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NANTUCKET LIT PHLOG

BITMAP-EDITING GIFS

NJB // 2023-08-02 // Broomfield, CO

© 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC

CC-BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

[ALT TEXT: Cover for the third issue of Quarter Up, published by Nantucket E-Books. The cover shows a looping animation of a stylized video arcade at nght, art by Jeremy Mendiola.]

Yesterday, the third issue of Quarter Up
(https://nantucketlit.com/books/quarterup/quarterup_2023_q2) was published on
Nantucket E-Books. One of the exciting possibilities for e-books is moving
images, and this new issue featured an animated GIF by Jeremy Mendiola
(artofmeh (https://reddit.com/u/artofmeh) on Reddit). As I was getting ready to
publish the issue, I learned a lot about adding text to a GIF, and I wanted to
share what I had learned. 

Editing a GIF in a bitmap editor like GIMP is challenging, since each frame is
a separate layer. The original artwork had a 1:1 aspect ratio, which was a
little too wide, I try to use a 8:5 aspect ratio for covers. Cropping and
scaling would need to be applied to each indivudal layer. While I try to only
use free software, in this instance I caved and use the resize tool on
ezgif.com (https://ezgif.com) to get the correct aspect ratio. (If there's a
way to do this in GIMP, leave a comment).

I learned that the text layers will get added as frames of the animation, which
caused a 'blip' as they vanished and reappeared for a couple frames. To add
text to a GIF, the text layers need to be merged down into the background
layer. 

Lastly, I wanted to add a linear gradient to the text. This tutorial on
bettertechtips.com
(https://www.bettertechtips.com/gimp-tutorials/create-gradient-text-gimp/) was
instructive, the site may be read with JavaScript disabled.

That's what I learned editing this cover for publication, hopefully it can help
someone else.


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