If you’re a dedicated fan of a beloved music artist, TV show, or movie, animated GIFs are one of the ways to display that love online. And no, it is not pronounced as “jif”.
Whether you are showing off your GIF-making skills on Tumblr or texting them to your friends, knowing how to create animated GIFs is a valuable skill that is easy to learn.
How do you create an interesting animated GIF that will grab people’s attention and want to share it all over the internet? If you want to know how to make animated GIFs, keep on reading.
What is a GIF?
GIF stands for “Graphics Interchange Format”. It is a compressed file type that can support 8 bits per pixel. or even have as many as 256 colors in a 24-bit RBG range. Originally, GIFs were enacted as standards for decoding and encoding binary codes.
Nowadays, when they are used online, they are used as interactive methods to convey an emotion that most people will relate to. When you want to use an animated version of an image that would typically be still without embedding a video, you should go for a GIF instead of a JPG.
How to Animate GIFs
One of the great things about GIFs is that they are lossless. Technically, this means that when you duplicate an original image, the quality of the image is not lost. This works well when you are making a GIF to an animated GIF.
While a GIF can also be a still image, why not take full advantage of the GIF’s full potential by animating it? These are some of the ways that a GIF file can be created.
Create with Photoshop
Photoshop is not just for editing photos; it also works well for creating a GIF. Here is how to create animated GIFs with Photoshop.
- Number your files and place them into a stack by going to File -> Stack -> Load Files
- Alternatively for video, use File -> Import -> Video Frames to Layers where you can choose which portion of the video to use
- Set up dimensions, resolution, and color mode
- Make a timeline
- Change “Create Video Timeline” to “Create Frame Animation”
- Click on it and select Make Frames from Layers
- Press the play button and make the duration Forever (left of the play button)
- Export and designate as Save for Web (Legacy)
- Make the preset GIF 128 Dithered
- Change the colors setting to 256
- Save and upload!
If you do not have Photoshop, other programs you can use to make animated GIFs include GIMP and Microsoft GIF Animator.
Create with GIPHY
If you are unfamiliar with it, GIPHY is known as one of the biggest databases for GIFs on the Internet. But what you might not know is that they also have a free GIF-making tool on their website. This is how you use it.
- Input a video file, individual photos, a series of photos, or a video URL from YouTube or Vimeo
- Go to the editing page that comes up after you upload your files
- Trim your video to about two to six seconds (Note: make sure the file size is small enough to load quickly on any social media and blogging platforms you export the GIF to)
- Add any caption, stickers, or drawings that you think will enhance the GIF
- Upload it
- Add tags so anyone can find it
The great thing about creating a GIF this way is that it is simple to navigate and create one from a variety of sources. If you are looking for a free way to make a simple GIF, this is a great way to do it.
Make GIFs From Other Files
What if you can’t afford Adobe Photoshop or other software that allows you to build files? Believe it or not, you can make GIFS by converting other files into GIF files. Some of the file types you can convert to GIF format include:
- ICO to GIF
- JPG to GIF
- PNG to GIF
- PSD to GIF
- SVG to GIF
Depending on the purpose of the previous file types you are using, converting your existing files into a GIF can be easy as pie. Try converting one of the file types above and use it for your intended purpose.
What Else to Do with GIFs?
GIFs are used in everyday life, such as online, at school, and or for work purposes.
Because GIFs support 8 bits per pixel, they can be great for creating logos and banner images. This makes them useful files for marketing purposes on a blog or website. If you use pronounced linework and color in any drawn images, the GIF is also a great use for this.
Keep in mind that one thing you will have to look out for is images with fewer colors will work much better with GIFs than photos that have a lot of colors. They should be designated for smaller, lower-resolution images since the file sizes can become very large.
Learn How to Make Animated GIFs
GIFs are widely seen all over the internet whether you realize it or not. When you know how to make animated GIFs, you open yourself up to a new world of technological possibilities. Whether you make it yourself, use an online maker, or convert them from another file type, make the animated GIF work for you and your needs.
No matter if you need to convert spreadsheets, Word documents, or presentation slides, our online conversion tool can help you get your file to the right format you need. Try converting a JPG to GIF on our site today.