How To Overlay A Still Image Over A Gif?

[aRandomViewer]

How do I put a png over a gif I have without it changing? I've found stuff where gifs can be overlayed on still images, but not the other way around. I even once attempted putting the still image on each frame of the gif, but that caused the transparent colors to add on top of each other, since some of the frames are meant to combine.

[Tas_mania]

I did this one recently.



Put your transparent (alpha channel) png layer at the bottom of the stack and then Filters > Animation > Overlay background.
All layers must be viewable. It's hard modifying gifs that are really messy. A lot are made using 'combine layers' or 'combine backgrounds' and they are not a clean image sequence. Also they are often Image > Mode > indexed and that makes them hard to manipulate.

If you have web space somewhere I recommend exporting as webp and linking from there.

[rich2005]

from those two posts:

1. How do I put a png over a gif I have without it changing?
2. Put your transparent (alpha channel) png layer at the bottom of the stack and then Filters > Animation > Overlay background

The essentials
A gif is a color indexed image and the png probably (but not always) RGB Change the gif to RGB: Image -> Mode -> RGB before anything else.

EDIT: Forgot this bit of advice. If the gif is "optimised" (sometimes looks like bits of layers missing) then use Filters -> Animation -> Unoptimise and Gimp creates a new set of complete layers

Filters > Animation > Overlay background  comes from a third party script. sg-combine-bg.scm It adds two entries combine background and overlay background. It has been posted before, but once more, download attached, unzip put the .scm in your Gimp users scripts folder.

Before exporting as a new gif or webp remember to remove the bottom layer you added.