I'm making a GIF for the first time and everything works fine until I'm going to save it.
When I save it, the filesize is way too large to post it here.
I tried a few things, like adjusting the image-size to the minimum, bringing the colours to 128 instead of 256 and I still end up over 600 kb.
Are there some small tricks to get the filesize smaller? Maybe I made too many frames or is the time-length too long of some of them..
Although I tried to adjust the time of frames and that didn't made a lot of difference.

I'm a bit stuck and I don't want to post a GIF with 64 colours

Ah yes, young Jedi - you now are learning the CHALLENGE of the GIF!

The problems you state are part of the deal - you are probably doing nothing wrong.

Here are some tips:

A) keep the colours in your actual image(s) as simple as possible. Since, at the end of the day, you will be working with very very very less colours than the MILLIONS of colours in an average JPEG, you need to Keep It Simple, Simon.

B) Try different colour rendering algorithms (up there underneath where you choose GIF or JPEG or PNGs). Selective / Adaptive / Perceptual - they will all give slightly different outputs.

C) Keep the PHYSICAL dimensions of your image SMALL. Don't go trying to GIF a 600 x 800 pixel image - that will chew through a lot of your image size quota FAST.

D) I have had to, in the past, make the actual GIF much smaller than the contest image-size dimensions, but then I added a plain white border around the image to bring it up to size. The white border doesn't take up too much colour/pixel information so it doesn't add a lot to the final file size.

E) make sure you have a dog scooping its own poop in the image somewhere. This is almost GUARANTEED to get you some kind of voting action!

F) Please excuse my Canadian spelling of COLOUR.

GOOD LUCK!!!!

ReinDude

See below for the opacity and dither will give you some play in k size and allow u to keep the colors. But the k limit may still cause a few frames to be dumped.
You can also make images smaller than limit of 500wx350 if you make a plain background frame that size, and reduce the other frames size in front of it to reduce k.

Hope it helps!

LOL
Thanks for the good & the funny tips will try.

Cheers

playing with the "lossy" sliders in advanced mode...also careful tweaking of the DITHER amount can really get size down without unduly affecting the perceived quality

YOu can PM me for more concise info.

Thx for the tips, now managed to get the filesize under 512 kb and everything, but one problem remains, I can't upload it without keep getting an error.

My filedimensions are the following:
w 500
h 568
kb 486

What could be the problem here? The fact that my GIF is made in vertical shape instead of horizontal? (not sure how you call this)

no larger then 550wx450h
no smaller then 500wx350h

512k limit

I'm confused..
Does that mean I can only work in Landscape when it comes to GIF'S?

kinda...


if you want to do a portrait ratio you (obviously) have to have blanking border(s) ...either white or transparent

Transparent would work best for the people who may use firefox with custom page styles.

Ah ok, I get it now.

Well, that means I can basicly start all over with my GIF or.. I can ask in my description to Turn head 90° CCW and GO LARGE

Based on the dimentions you have mentioned here all you have to do is resize the image in image ready to 450 width, and then it automaticly resizes the hight for you if you have that checked. No do over or any other stuff needed.

And the kb is good as it is. So it will be good after you resized as well.

There are minimum dimentions as well, if you read carefully.... and you will never get below these when you hang on the the right width.

I did a square-proportioned GIF once - 350 x 350 pixels
http://photoshopcontest.com/view-entry/114002/pop-up-balloon-gif.html
with added white columns on the sides to meet the 500 wide x 350 high requirements

minimum size is silly, that needs fixing

Got it working now.
Thanks