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I have made a project in Adobe After Effects, @30 fps - 7 seconds long - (resolution 506 X 808) and exported it as AVI video file (395MB size). after that I imported the video in the Photoshop and chose "export for web (legacy) to make a GIF file but I'm very limited for the file size, I need a maximum 8MB GIF, and the size I have is 45MB.

here are the settings I use for Photoshop:

Photoshop details

Things I tried so far:

I've tried to first convert the video file in Adobe Premiere Pro to H.264 and H.265 and the size will become 10MB with great quality and reasonable bitrate, but when making the GIF in Photoshop the size is still the same! I really can't reduce the length or the resolution of the AE project anymore.

Also tried to use less Dither, at 100% I get 60MB GIF, at 99% I get 45MB, at 90% 44MB and anything less than that decrease the quality A lot with very few decrease in GIF size.

for color reduction algorithm I used other methods than "adaptive" which I currently use but others add so much noise and reduce the quality.

Tried to export it as PNG and JPEG sequence as well, no difference in GIf file size.

What do I need to do to reduce the GIF size to 8MB Max and still have a very good quality?

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Even lossy compression has its limits. It appears that you've hit it. That's as far as GIFs can go.

The next thing to try is to resize the image, but considering that your output files are currently almost 6 times too large, it's unlikely that results will be acceptable. Dividing both dimensions by √6 which is approx. 2.44 should let you push below 8 MB (dithering may make it easier or harder, this is just an educated guess). If you're fine with your GIF being actually 207×331, then give it a try.

Reducing framerate is also an option. Once again, your mileage may vary here, because you can't really predict how reduced FPS will affect dithered palette.

Anyway, GIF is not the right tool for the job. It was never designed to handle full-blown color palettes and forcing it to do so will effect in huge files, while giving up will leave you with only 256 colors. If you don't have to support really old browsers, stick to MP4/H.264. All reasonably new browsers support it.

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    Thank you for your answer. unfortunately resizing is not an option, I am trying to put this GIF on Steam artwork showcase and the only animated picture file they support is GIF, at least for now. I wish we could upload H.264 videos in there with auto-play and repeat forever but hopefully in the future. However, I could manage to make it 7.9MB by lowering fps from 30 to 18 and removing some effects that wouldn't run smoothly on that frame rate and would add complications.
    – user430418
    Jul 10, 2017 at 17:23
  • That's a good idea! I've included it in the post so that future visitors who don't read comments can find it.
    – gronostaj
    Jul 10, 2017 at 17:33

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