Do you see the uneven edges around the globe on the left? Even the stand and decorative top have jaggies and which I consider to be unacceptable final animation results. In my opinion, globes with jaggies are not as elegant or as professional appearing as those with smooth edges. The prior version of Animation Shop did not give these results, and all the first globes I made were nice and smooth. Then I upgraded Paint Shop Pro to v6 and the patches for v6.02 and when my snow globes were actually ruined by the new Animation Shop, I spent a lot of quality time to figure out what was happening. I even registered another animation program, but it created such huge final animation files, I quit using it and went back to Animation Shop.
When hours can sometimes be spent on creating one snow globe, and then animating it results in a globe like the above left, it's frustrating. Viewing the animation prior to optimizing and saving it doesn't reveal what Animation Shop v2 will do! I've had globes with transparent backgrounds (inside the globe) turn black, and shadowing put on a date or other object on the globe will also turn black and literally ruin a snow globe. Why would I want a transparent background? I sometimes like the effect of a globe picking up the background color.
Info on the above globes:
Left globe: Copies of this globe were saved in .psp format prior to animating in Animation Shop v2. Not only was the roundness of the globe lost, so was the smoothness of the stand and the top decoration. The globe has ugly, uneven edges - the jaggies.
Right globe: Saved the same three images in .gif format (exported as GIF89a) prior to animation in Animation Shop v2. Nothing in the original images was changed.
A HUGE advantage of saving images in GIF89a format for animation is the files sizes. The psp files for these globes required 261k each; the GIF89a images required only 59k each.
There are two disadvantages of animations using GIF89a format. One is the size. The globe size on the left is 56 kb; the one on the right is 82k. The second is a minor one, but can be seen by careful comparison - look at the reflection. It's not as smooth in the globe on the right as it is in the globe on the left.
The picture used in these snow globes is from my wedding album - taken on February 11, 1950. Yes, my husband and I celebrated our 50th anniversary this year.
