help with rasterfiles

[Brian VanVoorst]

I have some 8 bit (256 color) sun rasterfiles which I am flipping thru to
make an animation.  These are rather big so the next best idea we have is
to put them into a grayscale, (say 4 or 3 bit) and reducing the memory
needed for each frame, allowing more frames in memory.

Now things get blurry as to what can be done and what can not.  I know
that you can have 8 bit or 1 bit rasterfiles, but I have not found any
proof that you can have something between.  If you can, I don't know that
it saves me any space (perhaps it stores a 4 bit image in the space of a 8
bit image).  Does anyone know the facts?

Next is the software required to do this.... I got the Fuzzy Bit Map tools
and tried playing with those a little.  I wasn't very successful in
accomplishing much of anything.  If my goal is to turn a 256 color sun
rasterfile into a 8 color gray-color rasterfile, can I do this with FBM?
Does anyone have any suggestion as to what series of commands to issue?

(note: clr2gray produces 256 color grayscale images, which I could combine
with fbquant to make into 8 color (gray?) images, if I can first turn it
into a 24bit image.... (sigh))

One other hope.... is there a program already out there to do what I need?

Thank you for your help!
All ideas are welcome!
Please respond!

Brian VanVoorst
brvanvoo at MTUS5.bitnet