GIMP Version: 2.8.4
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: XP pro
GIMP Experience: Beginner Level

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How do I edit a GIF file?

It just sits there and I cannot find anything for editing on the pulldown menus.

When I click on the image, I get a yellow circle and it begins drawing lines from my cursor...ugh.

I have no experience in a graphics program, only office type software.

This program is making me feel stupid!

Thanks.

GIF files are limited to having only 256 different colors and so when you edit them in GIMP, many features will not work with so few colors. You should first convert your image to RGB Mode (Image->Mode->RGB in the menus) and then you will have over 4 million colors available.

After you are done editing and you save your image back to a GIF file, it will again be limited to only 256 but at least you will have been able to edit the image.

Thanks, Saul.

I did what you said and have an RGB file, but still don't see where to start editing. I'm looking for something on a menu like, "edit GIF" or something, and maybe an edit window. All I want to do is change some text with a particular font.

Can you give me the first couple of steps?

an imagemanipulation program is not like word, where you open a text and then edit
sorry if you knew this already, but we had a case before, with that basic misconception

once a text is rasterized, you can not easily edit it, because the image is no longer made of layers and editable text but pixels
depending on your picture you need to come up with a clever solution how to mask the old text and add a new one

sometimes its better to start all new

it would help if you post the picture you want to edit

Thanks, Esper.

I will take your advice and start all new.

Step one:
I need to import a PDF file I created from WordPerfect which has 2 or 3 lines of text. I'm thinking I should set the font sizes in the PDF file to at least the size, or larger, than the size I want to end up with in the GIF that GIMP will create. From what I remember hearing about graphics and fonts is, an image gets fuzzy if you try to enlarge it, but will stay sharp if you keep it the same or reduce it later. This GIF will go on an HTML webpage.

Correct thinking?

Thanks.

im not the best person to give advice on making websites or headers or what ever you are actually planning to do
but i made a header made of 3D text for my blog once

you need to start with a new file
so go to File -> New and set the size of the canvas
next call up the text tool and type your text (or copy and paste from the pdf), you can then change the font, fontsize, colour, etc and try what looks best for you
you can also install new fonts that you download from font-sites, like dafont. com
some of them are free, some cost a lot of money

its true that its not good to upscale rasterbased images
its not true when it comes to vectorbased objects (like text), you can do this kind of stuff in programs like Inkscape, which is kind of Gimp's open source vector-brother

if you just want simple text, it should be no problem to make several version of the same text in different sizes with Gimp

when you are done, you merge down the layers and export
the png format is lossless and Gimp's default, but if you need small filesizes jpg might be a good idea

does that help ?

Thanks, Esper.

Yes, the file I'm building is to replace one in a webpage, the other image files are mostly GIFs with a couple of JPGs. I'm not sure why. I suppose I can try PNG or JPG when I have the final GIMP file.

I downloaded and installed inkscape, but have not used it yet. Are you saying inkscape would be better for text only images?

So GIMP is a raster based program and Inkscape is a vector based system better for text?

My final image will be rectangular 770px186p with black text over a white background on the left, and green color on the right. Some of the text will extend over the green color. Is there a way to change the text color to white when it's over the green?

Thanks, again.

Nowadays the only reason to use gif is for short animations-

if your images are not animations use jpg , or, in case of images with transparency to be protected , png

quality of gif images is really low , even gif support for transparency is limited , gif only advantage is support simple and soundless animations

no

If you want text that is nice and crisp you should use Inkscape and create the text with a 300 DPI resolution.
Then export as PNG to the size you want. PNG is larger than GIF format but supports many more colors and gradients are much, much smoother.

the dpi only matters if you want to print it out
for the web the only thing that matters is pixelsize

OK, I started a new file

I duplicated the GIF file from the website, and made a new file to export to PNG, GIF, TIF, or JPG when complete. It's a horizontal rectangle; the leftward white 2/3 has text I will change, the rightward 1/3 is all green. I have an XCF file that I copied from the GIF as a working file, and the new file, created from scratch, which now contains my new text. The new graphics must fit into the webpage and line up exactly.

I had "selected" the green section (by color) and pasted it into my new file, but it didn't paste in completely left justified, like the original, so I slid it over with my cursor, but apparently "dropped" it too high, because when I place the new JPG file in the webpage as a test, there's a little white line at the bottom of that file, and it needs to butt up against the green right below it. ie, no white space.

Rather than copy and paste or dragging and dropping imprecisely with my mouse, is there a way to place the green area with some sort of calibration tool? Like "by the numbers" or snapping it into place?

Is there a way to "read" the green area in my working file, to see the precise size?

Am I missing something really easy?

Thanks!

Can I use multiple fonts in the same text box
Can you have more than one font in a text box?

My text box tool does not allow changing, and if I change the font in in Tool Options on the left, it changes everything to that font.

In Gimp 2.8, the on-canvas font selector controls the font of the selected text (exactly like in your usual word processor). Individual letters can have their own font/size/spacing from previous letter/baseline offset.

To edit .gif file change
Image\Mode\Indexed..., created by making it a .gif file,
to Image\Mode\RGB or something else.

Thanks, everyone.

I have opened the attached files in GIMP and changed to RGB, but still can't do anything with them.

Can someone tell me how to open and read these files so I can at least get the font name, size and "brightness"?