Look OK to you? Good! Close preview. But wait! Before we save the animation, let's crop it as small as possible so animation will load faster.
The Crop tool is used to reduce the size of your image, which also reduces the file size. You should always crop your animations for the smallest file size.
Select the Crop tool from the toolbar. When you select the Crop tool in Animation Shop, three new buttons appear: Options, Crop, and Clear.
Select the Options button. In the dialog box you can set the crop area in a number of ways. Today we will choose 'surround the opaque area' to automatically crop the frames. Select OK. Crop lines will appear in each frame to indicate where image will be cropped. Make sure this looks OK!
If you have a opaque color background, choosing 'surround the opaque area' will select the entire frame. To get a smaller crop area, you will have to specify values for the Left, Right, Top, and Bottom positions. Another way is to choose 'surround the opaque area' and then use cursor to drag the sides of the crop rectangle to enclose a smaller area.
Apply the crop selection using the Crop button (next to Options button) or double-click inside the crop rectangle. Your canvas size will be reduced to minimum.
Now preview your animation again. If you're ready to optimize and save your file, go to the next step.
