Re: [Gimp-user] Layer on top of a .gif

[Jan Kandziora <jjj gmx de>]

Am 19.09.2016 um 17:48 schrieb Paula Koval:
> I have tried many ways to put a non-moving layer of text on top of a .gif
> image.  So far, the best I can do is to add the text page to the moving
> image and have it flash.  Does anyone know how to put a transparent layer
> with non-moving text on top of a moving .gif image?  Thank you for
> considering my question.
The solution is simple. You have to add the text layer to any single frame
of the original GIF file.

This can be a bit tedious with GIMP, that's why I have a second tool at hand
when it comes to automating procedures: ImageMagick (or GraphicsMagick). The
following one-liner will annotate a text over each frame of an animated gif:

$ convert input.gif -gravity center -fill black -annotate +1+1 "TEXT" output.gif

You can format the text as you need with ImageMagick, see

        http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/anim_mods/#annotating

and the other examples.

If you like it better to prepare a annotation frame within GIMP and put it
onto each GIF frame, use this line:

$ convert input.gif -coalesce -draw 'image SrcOver 1,1 0,0 text.png' output.gif

The output.gif isn't optimized (meaning: all full frames). If you can't tolerate
this, you can let ImageMagick re-optimize it before creating an output file.

$ convert input.gif -coalesce -draw 'image SrcOver 1,1 0,0 text.png' -layers Optimize output.gif

Note that may result in a bit of flicker around the text borders. You can play 
with the -layers options to reduce that.

        http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/anim_opt/#overlay

Or just stick with the non-optimized file. That one come without any flicker.


Sorry for not having an easy solution with GIMP, but with ImageMagick (or
GraphicsMagick) it's so damn simple you cannot beat it easily.


Kind regards

        Jan