#animstack

1. Open as Layers your gif layers and edit and cropthem as usual.

This will be my gif:

2. Click on this button while holding down the Shift key to link all the layers.

Then go to Layer > Group > Pack Linked Layers.

Duplicate the layer group and rename them as so. (You don’t have to rename them but to make this tutorial easier to follow, I will rename mine).

3. Select the blur layer group and go to Layer > Group > Unpack Layer Group.

Now, this is the important step, make the original layer group invisible.

4. Go to Filters > G’MIC and find Degradation > Blur Gaussian. Make sure the input is set to All Visibles so this will only affect the layer group that we unzipped just now. Apply how much blur you want. I put 10.

5. Link all the unzipped layers again, leaving out the original layer group.

And pack these into a layer group again.

6. Make two new empty layers and name all the layer/layer groups as such:

First empty layer: [*X] where X is the number of frames in your gif.

Second empty layer: [;opacity:0][bg]

Original layer group: [;mask:1][roll]

Blur layer group: [roll]

On the mask layer, use the rectanlge tool with a bit of feather in it to draw a rectangle. Feel free to use any other shapes, or leave out the feathering if you want the blur transition to be sharp (if that makes sense, haha).

7. Run Animstack by going to Filters > Animation > Process Animstack Tags. Then flatten them by going to Image > Flatten Layer Groups. And you’re done.

1. Import your frames (File > Open as Layers). Then resize, crop, and edit them how you want the gif to be as usual.

Here’s mine:

2. So over here, I have my texts. One layer is just going to be a normal white colored font. And the other layer will have the glass effect. I suggest you use a color for the font instead of white or black.

3. Duplicate the text layer. Now, I’m going to change the layer mode of both “when we talk” text layer as such:

Put an [fg] to the name.

4. Run Animstack (Filters > Animation > Process Animstack Tags). You will get them to be in layer groups like this. Sometimes depending on the color you have picked, you can stop here when the stained glass look is achieved.

5. If don’t like how the colors look, you can continue. Pick your two colors of the gradient that you want to be used in the gradient map in your color swatches. Here, I’ve picked these two colors.

Select the first “Hardlight” layer and go to Colors > Map > Gradient Map. This will add the gradient map to that layer.

6. Now, do the same for the rest of the Hardlight layers. Once you’re done, you can playback and export your gif!

1. Load in your gif frames and crop, color and edit them as usual. Here’s my gif:

2. Make a new layer and create a box using the rectanle tool. I’d suggest picking a color similar to the ones in the gif. Then go to Edit > Stroke Selection. I pick a 6px width but you can play around with what works.

3. Change the mode of the layer to Difference. Grain Merge also could look really good. Go with what you prefer. Then change the name of the border layer to [fg].

4. Run Animstack (Filters > Animation > Process Animstack Tags). Then just flatten them using Image > Flatten Layer Groups.

Bonus: If your gif is black and white, you can create your border to be a gradient color.

After you’ve created your border (it doesn’t matter what color it is), create another layer and make a gradient of the colors you want.

Then, right click on the border layer and pick “Alpha to Selection”. Select the gradient layer and right click on it and pick “Add Layer Mask > Selection”.

Merge down that gradient layer to the border layer.

Then just do the same steps as before.

1. Import your gif frames and resize, crop and color them as usual. This will be the gif I’m using:

2. Next, drag in your paper png image and position it where you want it. My png already has a drop shadow to it but if you need to add it, you can use Layer Effects and add it to yours.

3. Add in the text you want to be appearing from the ‘torn’ section.

To clip the layer, select the paper layer and pick “Alpha To Selection”. Then, select your text layer, right click on it and pick “Add Layer Mask > Selection”.

Now, the text should only appear inside of the torn paper layer and nothing outside.

But you have to look at your paper layer and see how it looks like. Sometimes, there’s the part of the text that goes over a ‘folded’ or ‘curled’ part of the paper and it won’t make sense. So just use a black brush and select the mask of the text layer and paint over that part you want to erase.

4. After this is done, you can merge down the text layer onto the torn paper layer so it becomes one layer. Rename it to [fg].

5. Run Animstack (Filters > Animation > Process Animstack Tags). And you’re pretty much done. You can add in more texts outside of the torn layer like you normally would for a normal text on a gif, if you’d like!

1. Open as layer your glass texture. Scale it to a size that you want.

2. Go to File > Open, and pick the first frame of your gif. This will open it on a new working tab. In that new working tab, open as layers the rest of your gif frames. Edit and color the gif to your liking and scale it the same size as the glass texture image you opened just now.

This will be the base gif.

3. Hold down Shift and click over here. This will chain up all the layers.

Then go to Layer > Group > Pack Linked Layers.

Now that I have all the layers in a layer group, I will save this .xcf file.

4. Go back to your glass texture working tab and open as layer the .xcf file you saved.

5. We’re going to make a new layer. But then, you’ll notice that the layer is made inside the gif layer group. Don’t worry, you can jsut drag it out of the group. Then, name it [*X], where X is your number of frames for the gif. Mine was 25. So I will type [*25].

6. Now, we’re going to create a mask selection. What you select is going to show up. Make your gif layer group invisible for now so you can see the glass layer. Make a new layer and use the magic wand tool or the lasso tool to select a glass shard.

Then fill it with any color.

7. Next, I’m going to arrange the layers and name them as follow:

Transparent Layer: [*X] where X is the no. of frames of each gif

Mask Layer: [bg][;opacity:0]

Gif layer group: [;mask:1][roll]

Glass texture layer: [roll]

8. Use the move tool to position the gif layer group a bit off so it’s not in the center. (Make sure your move tool is on “Move active layer” so that it picks the whole layer group and not just one layer in it.)

You can also scale down the layer group a bit by right clicking on the layer group in the layers tab and picking “Scale Layer”.

9. Now, go to Filters > Animation > Process Animstack Tags. Flatten the layers (Image > Flatten Layer Groups). You have your first piece of shard done.

10. Link all the layers again and pack them into a new layer group. Now, this will be like your glass texture layer just now.

11. So we’ll repeat the same steps again by opening your original gif .xcf file as a layer (move it around a bit), make a new layer with the selected glass shard and create the [*X] transparent layer. Do this for the all the shards.

12. Now you’re ready to export your gif!! :)