cab3@engr.uark.edu (Chad A. Bersche) (02/28/91)
A couple weeks ago I posted a request for some type of GIF editor, and I am now posting a followup article to my initial one. I got several responses from people on the net and I will summarize them now. The editors basically came in two areas. Those that would run under XWindows, and those that are for DOS based machines. The recommendations for the XWindows editors I did not try, as I do not have a color XWindow terminal and I was wanting to manipulate the brightness of the picture. The recommended programs were: XWindows: xv.tar.Z ImageMagick.tar.Z pbmplus: I've used this package to convert images from Sun raster over to a GIF, but I have not experimented to see what its cut and editing ability is. These are both available on expo.lcs.mit.edu. DOS: WinGif: This was recommended for the ability to use all memory on your system. Personally, it's not my favorite for a GIF editor, but if you have a GIF you want to use as a background for your Windows 3 screen, this is the one to use. Piclab: I was definitely impressed by this package, despite it's initial look. I was expecting nice graphic displays and cut boxes, but when I didn't see it, I felt let down. After I actually looked at the package and tried to do some manipualtion I really got attached to this program. Highly recommended. Vgacad: This was the graphic environment I was looking for, but unfortunately, it wouldn't support the large size or 256 colors during editing. It can handle 128 colors maximum. I didn't bother looking at it further since it wouldn't work for what I needed. Grafwork: This was recommended to me and is apparently available on Simtel20 (26.2.0.74). However, after I found Piclab, I was pretty convinced that nothing could beat it, so I never tried this one. Autodesk Animator: Although it is said that it can manipulate 320 x 200 x 256 color, it's a bit overkill. Again, the size limitation factor would not have let me use this, even if I did happen to have access to it. For my two cents worth of an opinion, I have been HIGHLY impressed by the Piclab package. This is the one that I used for this particular job, and should I need to edit GIF files in the future, this will be the one that I pick for the job. Sorry about the delay in the followup, but hey, at least it's here. :) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- cab3@engr.uark.edu - Chad A. Bersche Univ. of Arkansas Fayetteville CSEG Look, would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now? - Arthur Dent -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- cab3@engr.uark.edu - Chad A. Bersche Univ. of Arkansas Fayetteville CSEG Look, would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now? - Arthur Dent
krouse-p@banana.cis.ohio-state.edu (Pierce Krouse) (03/02/91)
In article <6061@uafhp.uark.edu> cab3@engr.uark.edu (Chad A. Bersche) writes: >Vgacad: This was the graphic environment I was looking for, but > unfortunately, it wouldn't support the large size or 256 colors > during editing. It can handle 128 colors maximum. I didn't > bother looking at it further since it wouldn't work for what > I needed. > Emails on this subject reveal that Chad thinks of this as an opinion, and that it deserves no further comment, but I disagree. The information above is simply incorrect. VGAcad handles 256-color GIFs with ease. As of version 1.6 (and it's up to 2.3 now, I believe) it handles large GIFs as well. I'm no fan of the interface it supports, but the program has behaved for me going on two years, now, and I've never experienced any problem whatsoever with editing GIF files with this package. I'm not about to claim it's bug-free (what is?), but it performs much better than this post would have you believe. I have edited 600x900 256-color GIFs with VGAcad without any problems. You do need to have some free disk space available for memory swapping. My only beef with VGAcad is that you can only edit 320x200 sections at any one time, but this was a limitation of version 1.6. Newer versions may have moved away from this limitation.