get off my lawn, part 1e38

[serinde]

I want better iconnage. However, my l33t graphics sk1llz are limited to Zog Crop Picture, Zog Resize Picture, and MY TEXT IZ PASTEDE ON YAY!. I've tried several times to embark on a glorious learning spree of layers and filters and shadows and animated GIFs and lord knows what, but I'm drinking from a fire hose and after about ten minutes my eyes have glazed over and I slink off to do something easy, like, I don't know, custom sendmail rules.

There are tutorials. Oh my yes, are there ever tutorials. There are so many tutorials, my eyes glaze over just trying to parse the enormous list of them. I don't need much, just some basic functionality of "here is how we make text look like it's part of the picture", "here is how to make a basic animated icon". Where, O where shall I find my grail-shaped beacon?

My stomach is upset, but I'm fairly sure that's unrelated.

Comments

[kalimar.livejournal.com]

Basic animated LJ icon "tutorial" (this assumes the use of 'The Gimp' image tool):

1) Create new image of appropriate size.
2) Add second layer
3) Paste second image into layer.
4) Add third layer
5) Paste third image into layer
6) Repeat until you have the 'right' number of layers.
7) Save image as 'gif'. When prompted, select to save it as an animation. Input delay between layer changes. Save.
8) Observe thine l33t !m4g3 sk!11z

[kalimar.livejournal.com]

the above is how I made this w!ck4d l33t sudoku icon.

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

Animated icons:

1) make each frame, save as png (for instance)
2) apt-get install imagemagick (or your local non-debian equiv)
3) convert -delay 100 -loop 0 foo1.png foo2.png foo3.png bar.gif (rtfm for more detail)

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

Variation on a theme:

1) make each frame, as PPM written by an ugly Perl-and-shell "one-liner", because that was easier than trying to stuff the math into something more fluffy

2) obtain gifsicle (http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/), because the ImageMagick of the time (mid-2003) would output uncompressed GIFs because of patent stuff

3) uh, something like that, but with gifsicle and its optimization flag(s)

[scavgraphics.livejournal.com]

What software are you using?

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

At work, I've got GIMP (running under NetBSD). I'm told by a fastidious minion that it really kind of stinks on ice, but you go to the war with the graphics program you have.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

...and one sucky thing about it is that I seem to have about six fonts to choose from. And I'm not sure that's a matter I can rectify.

[scavgraphics.livejournal.com]

WEll it's supposed to emulate Photoshop...but I've never used it so I don't know how good it really is. If my mystery PC ever winds up working, it might get a linux install for me to try it out with.

My Unix guru here tells me that Gimp on NetBSD should have no problems running additional fonts.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know it's possible to give it more fonts. I just don't know if it requires having root, or what. I'm not supposed to be Meddling on that particular machine.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

I happen to know a bit about the host in question, and it occurs to me that that GIMP may have been built before the arrival there of freetype and friends via XFree 4 via NetBSD 2. (And oh, wasn't that a bit of fun to come in and find that xterm wouldn't start because fontconfig didn't appreciate having the font directory mtimes touched behind its back.)