Dear Key Baby,

Since I'm heavily into 2D & 3D imaging, I've used a truckload of different software, but for making animated GIFs, the ULead Gif Animator is by far and away the one for the job. One particularly handy feature is 'Optimise' which allows you to interactivley reduce the colour palette to fit the finished series into a Kb budget - so my Avatar was compressed to 32k, which is the LoT limit.

A trial version can be found here http://www.tucows.com/preview/194832 , but quite often ULead provide older versions for free, or supply them on CDs stuck to magazines like PC Format etc (in fact I will scrounge around and see if I can find one to send to you).

Love and hugs,

The Stoat (as in Animal Category).

PS/ Sorry for being off-topic here, but I figure this thread will sleep soon.

The Tucows site is not cooperating at the moment. I shall check later.

But it is very rare that I need to make an animated GIF, so I will probably stick with ImageReady for now. I have it and I understand the basics.