Larian Studios Forums General About this website graphics programs, for editing screen shots

CompuPic can crop and edit (colourize, etc) animated gif files, but does not let you isolate individual frames. IrfanView can not edit animated gif files (you can stop the animation and then edit that frame), but it will let you save all the frames as individual images. In a quick look, neither program appears to be able to create animated gif files from a group of images. This is not surprising, since adding support for layers would make the user interface a lot more complicated and change the category of these programs (from image viewers that can do a fair bit of editing to images editors), which would require adding a lot more features. Pixia is an image editor, but does not support gif files at all.

The GIMP was designed to handle layers, and can open animated gif files with each of the frames as a layer, which you can then edit and manipulate separately. If you create or open a new layered image, it can be saved as an animated gif file.


A program specifically designed for gif animations may be easier to use. Check out Ulead Gif Animator (the last freeware version is available here) and Movies (from the author of Painter, reviewed above). I have not tried either program.