300Kb for a simple web banner!?

Hey,

I made a 728x90 banner in photoshop/image ready and it's ridiculous in file size!

It's only 60 frames and it's uses a lot of block colours so I don't see how it be so big, it's almost 300Kb's.

I saved for Web & Devices as a 128 coloured .gif with no dither.

What have I done wrong and how can I fix it? Or how can I optimise it?

It's 6 or 7 times the size I would ideally want it to be! Anyway, here it is.

 

You could cut that down to just 7 frames and 7 key messages but then you'd lose all those slick transitions!

 

Yeh I was considering that, but then I thought of all the banner ad's i've seen that are much more "flashy" than mine so there must be another way...

 

I've always created banners (but not for a while now) in Flash allowing me to have swf and animated gif output but I've never used Photoshop for banners and I'm not a PS guru either, so unless anyone has better ideas I'd do it in Flash

EDIT: I've just googled it and seen How to animate, tween & optimize web banners in Photoshop... don't know if that's of any help to you?

 

You could try flash. I think it gonna be less than 20KB.

There is no way to can optimized with gif without loosing the smooth transition.

 

I didn't know flash could output .gif! (it has to be .gif by the way). Will the animation be any smaller if I make it identical, but in flash?

 

output it as SWF, not as GIF

 

Thanks innovati, but no thanks. As I said in the previous post - "it has to be .gif".

The campaigns I am going to use this banner on only accept's .gif/.jpeg/.png

Please read thread before posting.

Thank you.

 

60 frames - 5kB/frame, doesn't sound very large.
Cut out 2/3 of the frames.

 

yeah animated gifs are massive compared to swf there is no way of reducing the size unless you loose some frames

 

I felt you were mistaking what the other guy meant.

If you create a GIF that has the exact same content, does it matter whether you've created it in Photoshop, Flash or GIMP? No. The size has to do with the number of frames, and how much has to change between them.

If it were designed as SWF, not only would it be infinitely higher quality (GIF's are limited by resolution, SWF's are scalable vectors) and full-colour, but it would likely be much smaller because it only requires the istructions on how to re-create the animation to take place, not the frame inidividually.

What other freedoms it present are this: complexity. Your GIF can play once, repeat 'x' times, or loop forever. Your Flash file can repeat a certain number of times, play a second part of the animation, and arbitrarily go to yet another frame or animation. It can respond to mouseovers, it can have links on it.

I understand you clearly when you say that you need a gif, jpg, or png - what I'm trying to say is you're trying to make a flash one fit into a GIF.

The way I see it you've got three options:

-Change the file requirements - there's no reason .swf's can be used on the web
-Change your animation requirements and design a smaller GIF
-Keep the GIF you have. It may be 300k but it looks great.

 

The more pixel you have got, so the the more sharper image.. the bigger the file..

 

300k isnt bad for what you have. it could definitely be smaller in filesize but that is the price you pay when it comes to using the gif format. frames = data, data = filesize. simple as that really. if flash is an option then use that though personally i wouldnt. well, maybe for an ad such as in this case but normally i stay away from flash unless it's requested by a client and even then i usually try to talk them out of it. anyway you have your options laid out in front of you, time for you to step in and make a decision

 

If it absolutely has to be gif, jpeg, png and 300k is too big then you will have to cut out a load of frames and pare it down; you will *have* to compromise the quality of that animation in order to get a more reasonable file size.

I'm not keen on the phrase but this is definitely one of those "you can't have your cake AND eat it" situs