The GIF has had an impressively long run amidst the usual short-term churn of the tech industry. One of the earliest ways of displaying animations on the web—long before there was enough bandwidth to support video—it now thrives as the preferred choice for sharing simple, short clips.
If the process of creating your own GIFs has been something of a mystery to you up to this point, it needn't be: Plenty of tools are around to convert videos that you come across into shareable pictures ready to post to the web or your instant messaging programs. Here's how to go about it.
It's easier to create GIFs from your laptop, if you have one available, because you've got more choice in terms of apps, and a lot more screen space to work with. A good starting point—and possible the only resource you'll need, full stop—is the GIF creator at the massive Giphy GIF library.
Open up the GIF Maker and you've got three options: Upload photos from your computer, upload videos from your computer, or supply a URL from YouTube or Vimeo. In terms of uploading your own files, all the popular formats are supported, though you are limited to a maximum file size of 100MB.
Whether you upload a file or input an online link, the app lets you choose the start and stop points of the GIF, as well as add text, stickers, and filters if you'd like. It's one of the most straightforward tools you're going to come across, and the end result can be shared online with a couple of clicks.
Another web app worth bookmarking is ezGIF. It's not quite as user-friendly as the Giphy GIF Maker, but it lets you do more with your GIFs. As well as converting videos and photos into the GIF format, it lets you resize and crop the end results, as well as apply a variety of useful effects, like slowing down or reversing the GIF.
You can't use ezGIF to convert URLs from sites like YouTube though. The source has to be a series of photos or a video from your computer, again with a maximum file upload size of 100MB. You then simply work through the steps on screen to complete the process; you get to choose the start and end point, and the resolution and the frame rate of the finished file. Remember that smaller file sizes are better for quick online sharing.
Plenty of people will be happy with the features and options in those two web apps—and you don't need to install any extra software, everything just runs in your browser—but if you need a bit more control and functionality, desktop apps for Windows and macOS are also available. One of the top choices on Windows is Giffing Tool, which runs under a pay-what-you-want policy—you can use it for free, if you don't mind a watermark on your finished GIFs, or send the developers a donation if you find it useful.
It works like a screen capture tool. Click New, drag out the area of the screen you want to build a GIF from, then hit Esc when you've finished recording. You can record something your doing in an app, or a video you're playing from your computer, or a video you're playing on the web. When that's done, you can add filters, create a text overlay, crop and resize your GIF, and more.
For those of you on macOS, you can go back to Giphy again with the simple Giphy Capture for macOS. Like Giffing Tool, it lets you capture everything inside a defined window on screen. There's also the more advanced GIF Brewery, which can turn video files, screen recordings, and webcam footage into GIFs, and comes stacked with options.
Import a video file, and you can set the start and end points to the exact frame. You can also crop and resize the GIF where necessary, and drop in text and stickers with just a couple of clicks. More advanced options enable you to set the frame rate, color depth, and more.
If you're making GIFs on Android or iOS, we're going to assume it's from a video you've already recorded or got access to on your phone. If you need to convert a clip from a YouTube video or something similar, then we'd recommend using a laptop and a proper desktop web browser for the job instead.
Those of you using iPhones can use the Live Photos that Apple handsets take and convert them into GIFs. With the image on screen in Photos, swipe up then choose Loop or Bounce to build the GIF. Finally, go to Albums then Animated, in Photos, where you'll find the newly created GIF ready for sharing.
You can do a similar trick if you have a Pixel phone from Google. These phones capture Motion Photos by default; like Live Photos, it grabs a couple of seconds of video along with each still image. To convert one to a GIF, open it up in the Google Photos app, tap the three dots to the top right, then choose Export and GIF.
Alternatively, once again you can turn to Giphy: It has free apps for Android and iOS that will let you create GIFs from photos and videos on your phone, or you can record them straight from your phone's camera. The app also provides tools for trimming your GIFs, adding colorful filters, and dropping text and stickers over the top of them.
Giphy isn't the only option in terms of third-party apps, though it seems to be the best of the bunch based on the options we've tried. Alternatives include GIF Maker for iOS, which again is packed with filters and effects to try out, and the identically named (but different) GIF Maker for Android, which has a host of comprehensive editing options for reversing GIFs, creating loops, changing color balance and so on.
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