GIF Palette Changer

Multimedia is found under a large variety of file types, like videos, and even small animations made up of multiple image files. These are called GIF animations, and are quite a popular format around the web. In case you want to fix or enhance colors for such a particular file, specialized applications like GIF Palette Changer are sure to help you out.

Once it’s installed, you can go ahead and check out the set of features. A compact window shows up on launch, but it’s enough to hold all features. A large palette of colors covers most of the workspace, with several values fields that accompany it, still related to color.

What the application does is read the color palette of GIF files in an attempt to either enhance brightness, adjust light, and even manage hues and saturation. General GIF info is shown to help you better pick new values, with only a few fields that require your attention.

You’re only able to load one GIF file at a time, and the bad part is there’s no built-in preview area, or any option to generate one. This means you might want to make a backup of the original file, since all colors can easily get scrambled if certain values are not properly introduced.

As mentioned above, GIF Palette Changer lets you edit hue, light, and saturation fields, and even adjust tolerance level. The basic form of these values are shown, so you can specify the range of enhancement. The rest of the fields are used to specify image height and width, color resolution, bits per pixel, background index, as well as RGB values for any of the tints you hover the mouse cursor over in the default palette.

Hitting the Start button instantly applies your settings, but the original file is not replaced. Sure enough, you can press save to overwrite the original, but there’s also the option to generate a new GIF file. Unfortunately, with the lack of a preview area, it can take some time to get values right, especially with no guidance.

All things considered, we can safely state that GIF Palette Changer leaves more to be desired, with a rather difficult accommodation process for beginners, both because of the lack of any documentation, as well as value fields that are a bit tough to understand. However, most of the impact on practicality is because of the missing preview options, which can increase the time needed to get the desired result.