What software do you use for gif animation aside from Photoshop?

[madebymarco]

What software do you use for gif animation aside from Photoshop?

 

Ability to save it as video would be helpful too.

 

Thanks

[gdenby]

I use GifBrewery, which I think is Mac Specific. Saves .mp4.

[Fixx]

I have not found any software that can import PSD and export animated gif (besides PS).

[iMacKalle]

Gimp.Gif

 

Can I create this Gimp.Gif with Bling Bling Script on Affinity.

Edited December 9, 2017 by iMacKalle
Add text.

[R C-R]

19 hours ago, gdenby said:

I use GifBrewery, which I think is Mac Specific. Saves .mp4.

That looks interesting (& you can't beat the price) but it lacks the ability to convert a series of still image files to a GIF. As a clumsy workaround for that, I could use the Quicklime Player 7 Pro feature File > Open Image Sequence to create a mov. file from a folder of numbered image files, but there must be a better way to do it.

 

Any idea of a free or low cost app that can do that?

[Alfred]

52 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Quicklime Player 7 Pro

 

Is there really a product of that name, or did you mean to type "QuickTime"? 

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

 

Is there really a product of that name, or did you mean to type "QuickTime"? 

 

LOL! I meant QuickTime.

[gdenby]

if installed,  ImageMagick, can be used to prep files for gif anims.  This page shows how to use Automator to make the anims.

 

https://jacobsalmela.com/2015/11/02/make-animated-gifs-in-os-x-with-a-right-click/

 

At this time, I've been away from the command line for so long, I'm not sure I could get ImageMagick set up right. As is said, use it or loose it. Let me think... I can still do sudo, cd, ls, man...mv....cat. chmod,??? Sigh. Pitiful

[toltec]

There is a plug-in for GIMP called Gimp Animation Package which gives the ability to create GIF animations from Gimp layers.

[Poetic Gibberish]

I use picGIF Lite), free on the Mac App Store.  You can create gifs from a variety of file formats (.jpg, .tiff, .png etc), video files, and use multiple file types when creating a gif (e.g. .jpg, .gif, and video).  It only outputs as a .gif, no video output option so far.  You can also adjust frame rate, and aspect ratio.  It's a really basic and easy to use program.

[v_kyr]

On 19.11.2017 at 3:12 PM, Fixx said:

I have not found any software that can import PSD and export animated gif (besides PS).

I recall that ImageMagick's convert (...convert is part of ImageMagick) can do so by internally using gs (Ghostscript) ...

$ convert -verbose -delay 50 -loop 0 -density 300 file.pdf file.gif

And in cases where using a multipage PDF file makes problems, one can use pdftk to split the PDF pages into single files and then use ImageMagick's convert ...

$ pdftk file.pdf burst
$ convert [options] pg_*.pdf file.gif

Though these are of course command line tools, thus working from the shell level and you need a complete ImageMagick version to have been installed previously in order to perform such conversions!

 

[SrPx]

I believe these days there are a bunch of other apps producing gif anims, even free...  (in Windows)

 

About the PSD -> imagemagick workflow (I also encourage using that app, extremely useful for batch, there's binaries for windows) , I'd really consider flattening all layer effects first (obviously not flattening all the file to a layer!), simplify your file as much as possible in just mere flattened layers, and even save in compatibility with old versions mode (maybe if all fails, save as layered tiff...). Or you could go no where, if not. Of course, text , smart objects, shapes, all rasterized. At least in the latest time I used imagemagick it couldn't import PSDs (indeed, not found any app doing it) with advanced stuff on the layers. I doubt there's any non adobe util that can open a fully featured layered PS CC 2018 (or any other version CC, maybe even CS6)  PSD file with all the crazy effects non flattened (imo, expected in any native proprietary format that is not intended to act so, as is one of the selling points for the company, having all the market...). 

 

 

[Medical Officer Bones]

Another option is OpenToonz. https://github.com/opentoonz/opentoonz/releases

The new v1.2 version was released in December, and includes a new horizontal timeline and the powerful MyPaint brush engine for bitmap animation.

To enable GIFAnim export you must also download FFMPEG https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html

PS both are open source and free!

1) Start OpenToonz and open the preferences File->Preferences>Import/Export and then point the FFmpeg path to the BIN folder of where you unzipped the FFMpeg folder.

2) Create a new project File->New Project. Name the project GIFAnims. From this point forward you may want to use this project to create your GIF animations.

3) An empty scene is automatically generated. Change the output settings to mirror the ones you need for your GIF animation. File-->Output Settings. Adjust the width and height to match what you need.

4) You could import all your frames individually in the timeline, or rename the file sequence to NAME.XXXX.ext. XXXX is a number that must start at 0001 (0000 will crash OT). ext is the extension of the file format. PNG will work with transparency, but avoid indexed PNG files - full colour ones work well.

5) Place your renamed image sequence in the INPUT folder of your project.

6) in OpenToonz, open the file browser. Windows-->File Browser. Navigate to the INPUT folder, and turn on Icon view. You can preview your animation here, if you like.

7) drag your animation into the timeline. If you dislike the vertical Xsheet, click on the "Xsheet" labelled button to switch to a horizontal timeline. You may have to move it to the bottom of the screen for a better screen setup.

8) If you like, change the timing of the frames. Insert frames, move things around, layer stuff, etc. OpenToonz is an extremely powerful animation app.

9) change the FPS in the Scene settings: main menu Xsheet-->Scene Settings.

10) Save your work before exporting. File--> Save All.

11) Open the Output Settings again (CTRL O). Change the file settings: name your animation, change to GIF, and adjust the save location if needed. Click the Options button to control whether your gif animation must loop or not. (Before the GIF export option becomes available, you must, I believe, restart OT first after telling it where it can find FFmpeg.)

12) Hit the Render button. Wait until the animation is processed, and open the folder where you saved your work.

13) admire your beautiful animation.

This workflow works quite well with Affinity Photo / Designer when starting work on a new animation. Work on a frame in Affinity, save that frame as the next numbered (bitmap) file. Then extend the animation level downward in the timeline in OpenToonz (for as many of the new frames that must be accommodated), and reload the animation to update it with the new frames from Affinity.

It is even possible to convert inked bitmap lines to controllable vector drawings in OpenToonz. Or save your Designer frames as a sequence of SVG files, and load those in OpenToonz (be careful to keep the SVG files very simple, though: inked lines work well).

[myclay]

I use screentogif on windows, its opensource, easy to use and lets you save animations in
gif,avi,mp4,webm,wmv,apng

bulk loading of images (and videos) is possible in various file formats but there is no *psd import thou...
http://www.screentogif.com/

[michaelsboost]

Blender: (It's great for character rigging, 3d modeling, game development and video editing)

 

GIMP (Does frame by frame animation rather than keyframes)

 

Werble is a great mobile app to animate still photos. Sometimes I also code vector animations in CSS.

 

So far aside from Blender Animatron is probably my favorite for SVG Animations and Character Rigging.