Animated GIF same size regardless of Quality setting

[Ashley7]

I noticed that with the Animated GIF preset, if i modify the Quality slider, the resulting GIF is the same size, 15MB in my case. The only way I could reduce the exported GIF to about 1MB size was via reducing the dimensions (setting just below the quality slider).

Not a biggie for me as I don't create animated GIFs often... just did so now for another discussion post here because I saw someone else do it. Ran into the issue mentioned above and thought I'd post about it here. An aside, that other post of mine with the GIF was rejected because the GIF was 15MB... after downsizing to 1MB via dimension reduction, that other post was accepted.

[Stefan Gruenwedel]

Ashley: Did you ever figure out a solution to this problem? Looks like someone else posted about the same issue — and no one had an answer: Animated GIF problems

[Ashley7]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Stefan+Gruenwedel  wrote

Ashley: Did you ever figure out a solution to this problem? Looks like someone else posted about the same issue — and no one had an answer: Animated GIF problems 

Oh my post was back in April so I don't remember it in detail but I think I ended up getting it down in size by reducing something... it seems there was a qual slider that did nothing so perhaps something could be done to indicate it is inert to the user. There's so many export options so probably best to not have options that don't do anything. Thanks for the follow-up excuse my delay just saw this after signing in.

[Warren Heaton · Accepted solution]

The GIF format doesn't use compression like JPEG does.  So, in effect, the quality slider does nothing for GIF exports.

To reduce the file size, you would want to either reduce the frame size (as you've done) or reduce the color depth. 

[Stefan Gruenwedel]

Warren: You're right. I just did a few outputs and noticed that increasing the frame rate increased the file size and reducing the aspect ratio reduced the file size. In both cases, adjusting the Quality setting had no effect on file size — and no (?) discernible change in visual quality.

10 frames - 100% quality - 640px = 8.5 MB

10 frames - 100% quality - 280px = 1.9 MB

10 frames - 20% quality - 640px = 8.5 MB

50 frames - 20% quality - 640px = 41.6 MB