I'm unsure how to make GIFs smaller, I've done everything from restricting color to the size, yet it remains over the 500kB KHV requirement. It's currently 1mb, and I want it down to about 300kB to 450kB. Spoiler I always see large pixel'd GIFs on Tumblr and they are about 300kB and I don't know how they do it!! Help would be greatly appreciated.
If you're using photoshop, a few things. 1. Look for duplicate frames, they are a waste of space and are quite common. 2. If all the frames are different but still too large, try deleting every other frame. 3. If it's still too large, keep repeating that process and select all the frames and slow down the speed so that it doesn't looks as obvious that you took a lot of frames out.
^ Removing every other frame, or culling, can be a good idea when trying to compress a long animation. I've also written a tutorial on a GIF compression technique, but whether you can use it is highly situational on your image sequence. I don't know what program you're using, but I use Animation Shop to compress GIFs. It has a very easy-to-use optimization wizard for compression settings. I tried resizing your picture and restricting the number of colors and I had no problem getting the filesize under 500 KB. Spoiler 463 KB, 390 x 213 pixels, maximum 31 colors, 21 frames 494 KB, 380 x 208 pixels, maximum 255 colors, 11 frames EDIT: Oh yeah, feel free to use these however.
If you're using Photoshop, I find it's really useful to do what RvR suggested, and then when you go to Save for Web & Devices..., select GIF 128 Dithered from the Preset list. Check the file size. If it's under 500kb, awesome! If not: Keep the radio buttons on Current Settings, and put 500 in the little box. Done. c: It doesn't always look pretty but I've found it works well.
And an easy way to shave off a bit on this particular one is to just crop off a bit on the right side since it isn't really used. Past that this one does get tricky to make it look good because the background moves just a bit to fast and uses a lot of colors. As Nell showed you are kind of left with either a rougher color scheme or a chopier frame rate.
Thanks for bothering to help out guys. It probably would have been wise to also tell you what program I use and that I have a Mac. I have Photoshop, but I have no idea how to make GIFs work in it. I have Photoshop 8, unfortunately it's not the best... What I do use is an Mac application called GIFBrewery, which pretty much does everything, except for cropping, adding text, and GIF compression. I was also curious as to how you add frame text. She says, "Oh.. My.. Good Lord.. Hi." and I wanted to have white text that says those words only at different times. I feel so useless, but I suppose everyone has to learn at some point. Thank ye much Nell, I see the differences, it does make sense. And thanks for making some too.
