I know for many of my readers this may seem elementary, but I recently (within the last 24 hours) learned how to make animated GIF images using GIMP. GIMP is my image editing software of choice because it’s free, is a part of nearly any Linux distribution (but there is a windows version), and it has more features than I will probably ever use.

It is surprisingly easy to create animated GIF images using GIMP. The secret is that each different frame of the animation is kept as a separate layer. If you have always wondered how to do this, here is a very basic tutorial.

Start with a new blank image of the size that you want to end up with. If your “layers” dialog is not showing, in the GIMP menu window, go to file -> dialogs and click on layers.

Now, make your image look how you want it to look at the beginning of the animation. When it looks the way you want it to, take a look at your layers dialog. If there are multiple items in it, you will want to select the items that are not your actual image and choose “merge down” which will make them a part of the original layer.

Once that is complete, you can make the second frame start with that image (right click on the layer in the layers dialog and choose duplicate layer) or start fresh (right click on the layer in the layers dialog and choose new layer) if it is going to change completely.

Now make this new layer look how you want the second part of the animation to look. Repeat this process for the entire sequence of your animated GIF file. After you have all of your layers created, you can reorder them by dragging and dropping. The image will run from the bottom to the top of the layer list.

You can make adjustments to any particular frame by selecting that layer and making the adjustments you desire, however, I have discovered that it may be necessary to move that layer to the top of the list to make the adjustments and then move it back to its original position after the corrections are made.

Once these steps are complete, go to file -> ’save as’ and name your file and choose the location you want it saved in. Make sure the file name ends with .gif and you should be prompted to either flatten or save as animation. You will want to choose to save as animation. Also, you can choose to convert to indexed or convert to greyscale, if you want it to be in color, you will want to choose to convert to indexed.

The next screen gives you the option to interlace and add a GIF comment. I personally did not use these options, but you may want to. This is also where you can set your image to loop forever (otherwise it will just run once) and you can also adjust the delay between frames (which defaults to 100 milliseconds which is about 1/10th of a second) so that it runs as fast or slow as you desire.

That is it, you have now created an animated gif image. Of course, you can get more complex and fancy with this process and use transparency and other options to avoid having to duplicate layers. This would also make it easier to go back and add or remove something from a previous layer.