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MargoM.
Known Participant
February 15, 2022
Question

PSD animated GIF - weird background after exporting

  • February 15, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 7289 views

hi All,

 

I have created a GIF in PSD and exported it according to instructions found here. At export, I have chosen to go for 'original' rather than 'optimised' noticing 'optimised' changed background colour of the GIF (which originally was white) to bluish. However, when I opened the GIF, the weird, bluey background's there. What should have I done differently?

Two screenshots below: of one of the frames as opened in psd (1st) and same camptured from exported GIF (2nd).

 

 

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    Conrad_C
    Community Expert
    Conrad_CCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 25, 2022

    This is probably because of the extremely limited color palette of GIF, which can have only 256 colors. If it’s a still image, it would be better to export as PNG, which allows many more colors. If it’s being exported as GIF because it’s an animation, then the problem is caused by having more colors across all of the animation frames than can be provided by the 256-color GIF palette. Because the palette runs out of colors, it can’t represent the white because white is not in any of the 256 color slots, so it picks the next closest available color.

     

    You can resolve this by customizing the GIF color palette. The animation below shows the following steps:

    1. You need to tell Photoshop which color you want to change, so select the Eyedropper tool and click the color that is wrong. When you do this, one color in the palette becomes selected.

    2. In the color palette, double-click the color that became selected. In the color picker that opens, specify the color it’s supposed to be. In this example, it’s supposed to be white, so I picked white. Then click OK to close the color picker.

    3. Check to see if there are any other wrong colors to correct.  My example still has another slightly blue background color to correct.

    4. Check all of the frames again, in case shifting that color screwed up something else in another frame.

     

     

    Photoshop does not do a good job of optimizing a color palette across animated GIF frames. If you do this a lot and run into this problem all the time, you may want to export from Photoshop as a movie instead, and convert that to animated GIF using a different application that optimizes the color palette more effectively, such as Gifski.

     

    The palette in the example looks different than yours because I used the single cropped picture you attached, so it doesn’t contain all of the colors in the entire document. But it’s enough to show what can be done.

      M
      MargoM.Author
      Known Participant
      March 1, 2022

      hi Conrad and Jain,
      thanks for answering.
       - @J E L the animation's got 64 frames (16 photoshop layers + tweens introduced in between), the res is 72ppi (724x1024 px) and the 'paper' (original images on which the layers and frames are based on) is pdf. I was actually wondering if the original file's format might be a factor here. Not sure how to check if they're text frames though?

       - @Conrad_C I tried exporting psd as a video file and used spark to turn it into gif - this one worked!
      Incidentally, after creating the gif I was intending to embed/ place it in InDesign or Illustrator, to add text on the side of it and then save in a format that would then enable the gif to work (ie. animate) as part of such an image/ graphic. I couldn't find a thread on this in community posts - would be grateful if you could point me to one if you know of any? 🙂

      J E L
      Community Expert
      J E LCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 1, 2022

      Hi @MargoM. I'm glad to hear the video to gif conversion worked! Using a PDF for the paper layer might have had something to do with it, but probably not. I thought the text area was created in Photoshop, which is why I was wondering about the text layers on top of the paper background and if those were separate or clipped or merged onto the paper.

       

      On your idea to import the gif into InDesign or Illustrator, I'm not sure what your end viewer is going to expect to see or experience. For InDesign, you might check this thread for some info using publish online: Solved: Placing .GIFs in InDesign and Exporting to PDFs - Adobe Support Community - 10467645.

       

      M
      MargoM.Author
      Known Participant
      February 21, 2022

      hello?!

      is anybody out there?

      I really san't find any info on how to solve this online, so really counting on someone out there in the community to shed some light please 🙏

      J E L
      Community Expert
      J E LCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      February 21, 2022

      Hi @MargoM. I see you don't have any answers yet, sorry about that. Can you please show us a screenshot of your export settings? Here is an example of one of my custom presets:

       

       

       

       

      M
      MargoM.Author
      Known Participant
      February 24, 2022

      hi @J E L ,

      Thank you for takingmy issue on and replying! 🌹

       

      Here's the screen of my default export settings:

       

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