Are there any best practices or recommended tools for creating animated GIFs using PHP?

Creating animated GIFs using PHP can be achieved by using the GD library, which allows for image manipulation and generation. One recommended approach is to use the imagecreatefromgif() function to load the individual frames of the GIF, manipulate them as needed, and then save the resulting frames as a new animated GIF.

// Load the original animated GIF
$gif = imagecreatefromgif('original.gif');

// Manipulate the frames as needed
// Example: apply a filter to each frame
imagefilter($gif, IMG_FILTER_GRAYSCALE);

// Save the manipulated frames as a new animated GIF
imagegif($gif, 'manipulated.gif');

// Free up memory
imagedestroy($gif);