How to make simple animation for your photos using GIMP

Animation is a sequence of transition frames changing from time to time with similar or variable time interval. Animated pictures are used in various area for different purposes. Used in buttons, links, icons, backgrounds, dividers, and banner ads, these eye-catching images can be anything from an excellent tool for personal expression to a downright nuisance.

In this post I will share with you how to make simple animation using GIMP. GIMP is a free and open source image editing software. The word GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Any personal can install it and use it for free. You can download and install it from GIMP's website. And it run in windows, Linux and Mac.

Steps for creating animation in GIMP

I will assume you have download and install the program and is running in your machine.

Select pictures you would like to appear in animation and put them in a new folder for easy access. Name the folder any name easy for you to remember.
Open GIMP program, after opening you will come up with an interface like this one below.
Go to file on the top left menu and click File then click Open a window will appear, navigate to the folder containing your pictures, select one picture and then click Open. The pictures will open in GIMP.
Rename the picture in GIMP for easy remember. At these stage you may make some editing to the picture,mostly resizing if you wish.
Go back to the top left menu and click File then click Open layer As a window will appear, select the second picture and click Open. The picture will open in GIMP as new layer. You may make some editing to this layer image if you wish.
Repeat step 5 for the rest of your pictures you want to include in animation.
Go on the Menu and click on Filters,select Animation then Play back. A preview window will appear for the animation,you can play the animation and stop it,also view appearance of the frames. If frames does not look nice go back to the pictures and resize them.
Now is time to save your animation,Go to Menu, click on File then click on Export as, a window will appear, choose a location to save your animation,name the animation with a desired name with extension of .gif (gif extension is very useful at this stage) and click export. Another window will appear,check on As animation and finally click on Export you animation will be saved in the location you have choose. Go their and open it to view it