Sorry if this is one of those annoying questions people ask 12 times every hour...

[Mitsukara]

I was wondering, does anyone have any suggestions for a program that supports .bmp files that can convert them to .gif files without messing up the pallette too badly? MSPaint completely murders pallettes, and the only other real graphics program I have is TakeONE and it still kinda sucks... anyway, any help would be appreciated.

Sorry for not posting this in a more proper forum, I wasn't sure of any place that might be better...

*Err, I forgot to mention that I'd prefer something free or that can be found and downloaded easily on KaZaA. I'd rather not have to go through a 98MB download or have to buy anything...

[Maverick_Zero]

I use Adobe Photoshop. But I'm not sure if that can do GIFs or not. But if you can't do GIFS on it, I'd suggest PSP, if you can find/buy a copy. But It's pretty expensive.

[Shadowblazer]

There are most likely far superior programs, (Photoshop and PSP come to mind, but those aren't exactly free) but I always used Gif Construction Set (http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html) for that. I just use their animation wizard, accept all the default choices and then when it comes time to pick the files for the animation, just choose the same one twice (since you're supposedly making an animation it wants more than one image but you can simply delete the second frame once you get the thing created).

There might be an easier way to go about it but that's the technique I figured out about 5 years ago and old habits die hard. ;)

[VEL]

I use irfanview, it's free to download and it isn't very big. I think their site is something like irfanview.com

[Mitsukara]

Thank you, SB, that program worked very well for what I was trying to do.

*bows*

[Axel]

I tried both those programs, and somehow both were deleted...
in the end I made a gif by the same name as the image I wanted, then cut the image, and pasted it in the gif. saved it and the pallettes remain the same.