Disassembling a .gif (New to the board and new to pain.net)

[Pattie]

Hi everyone.

I am trying to disassemble a .gif animation to edit the frames.

Can some one point me in the right direction?

This is what I know so far..

I can assemble a gif using "unfreeze".

I have read here that gif files don't support layers?

I have only been using paint.net for about 24 hours and am not familiar with the functions yet.

Flatten? What does that do? I see this all over the board when I tried to search for the function there are tutorials by the dozens that tell you to use it but they don't really tell you what it does exactly. When I open my animated smiley it is grayed out. (My guess is this has something to do with assembling animated layers..) I'm lost in case you cant tell...

I assembled a smiley with a different program and now I need to edit the text in one of the frames and I cant figure out how to get the darn thing apart to edit it.. :oops:

I know this is probably a noob question but then ... Pattie is a noob.

This program is complicated, looks like I'm going to need lessons.

Being a noob is not fun. Some one help me get past this bump please..

Thanks in advance

Pattie

[-Expiration-]

Paint.NET is not capable of decompiling animated .gifs.

There are some programs out there that can, but I do not know any specific ones. Try to google it, or another member could point you in the right direction.

[Crazy Man Dan]

Hey Pattie, welcome to the forum,

I'm afraid that, while Paint.NET does support layers, it does not support animated GIFs, so there is no way using Paint.NET to break it apart into its separate frames. There are other programs that can - the one I use is called The GIMP, though you'll find the interface to be decidedly less friendly than that of Paint.NET.

I know there are standalone programs for composing GIFs from multiple separate images, but I am uncertain of any standalone programs with tools for breaking apart a GIF and saving the frames as separate images for individual editing. The GIMP can break them apart, but it is an editor itself, so the primary focus is for editing within the program. Depending upon the length of the animation, you may be able to save each layer individually by hiding all the others, then edit the necessary frame(s) in Paint.NET, and then put them back together in Unfreeze.

Saying it like that, it may be easier to just do the editing in The GIMP, if this GIF editing is all you need to do for now. If you've got other projects planned, though - projects of the not-animated variety - then you should certainly keep PDN close at hand for the future.

[Curmudgeon]

This is what I use to separate .GIF's into separate frames:

http://www.gifworks.com/image_editor.html

You upload the file to their site, and under the "optimize" tab, you can separate it into individual frames, then save them to your computer for editing.

(but if you assembled the .gif, don't you have the original images used to create it?)

And "Flatten" can be found under the "Images" tab at the top of the Paint.NET interface. It flattens all the layers from the top down into one layer.

[Pattie]

Thank you all for your responses. It has made me understand the capability of the software better for sure.

I did not save the images I used to create the .gif unfortunately because I thought I had it right.. IT really looks nice but its embarrassing to say I made a spelling error in it rendering it useless unless I can fix it.

I do have gimp and am just learning how to navigate it and you guys are very right Paint.net is far easier to navigate but I am starting to get things about Gimp sorted out in my head although I am sure it will do more then I am currently capable of..

I will try Gimp although I am sure it will frustrate me completely.. I will also try the link you posted to gif works.(Which sounds much easier than Gimp)

I need to learn how to navigate all this image software sooner or later I guess.

I do wonder though why Gimp can do this but paint.net can't though . It would seam to me to be one of the first things some one would try to do with image software :shock: .

Thanks guys, I'll let you know how it all works out.

Pattie

[Pattie]

Thanks guys. Sorry about the double post you can merge the 2 if you want. I just wanted to give you an update on my issue.

I was able to take the image apart with http://www.gifworks.com/image_editor.html as suggested. I copied each frame but they turned the background black when I pasted the images into Paint.net. I couldn't change the background color to something that was easier to work with because every time I did it would erase the outer edges of my smiley image and mess it all up. So I struggled with the text in a black background by turning it red first to see it and then turning it back. I am sure there must be a better way to do it but I didn't know what it was so thats how I got the text fixed. Then I had to save each image and reopen it in Gimp to add an alpha channel so I could make the back background transparent. Some how in Gimp it didn't remove my Smiley border when I did that so I got all the images sorted out. I used UnFreeze to assemble the animation but it didn't have individual frame timing so I had to add frames to get the timing close to what I wanted. I think it may limit the frames to 11 though because when I reopened it it only had 11 frames out of the 16 I thought I had.

Anyway all is well. Its working.

I just wish I knew how to do this all in one piece of software, going back and for the between MSPaint, Paint.net,Gimp, UnFreeze exc. drives me a bit batty.

Thanks for all your help guys and especially for steering me to gifworks. That made life a lot easier.

*Kisses*

Pattie

[Crazy Man Dan]

Well, technically, you could do it all in The GIMP. When you open a GIF that has animation information in The GIMP, it will automatically split each frame to its own layer, as well as preserve the animation information (per-frame specific disposal or timing information) for when you go to save it later.

As for why the background turned black, it's a problem with the Clipboard in Windows. If your GIF has transparency in it, instead of copying the image from GIFWorks, you can Save As and open it to preserve the transparency.