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5. Working with PhotoLine / 5.7 Creating Images For The Web

### 5.7.5 Animated GIFs

Animated GIFs are pictures with several layers, that are shown one after the other in web browsers. By that the impression of an animation is created. PhotoLine is able to create, load, edit, show and save animated GIFs.

Animated GIFs are loaded like any other pictures. Every step of the animation is shown as layer in the layers dialog.

To allow better editing all layers - with the exception of the active layer - should be hidden. To do this you should select the desired layer in the layer dialog (see chapter 4.7). Then right-click (Windows) or Ctrl+click (Mac OS) the most left square in order to show the context menu. Here you find the option Single Step. If you select this, only the active layer will be visible. Activating another layer automatically hides the last one. Another way is to select the command Show Only Active Layer. This command hides all layers except the active one.

GIF only allows to save image layers (monochrome, gray or RGB). If you are using other layer types i.e. text layers, they will be automatically converted to image layers on saving.

In order to test an animation, select Web/Animate Layers. A dialog will appear, that allows to show the animation. The double arrows play the animation, the single arrows step one picture forward or backward. The square stops a running animation.

Speed controls the time, the active layer is displayed during showing the animation. The time is given in milliseconds. If the switch All Equal is selected, every change will be applied on all layers.

Display Mode allows to set mode, how the layer will be drawn on playing the animation. Unfortunately the web browsers are behaving quite differently, if several different display modes are used in one animation. Therefore you should always use only one of the following modes in an animation:

Delete deletes the background before showing the layer.

Overwrite simply writes the layer over the existing background. Already drawn layers keep visible, if they are not covered by the new one.

If you plan to show an animation in front of a given background image, you therefore have to use the overwrite mode.