How to Make Animated Text in GIMP

You can make animated text in GIMP by creating a Compuserve Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) image using layers. Each layer you create in GIMP becomes a new frame in your GIF animation. This tutorial is for making animated text that changes color and sparkles every other frame. You don’t need the GIMP Animation Pack (GAP) to create this animation.

Open GIMP. Click File > New… Create a new image with the size parameters you need for your animation. For a higher resolution animation, use a larger number of pixels in the fields provided. For a lower resolution animation, use smaller numbers. 600 by 400 pixels is usually a good resolution to use. Click “Advanced Options.” In the “Fill with” field, choose “White” from the drop-down menu. Save your file as a GIMP xcf file with a name like “textanimation.xcf.”

Choose the “Text” tool from the GIMP toolbox. Select the font and size text you would like. Select black as your foreground color. Choose the desired justification. Type in your text message. Click the move tool in the toolbox to move your text to the desired location.

Click Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Layers. Select the text layer in the GIMP layer window and click the “Duplicate” button at the bottom of the layer window twice. Right click the first text layer and select “Edit Layer Attributes.” Rename it “Red Animation.” Use the same method to rename the second text layer “Green Animation” and the third one “Blue Animation.”

Select the “Red Animation” text layer. Click Filters > Noise > RGB Noise. Slide the “Red” slider to 1. Click OK. Select the “Green Animation” layer and repeat the RGB noise, this time sliding “Red” back down to 20 and “Green” up to 1. Click the “Blue Animation” layer and bring its green RGB noise levels back down to 20 and adjust “Blue” to 1. Duplicate each different color text layer once.

Ensure that white is selected as your background color in the GIMP toolbox. Rename the text layer copies to include the word “Sparkle” after the layer name. Select “Blue Animation Sparkle” and click Filters > Light and Shadow > Sparkle. Select “Background color” at the bottom. Adjust the luminosity threshold to .0005. Move the flare intensity to .75. Change the spike length to 45 and the spike points to 7. Click OK. Click the other text animation sparkle layers and go to Filters > Repeat Sparkle.

Duplicate your background layer 5 times in the GIMP layer window. Move the background layer copies up so that each text animation layer has a background layer directly beneath it. Select the top text animation layer and select Layer > Merge Down. The top text layer and the background layer should now appear as one layer. Merge down each of the other text animation layers with their background layers. You should now have a total of 6 frames for your text animation.

Click Filters > Animation > Playback. Press the play button to preview your animated text. If you’re satisfied with your animation, return to the image window and click File > Save As… Under “Select File Type” select “GIF image” and click save. Select “Merge Visible Layers” and “Convert to Indexed using default settings” in the next window. Click “Export” then click “Save” again. Repeat these steps in GIMP whenever you want to add animated text to any other background image or animation.