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This is Ben Langhinrichs of Genii Software with a Mini-Lesson called
Make-A-Meme: Scaling, cropping and adding text to an animated GIF.
In this case we're going to use this dancing bear. We'll open it up
in Gimp, and we'll see that each layer is one of the frames.
We can scale it quite easily. Just go in and make sure that you're linked together
so that the scale will work in both dimensions, and scale and that will work just fine.
If we want to crop it, it's a little bit more complicated.
Go into the Canvas Size.
In this case we don't want the dimensions linked because we just want to make it more narrow.
Let's change it to 350, and then we'll shift it
to where most of the action happens. Now we need to make sure
that the "Resize layers" is set to "All layers". That is key.
So, now we have it resized, and we want to add text to it.
If you look at each of these layers,
you'll see that each layer is only the difference between the previous layer.
So, we need to look for a space down at the bottom
where there's an empty space meaning that they all share the same.
Now, we'll go to that bottom frame,
the image on which the layers are combined, and we'll make some text.
I want this to be white, because that is typical for a meme,
but you could obviously make it any color.
I'm going to go in and pick a font that I think works well for this theme.
Then, just set the font size a little bit higher,
and I'm going to go ahead and type a funny phrase or something.
In this case, I'm going to say "I gotta pee so bad!"
because that's what the dancing bear looks like.
We can adjust that size, and in this case I'll also center it
because that makes it look right.
Now, you'll notice it's kind of yellow, so I check the Mode
and it turns out it is indexed colors. I'll just change it to RGB.
When you do this and you click on the text,
it'll say you're changing the text, so just confirm that.
So there you have it, but now we need to merge that text layer down
onto the bottom layer because it can't be a separate layer.
When you run it now, the text will show up in all the others (frames)
because there isn't anything overwriting it.
So, we'll do an animation playback and see that it works.
Let's save it and go out, back to our browser and view it, and there it is.
It's cropped and resized or scaled and has the text.
Thank you very much. Stay tuned for other mini-lessons on Gimp.