Re: [Gimp-user] Adding text layer to gif image

[Joel Rees <joel rees gmail com>]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2017 at 1:56 PM, Paula Koval <paula koval gmail com> wrote:
> Hello, All,
>
> I don't wish to be a pain-in-the-ass, but I have found a YouTube video that
> I have been able to follow, however, it does not yield a gif image with a
> fixed text image on its top layer.

Maybe this is where we can say it.

GIF images have no top layer.

If you want to talk about the frames in GIF images as "layers", they
are, I suppose, but we call them frames for two reasons. One is to
avoid the confusion about what a layer means, and the other because
the frames in a movie are called frames, and the frames in a GIF image
serve the same sort of purpose.

Specifically, when you edit layers in GIMP or Photoshop, etc., the
purpose of the layers is to be combined as one still (non-animated)
image. Thus there is a top layer and a bottom layer and all the layers
in between, and there is no need to define a time delay between layers
because they are combined and all shown at once.

The frames in a GIF image are displayed one at a time, in sequence,
with the specified time delay, to give the illusion of animation, in
the same way that movie film frames are shown very quickly
one-at-a-time.

If you want a layer effect where the text is in one layer and the
image is in another, you can make an illusion by repeating the text
image every other frame. But it won't really be the same, and may
flicker a bit.

> The layer that I have added flashes at
> the playback rate of the gif image.

If you don't want the flicker, you have to raise the frame rate.
Ad/or, if you have multiple non-text frames, you will need to insert
the text frame between each non-text frame. (And if you have a lot of
frames, you can animate the text, as well. But most web browsers have
buffer size issues that will cause GIFs with a lot of frames to
stutter and not look nice, so there are limits to the amount of
animation you can achieve.

You may prefer to put the text into each frame, to reduce the flicker.
You can keep the layers in the source image format, which should not
be GIF, anyway.

> I have a suspicion that the video misses something about making a mirror
> image and interleaving the layers.  Am I on the right path here, please?

Not sure what you have in mind about a mirror image, and not sure
where you are headed. Can you tell us about what you are trying to
achieve?

> Thank you for your consideration.
>
> Paula
>
> --
>
> *"It's so nice to know so many nice people."*
>
>
> *---Eddie Gallaher (1914-2003)     Radio Personality, Washington, DC
> 1947-2000*

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html