> Using imagemagick on the command line I was able to combine the images into a GIF.

man what a cop out, I was hoping they would use a text editor to build the gif. that would be way harder.

Indeed, I've never developed my own film but I do respect it entails a fair bit of effort, and the funky old camera is cool.

But scanning, cropping using one of the latest image editors, then running it through imagemagick does not feel like the hardest way to make a gif.

Developing film is such a beautiful kind of magic. Watching the image appear in a darkroom before your eyes is a very unique experience.

Yeah I was expecting somebody to build a gif by hand from the spec using ed.

Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/378/

Yeah, real devs write their own LZW compression implementation from scratch in C++

This reminds me in the best way of Lynch's Lumiere competition entry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds-OKH2ow4o

I was a little hoping you were going to hand deliver the film to a CVS and have it printed AND THEN scan it :)

As for imagemagick, you could make this harder by: a) Parsing the PNG structure of every image (4-byte length, 4-byte type, data, and 4-byte CRC). b) Decompress and unfilter the pixel data c) Convert data to indexed color and quantize down to <= 256 colors if needed d) Write the GIF container e) LZW-encode the pixel indices

"Acquire photons" was funny

it certainly gives "you must first invent the universe" vibes

No reference to Ulead GIF Animator? Was expecting some time travel step in between.