Animated GIF Software - Rudimentary Features

Animation software features range from

Basic to feature packed

Today I’ll illustrate the most rudimentary requirements

In future posts I’ll show more advanced features

As I learn through trial & error

A Walk in the Snow

A short walk from my front door

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A nice program (free) that includes

Animated GIF and a dozen other features is

PhotoScape, which I used for this post

To create an animated GIF a program needs

1 – A standard file system

2 – The means to open your set of images and

To (re)arrange their order as needed

3 – A way to set the amount of time each image will appear

4 – An animated GIF creation algorithm (the heart of the program)

To convert the set of images into a single animated GIF file

Clearly, we could expand this list several-fold, but

These are the basics and

Here is how they are implemented in PhotoScape

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Admittedly, #1 & #2 are pretty obvious requirements.

#4 is also, after all this is what we’re trying to do

#3 might not seem obvious but it is the basis for whether

The animation looks like a slide show or

A video (movie) or

Something in between

If you can’t control the time for each slide,

You have no control over the animation’s appearance

The above “how-to” slide show was made in PhotoScape

Using three screen captures

Each image “on stage” for 5 sec.

The animated photo was also made in PhotoScape

A single photograph with

Snow created in Photoshop

Snow overlaid on image (PS Screen blend)

Saved 15 versions

Each with the snow moved down/left

Can you spell tedious??

Each image displayed for 0.3 sec.

So animation can do more than

Provide the illusion of motion

As shown above it can do many different things

Simply by our choice of images

and how long we choose to display them

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Tomorrow – ??

Depends on what “new” I learn today

Probably adding effects to a photo and

Making the additions move

As in the winter walk image

What did you learn new today?

As I proceed in this series,

I hope to illustrate a potpourri of different animation styles

Suggestions? Requests?

Is this whole animation thingy interesting? Useful?

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Tags: Animation & Video, Art Photography, Photography, Photography How To, Photography Tips, Photography Tutorial