Free program for .gif's?

[Nessus]

Does anyone know a good free program for making a .gif. I need to save a picture that is not a rectangle and I can't do it in photoshop so I'm guessing I need to make it a gif.

[Nessus]

I intentionally put it in Fnord because it was not only a question about software but also asking if I was thinking the right way about only being able to save a non rectangular picture out of photoshop, and FNord is now the photoshop board.

[NutWrench]

IrFanView? (http://www.irfanview.com/)

[WarHammer]

There's no such thing as a non-rectangular image. You can mask the true shape with transparency but the actual canvas is always going to be a quadrilateral. If that's what you mean, there are numerous methods of adding transparency in Photoshop. The best method varies, mostly depending on the the content of the image and how much time and effort you are willing to devote to cutting it out.

[Nessus]

Hmm, well it's just a skull, it cuts out in a minute with the magnetic lasso, I thought I could just save it from there but I see what you mean that I have to make the background transparent, I look in the layer tools and see if I have that option, could I just turn the opacity of the background to zero?

[Roger]

You can delete the background.

[WarHammer]

That's probably the quickest and easiest way. In Photoshop in the layers subwindow, double-click on the layer name were it says background; this converts the background into a layer. Then select the background with the magic wand tool and press 'delete'. The background should should change to a checkered pattern (transparent). Now either save the image as a PNG for best quality or a GIF for greater web compatibility. If saving as a GIF be sure to check 'transparency' at the convert to indexed color stage.

[Xerxes]

Nessus said:
Does anyone know a good free program for making a .gif. I need to save a picture that is not a rectangle and I can't do it in photoshop so I'm guessing I need to make it a gif.



Microsoft GIF maker?