How to Reverse an Animated GIF

By  on  

Modifying visual media via code has always been a fascination of mine. Probably because I'm not a designer and I tend to stick to what I'm good at. One visual effect I love is seeing video reversed -- it provides a sometimes hilarious perspective on a given event.

Take this reversed water effect for example:

To reverse an animated GIF or video, you can use the ImageMagick library:

convert water-forward.gif -coalesce -reverse -quiet -layers OptimizePlus  -loop 0 water-reversed.gif

If you're interested in media engineering, check out my previous ImageMagick tutorials. These awesome media libraries are as close to an artist I will ever get!

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS vs. JS Animation: Which is Faster?

    How is it possible that JavaScript-based animation has secretly always been as fast — or faster — than CSS transitions? And, how is it possible that Adobe and Google consistently release media-rich mobile sites that rival the performance of native apps? This article serves as a point-by-point...

  • By
    From Webcam to Animated GIF: the Secret Behind chat.meatspac.es!

    My team mate Edna Piranha is not only an awesome hacker; she's also a fantastic philosopher! Communication and online interactions is a subject that has kept her mind busy for a long time, and it has also resulted in a bunch of interesting experimental projects...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Fullscreen API

    As we move toward more true web applications, our JavaScript APIs are doing their best to keep up.  One very simple but useful new JavaScript API is the Fullscreen API.  The Fullscreen API provides a programmatic way to request fullscreen display from the user, and exit...

  • By
    Build a Calendar Using PHP, XHTML, and CSS

    One of the website features my customers love to provider their web users is an online dynamic calendar. An online calendar can be used for events, upcoming product specials, memos, and anything else you can think of. I've taken some time to completely...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!