I did just in case I made any mistake.

I finally got a full dialog box for export .png to select animation. Looked like it worked correctly and would play in GIMP. Not play when put in email or sent. So I am not any further in resolving the problem. The reason I was not getting the dialog box with animation choice is that the file-apng.exe file kept disappearing from the folders. I found that my virus checker decided it was harmful and kept deleting it every time called into action. I now have that fixed. But still no animation!

That is very strange Pat. That is a very old tutorial so the only thing I can suggest is maybe your png script needs updating. I am not sure.

I have just finished reading through Molly's original thread to try and understand what to download, where to download it from, where to install the zipped files and what to do when exporting the 'apng' file in order to obtain a working result.

And now I am totally confused on all accounts - most of the posts refer to previous GIMP versions - is that a factor? Tran says above save as .apng and elsewhere I see save as .png.

I have 3 sets now of different downloaded apng zips - from Molly's post, from Rod's post and one Graechan referred me to ... which ones should I use?

It's not often I struggle with these type of issues, so maybe I must be getting too old for all this ..

... or just go back to gifs.

That's odd,
I didn't have to install anything.
And I can save it as .apng or .png as long as i select PNG+APNG images as Save File then it works...
but for some reason this animation is messed up now ... i blame you guys for messing up my apng file


it should show the same blue line rotated 90 degrees instead of that weird garbage...not sure why it's not working for me now.


Maybe give this online tool a try (I haven't tried it yet but it looks like it might work for what you try to do).
http://littlesvr.ca/apng/assembler/assembler.php

Edit: Just tried above site..it works fine.
here's a sample.

My aspirations for getting .apng to work may, and probably is, in vain. According to a source I found dated July 2015, IE and Edge, and many other browsers do not support .apng as yet. States that you will just get the first frame, which is what happened to me. .apng works when I check it in GIMP now that I found my virus checker decided to deem it dangerous and kept deleting it. That is now fixed. If you are not getting the animation choices on the dialog box you might want to check your directories and see if the file-apng.exe is deleted. The source for browsers that I found is at: http://caniuse.com/#feat=apng. If your browser is blocked in red, it will not support .apng. Hope this was useful.