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Need to edit animated GIF

S

sigamy

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 7, 2003
1,401
187
NJ USA
I inherited an animated GIF that I need to edit but I can't find software to do it. I've tried a few shareware apps like GIFfun but they don't seem to edit existing animated GIFs, they just create new ones. Or am I missing something?

I don't have Photoshop. I have Seashore, a freeware image editor.

Any recommendations for a freeware or trial app that I can use to edit one of the frames in an animated gif? Thanks.
 
Check out versiontracker.com for all kinds of mac freeware/shareware!

gifbuilder looks like a good bet!
 
Thanks for the help...I tried a few on versiontracker. Just tried gifbuilder and it won't open any of my gif files. All GIF files are disabled in the open dialog.

I see online that someone else had this issue.

this is getting frustrating.
 
Download a trial of the CS2 suite, or try to get Photshop CS2 which should come with Adobe ImageReady - this will allow you to edit existing animated GIFs. That's the one you want if you like using adobe products.

Hope this helps.
 
great advice, but...

I was reading the thread and I got all excited because it seemed to answer all my questions and then I tried to open ImageReady through Photoshop but apparently ImageReady was discontinued and since I have CS3 I'm out of luck. Any suggestions???
 
TwinkleToez718 said:
I was reading the thread and I got all excited because it seemed to answer all my questions and then I tried to open ImageReady through Photoshop but apparently ImageReady was discontinued and since I have CS3 I'm out of luck. Any suggestions???
Click to expand...

to edit an animated gif in CS3 you have to import the file as a video. But first you have to change the file extension from .gif to .mov so you can select it since the stupid import thing only lets you select video files.
 
When I imported the file as .mov it ididn't show multiple frames. It condensed the gif into a picture. What I wound up doing was downloading the trial version of Adobe Fireworks and it did exactly what I wanted. Thanks everybody for all the help :)
 
This is an old thread now, but it comes up high in the results for Google searches for Mac animated GIF editing software so I thought I'd update it in case other people find the information below useful.

A very good solution is Pixen, which is specifically designed for this kind of work and is completely free / open source (under the extremely permissive MIT licence):


Since it knows about things like fixed length palettes and binary transparency, where a single colour within a palette is marked as transparent, it becomes very easy to take e.g. a solid background colour animated GIF and change the background colour to transparent, thus updating all frames. In conjunction with this site, that makes it very easy to have animated progress indicators which degrade well on browsers lacking animated PNG or MNG support:

 
Pixen seems to be abandon ware (last revision 2006),

and furthermore it seems useless to me. after importing an animated gif I can't even convince it to play an animation in its preview window :mad:
 
Re: Need to edit animated GIF

I know this is an old post, but it still comes up in Google.

So I opened an animated GIF in Adobe Photoshop CS5, and it opens with each animation frame as a layer. So you can edit the frames in the main window, and edit the animation in the "animation" window, and resave as an animated GIF. No need for Fireworks or ImageReady.
 
Again, I got to this thread via google but thought I'd pass on how to open animated gifs in CS3 and above.

Go to file > import > video frames to layers.

In the text box at the top right of the import pop-up, type in the name of the file you want to open along with the extension.

So, if you want to open a file called "animation1.gif", you type "animation1.gif" into that top right text box.

Your computer will find that file - click on it and open it. All the frames of the gif should be showing.

The only drawback is that transparent gifs are opening on a white background - that's what I was googling when I found this thread. If I find the answer to how to stop that, I'll come back and pass the info on.

Hope that helps. :)
 
All Useless

design-is said:
That's actually really useful to know, cheers :)

/Doug
Click to expand...

What IS this? EVERYTHING here is useless except Fireworks which cost about $1000 and I'm not going to purchase just to fix a few banners that animate continuously instead of only once as I have required.
The PIXEN links are totally crazy! When I used GIFbuilder before it fixed the animation looping but changed the colors of the banners.
 
you could download the photoshop trial, that will give you 30 days of editing time.
 
sigamy said:
Any recommendations for a freeware or trial app that I can use to edit one of the frames in an animated gif? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Any luck, yet?

Is Photoshop the best option or are there cheaper "long term" alternatives? I know you are looking for freeware or trial options. But I'm looking for a regular app. I wouldn't mind paying...but no more than $50, ideally.
 
Some possibilities

I came across this post in my research. Here are some possibilities that have turned up in my looking around so far:

a) GIF Brewery: http://gifbrewery.com

b) GIF Scrubber (chrome browser add in)
 
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