How to convert multiple PNGs into a single animated GIF using PHP's Imagick

Question

I have several PNG format Imagick objects which are intended as individual frames for an animated GIF. How would I convert these frames into a single animated GIF?

Answer 1

You're going to want to append each file to a an image magic object. Check out this answer which includes a great code sample for creating an animated gif:

Make an animated GIF with PHP's ImageMagick API

You may need to complete gif creation by using the writeimages method, which is missing from the above sample: http://www.php.net/manual/en/imagick.writeimages.php

I'm not sure if this is helpful, but I have created animated gifs in Ruby using imagemagic. The code below is a simple sample of what I have done. I hope this is useful and may give you an idea on how to construct your program.

require 'rubygems'
require 'rmagick'
include Magick

dir_contents = Dir.glob("xmas_tree_files/*.gif")

image_list = ImageList.new
image_list.delay = 20 # delay 1/5 of a second between images.

dir_contents.each do |file_name|
  image = Image.read("#{file_name}").first
  image_list << image
end

#make sure to write the animated gif to a different dir 
#than the one that contains your original images,
#otherwise you'll get weirdly animated gifs when you rerun the program
image_list.write("animated_tree.gif")