How to Create Animations (GIFs)

Animation is a simple form of animation. If you have a series of photos or a short video, it only takes a few minutes to animate with online tools. If you want advanced editing or speed control of your animations, download the free software GIMP.

Table of Contents

Create Simple Animations with Online Tools

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Select a series of photos or videos. Create a folder on your computer to store the images used to create animations. Each image is a frame of the animation. In addition, you can convert a short video into an animation.

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Go to the online GIF maker. There are many online animation tools like imgflip, makeagif, and gifmaker. They don’t have as many functions as GIMP or other photo editing software, but you can quickly and easily use them without having to download or register.

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Trim a video (optional). If you are creating animations from a video file, you should cut a short clip instead of uploading the entire video. You can easily trim video by downloading VLC software completely free, then follow the instructions:

Start VLC, use the command File → Open File… to open the video file.
Specify the starting point of the video you want to convert to animation.
Choose Playback → Record from the top menu.
Play the video until the end of the segment you want to “animate”. Select the Record command to end recording. The new file with a smaller size will be saved in the same folder as the original file.

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Upload a photo or video. Find the Upload Images function. If you need to convert the video, look for the Upload Video function.

Downloading videos can take quite a while if the internet speed is slow or the file is large. It is better to download videos that are a few seconds long.

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Motion photo editing. These online tools often allow you to change the order of images in an animation, in case you upload images in the wrong order. You can insert text, resize images, and set the speed of the animation.

Create Animations with GIMP

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Download GIMP. GIMP stands for GNU Image Processing Software, an open source image editing software. You can download it for free at gimp.org/downloads. With GIMP, you can edit your animation frame-by-frame, change the speed, and save it in an optimized format to make it run smoother.

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Open the image file you want to convert to an animation. Choose File → Open from the menu above and select an image that is available on your computer. If you want to create the animation yourself, choose File → New .

If you’re using a GIMP built-in animation with multiple layers, use the Image → Flatten Image command to merge the layers into one. ^{[1] X Research Source} This layer will be a frame of the animation.

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Add photos. If you have several photos that you want to turn into animations (such as a series of screenshots), open the images with the File → Open as Layers command. If you only have one image but still want to animate yourself, use the Duplicate Layers function in the “Layers” window on the left side of the screen. You can right-click the image icon and select Duplicate Layer , or click the two stacked image icon.

Each layer will form an animation frame. The image in the bottom layer will appear first, then the image in the upper layers will appear in turn. You can change the order of images by drag and drop.
The images must be the same size, or the larger image will be cropped when saving the animation.

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Hide the upper layers to edit the bottom layer (optional). If you intend to edit the image or insert text, you need to hide the image layers above the image to be edited, otherwise you will not be able to see the edit. There are two ways to do this on the “Layers” window:

Click the “eye” icon next to each photo to hide the layer. Click it again when you want to show the image.
Or select an image layer and adjust the Opacity at the top of the Layers window. Low opacity makes the image transparent. This is quite useful when you want to insert text or edit on multiple frames, you can completely stack them together.

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Frame correction (optional). You can learn more about GIMP’s other editing functions if you want, or just stick to the basic technique. Select the image you want to edit from the icon on the “Layers” window on the right side of the screen, and then follow these steps:

On the “Toolbar” (Topbar) window on the left side, select the “Scale Top” (small square icon with an arrow pointing to the larger square) to resize the image. Image size in all layers must be the same.
In the Toolbar window, select the “A” icon then click on the image to insert text. Type text and use the tool palette that appears to adjust the size, font, and color. Once done, use the Layer → Merge Down command to combine the text frame and the underlying image layer.

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Review animation. After editing, choose Filters → Animation → Playback… in the upper menu. Click on the run icon on the window to see the animation.

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Adjust time. Go to the “Layers” window, right-click (or press Ctrl and click on some Macs) the image layer. Select the Edit Layer Attributes command. After the name, type (XXXXms) , replacing the Xs with the number of milliseconds you want the layer to appear in. ^{[2] X Research Source} Do the same for the remaining image layers. Open the Playback section to see the animation after editing, continue to adjust until satisfied.

Most animations created from video typically run at 10 frames per second (100 milliseconds per frame).
You can skip this step and choose the default speed when exporting files.

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Optimized animations to run smoother. Choose Filter → Animation → Optimize (for GIF ). This will create a much smaller copy. Continue with the above step with the copy in the remaining steps.

Before optimization, each frame was completely loaded (“replaced”). After optimization, only the edit area is loaded (“combined”). ^{[3] X Research Sources}
You can skip this step and optimize the file export process.

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Export files as Animations. Choose File → Export As…. Click Select File Type at the bottom of the window for more options, scroll down and select “GIF”. Select Export , a new window will appear, explained in more detail in the step below.

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Set options and complete the file export. In the new window, under “Export Image as GIF”, check the box next to “As animation”. Finish by clicking Export , or change the option first:

Uncheck “Loop forever” if you only want the animation to run once.
If you skip the time adjustment step, set it up at this step. By default, it is set at 100 milliseconds, or 10 frames per second. Reduce the time if you want the animation to run fast, or increase the time if you want it to run slowly.
If you skipped the animation optimization step, look for the “Frame disposal” option while exporting the file and select “Cumulative layers (combine)”.

Advice

Older versions of Adobe Photoshop include Adobe ImageReady software. If you own it, create each frame as a separate layer in Photoshop, then use ImageReady to animate, the same way as the instructions above.
GIMP has a few animation effects in the Filters tab → Animation . A blur effect can be added between image layers, such as disappearing or blending.
If you want to use advanced functions, install the Gimp Animation Plugin (GAP) and consult the user manual online. GAP does not work on 64-bit versions of Windows and GIMP 2.8, you need to download GIMP 2.6.

Warning

Animations are very large files, so it takes time to upload online. You can set to use less colors and avoid image dithering to reduce the size. ^{[4] X Research Sources}

Steps

Create Simple Animations with Online Tools

Create Animations with GIMP

Advice

Warning

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