If You Knew Youd Know Gif
- Tips & Resources
Surprising. Entertaining. Informative. GIFs are all of these things, and marketers and customers alike love these fun email additions. Merely you know what else GIFs can exist? Big. It's easy for a GIF file size to grow to bloated, behemoth proportions that interfere with email load times.
Then what's an email marketer to exercise? Evan Diaz, the Pb Designer at Lucky Ruby-red Pixel, has the answers. Hither'southward what we learned from his Litmus Live presentation, "Creating Animations That Delight and Help Subscribers."
Tiny but mighty: Why keeping GIF file sizes low is then crucial
Large GIFs lead to wearisome email loading or downloads that eat upwards a subscriber's telephone data programme. Both of these tin leave subscribers frustrated, which jeopardizes all your hard work and impacts your campaigns' performance. That'south why keeping GIF file sizes pocket-size is one of the central challenges e-mail marketers accept to main if they desire to use the power of animated GIFs in their email campaigns.
How large tin can a GIF in email be?
In general, the smaller your GIF is the faster information technology loads in your emails—and the shorter your load times, the better the experience is for your subscribers. Only what's the maximum file size that'southward acceptable for a GIF? Evan advises keeping files under 5 MB. At five MB, a subscriber will probably just have to wait a few seconds for images to load. Hither at Litmus, we're trying to keep GIFs under ane MB to guarantee speedy load times and to not eat up besides much of our readers' information should they open up our e-mail on mobile while on the get.
Focus on file size optimization throughout the GIF cosmos process
Reducing GIF file size starts on the drawing lath. Once you accept an idea for your GIF, in that location are some design choices you can make to keep sizes in check. Plus, when it comes to finetuning your GIF in Photoshop and processing it for use in electronic mail, there are boosted tricks you can utilize to stop your GIFs from becoming too heavy. Here'southward the top ten tips for keeping GIF sizes small:
1. Stick to simpler (AKA faster) transitions
If your blitheness involves transitions, stick to "cuts" over "fades." Whereas cuts jump correct from one visual to the next, fades take their time to deliver the same bulletin. Fades involve more frames, more colors, and thus come up with larger file sizes. The instance beneath shows how meaning the impact of a fade transition is on file size. If you choose a fade event over a simple cut transition, your GIF file is 7.8 times larger.
Not a fan of cut transitions? Evan suggests using a "translate" transition, where 1 frame slides over the previous image. This way, you get interesting move without bogging downwards the file with more color transitions from a fade.
ii. Use illustrations over photos when possible
In the same way that processing more colors in a fade transition increases GIF file size, so too practice the complex colors in photographs. Illustrations volition take more solid-color components than a photograph or video, which typically makes them less heavy.
Information technology uses a lot of colors, so the affect on file size is huge.
Another benefit of simply-colored illustrations is that you tin incorporate more movement and animation with a smaller file size footprint. Subtle changes in a photograph are more cumbersome to load than multiple blithe frames for an illustration that tells a story. If there'due south no mode around using a photograph, so you should isolate the blithe portion. Instead of the entire prototype being a GIF, you can significantly decrease the file size by leaving all non-moving sections as images.
3. Overlay colors to limit the color palette in photographs
Another way to bring downwardly the file size when yous need to use a photograph or video is to overlay a single color on the GIF. A monochrome overlay gives the GIF an on-brand tint and limits the number of unlike colors the GIF needs to process. The result: smaller file sizes!
four. When turning a video into a GIF, import every other frame to a layer
Photoshop will convert your video frames to layers when you select File > Import > Video Frames to Layers. This is a handy tool, merely information technology can lead to a runaway GIF file size if you aren't careful.
Optimize your file size by limiting layers to every 2 frames. This option will take every other frame to create layers, which reduces file size. If taking the layers down to every other frame isn't enough, Evan noted that having Photoshop only selection up one out of every 4 frames is nonetheless a skilful identify to start.
5. Delete duplicate frames
Remember: The more frames you lot employ in your GIF, the bigger the file size. After importing your GIF to Photoshop, yous tin can expect at the animation frame-past-frame. If there are multiple layers with the same frame image, give the duplicates the boot.
Hither at Litmus, nosotros often employ EZGIF to optimize our blithe GIFs. The free online GIF optimizer gives you lot the option to hands delete duplicate frames if you lot don't have access to Photoshop or a similar tool.
half dozen. If yous remove duplicate frames, adapt filibuster to continue GIF on pace
If you're removing frames from your GIF, y'all'll demand to change the frame delay to keep GIF timing the aforementioned. But "hold" the single frame for equivalent of time information technology would have taken to run through the duplicate frames you've deleted—that's how you keep the GIF on pace.
Keep in heed that thither's a simple changed relationship in GIFs: the higher the frames per second, the less jerkiness in playback. A delay of .03 will likely exist the default Photoshop gives your uploaded GIF, which creates a 30 FPS animation that loads very smoothly. But the more frames you need to load per second, the larger your file size will be. You'll desire to discover the sweetness spot that keeps your animation smooth plenty while keeping your file size low.
seven. Choose adaptive color reduction
When you save your GIF for the web, yous'll exist met with a few options for colour reduction. Evan's best practice suggestion is "adaptive" color reduction. This algorithm samples colors that appear most in an prototype and provides a fair remainder between file size and color fidelity.
eight. Go along "transparency" turned on
GIFs often handle transparently poorly, applying a harsh white edge around elements when attack a transparent background. If you'd similar to use animations on a transparent background, animated PNGs are the manner to become . And then what does that "transparency" checkbox in Photoshop actually practice? Information technology allows pixels that didn't change from frame to frame to remain as they are. That ways that areas on the GIF that remain constant from one frame to the next don't need to bother reloading. Evan suggests leaving this turned on most of the time, every bit information technology can reduce your file size past a third or more than.
9. Balance the color table with dither
During export, you also have the option to accommodate the number of colors saved to the prototype file's color table. The lower the number of colors, the smaller the file size. To get the best combination of optimized file size to color fidelity, choose:
- 128-256 colors for videos
- 64-128 colors for animated illustrations
If you lot want to really fine-tune your file size, you can combine your color tabular array changes with the dither percentage. A higher dither percent leads to smoother gradients, even with a limited color table. For case, a greyscale with merely 8 color stripes becomes a smooth gradient with 100% dither turned on. A higher dither combined with a color table on the lower end for videos simply might be the sweet spot for a GIF that looks overnice yet loads quickly.
10. Simply reduce video quality and file size with Lossy
Desire to optimize your GIF file size without all the fine tweaking involved in colour tables and dither? Selecting a Lossy level of twenty% to forty% reduces file size, and some quality, in one fell swoop. You can play effectually with these percentages to detect the balance of quality and file size that's right for you lot.
Watch Evan's total Litmus Alive talk
Are yous looking for even more than tips on how to create animations that please and help subscribers? You can sentry Evan's full Litmus Live talk below!
https://litmus.wistia.com/medias/ji7pkn8cd5
What's your underground to optimizing animated GIFs for electronic mail?
Great GIFs can add context and fun to an electronic mail, while a GIF gone bad can distract from the message or cause subscribers to avoid your emails altogether. What are your tricks to optimizing animated GIFs for email? Nosotros'd love to hear them in the comments below!
Source: https://www.litmus.com/blog/animated-gifs-in-email-10-tips-for-keeping-files-sizes-small/
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