Vol. 1, No. 22
Editing Images Online

Let's say you find yourself stationed at an Air Force base in Antarctica, desperately needing to create a banner ad and jazz up some of your site's GIFs. Unfortunately, this being the South Pole, you're working on an ancient computer terminal and there's nary an image-editing program in sight. Heck, there's not even enough space on the hard drive to download one! (Well, it could happen!) If you ever find yourself in just such a predicament — or one a tad less dire — Tripod has the tool to help. Allow us to introduce (drumroll, please) Tripod GIFWorks.

The latest online furor is Web-based applications. You can balance your checkbook, work on your novel, schedule your social life, and edit images — all without leaving your browser! GIFWorks is a proud offshoot of this craze. As you might guess, its functionality is limited to GIF files. Still, given its preferred input, it can do just about anything — and all through an easy-to-use Web-based interface. Got your interest piqued yet? You'll find this terrific tool here. All you need is a JavaScript-compliant browser.

Let's get started! Go to the File menu in the GIFWorks window and select "Open GIF." You'll be offered a choice of working on a GIF file from your local hard drive or one that's on the Web. Make your selection (GIFWorks allows you to browse the directories of your hard drive to find your desired file) and click "Upload Image." You'll then be taken to the main editing page, where you'll start playing with that image.

Here's how it works. The View menu allows you to zoom in and out on the image for finer modifications or if you simply want a view of the big picture. Select "Image Info" for the rundown on your GIF, including such juicy tidbits as width, height, number of colors, file size, and animation info.

The Edit menu's "Options" button allows you to do your magic. Want to insert text? Type a line of witty bon mots and choose your font (Arial, Times, Georgia, Helvetica, Courier, or Comic Sans), size, and color. Then click on the image where you want the text to begin. You can also: crop, resize, rotate, and flip the GIF; undo your handiwork if it didn't turn out quite right; and then redo it if it turns out that, yes, that actually was what you wanted. (You can also, at any time, revert back to the original image by choosing "Revert" from the File menu. But you didn't come all this way just to revert to what you started with, did you?) The Edit menu also allows you to make part of your image transparent: Using this neat feature, you simply click on a pixel in the GIF, and all pixels of that color will become transparent, allowing whatever's behind the image to show through.

But the real fun part of GIFWorks is in the Effects menu. If you've played with Photoshop or similar image-editing tools, you're familiar with the concept of filters, which take your image and alter it in clever ways. Let's examine what GIFWorks offers.

You can change the apparent medium of your image by making it look like a pen-and-ink drawing, a grainy TV image, a watercolor painting, a comic strip, and more. And this can all be done automatically. "Brightness" allows you to — wait for it — adjust the brightness; "Sharpness" is used to make edges and transition zones in the image more defined; and "Color" lets you tweak the palette. In the Offset submenu, tweak your image to have it cast a "Shadow," or put on your "3D Glasses" to reproduce the image in two slightly offset panels, one red and one blue. This latter function provides a 3-D effect when viewed with red-and-blue 3-D glasses. "Warp" makes the image appear as though it's wrapped around different shapes. Finally, "Buttonize" is a useful tool for making Submit buttons for forms and the like: It puts a nice faux-3-D bevel around the edge of the image, so it looks like a nice, clickable button.

Once you've finished creating your image, choose "Optimize" to reduce the number of colors in the image. This will shrink the GIF's file size (though the tool doesn't offer a full range of image-optimization features) and re-render it in a browser-safe palette (which is always a good idea).

When you're happy with all of your changes, select "Save" from the File menu. This saves the image to your Tripod site, your hard drive, or both. And you're done! Congratulations!

HINTS, POINTERS, AND TIPS 'O THE TRADE:

Use the "Image Info" feature (found in the View menu) to keep an eye on your file size. Don't let it get too big!

GIFWorks only allows you to upload files that are 150K or smaller. If you need to work with large, complex images, your best bet may be to chop them up into a number of smaller pieces and then put those files together on your Web page.

Select "Effects Gallery" from the Help menu to get a tour of what each effect looks like, without having to painstakingly modify your own image.

Need to create a text banner? Select "3D Banner Wizard" from the File menu and follow its prompts. It will help you quickly build any size banner, with customizable animated text.

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RESOURCES:

GIFWorks

Draac's Gifs 123

Handcrafted Archive