Motion Pictures

Darian asked:


I’ve a friend with ulead, who’s learning gif making, and I would like to know what other applications are necessary for advanced gif making.

For example merging two video files or parts of two videos into a single gif. Dynamically changing the color of a person’s skin or adding motion blur and shaking, or taking pictures or masks and adding them to film footage and morphing them(say the mask moves appropriately and stretches, blinks, etc).

I’ve heard photoshop is one, but was wondering what the others were.