Guides

Practical walkthroughs for making and shrinking animated GIFs, all using tools that run on your own device.

• How to make an animated GIF frame by frame

  Frames, onion skinning, layers, holds, nested loops and frame rate — the full walkthrough from blank canvas to exported GIF.

• How to make a GIF from photos

  Turn a burst of photos or a set of drawings into an animation: importing images as frames, ordering them, and timing the result.

• How to convert a video to a GIF in your browser

  Turn an MP4 or WebM clip into a GIF without uploading it: length limits, trimming, frame rate, width, and importing video as editable frames.

• How to add text and captions to a GIF

  Use the text tool for captions, meme text and titles — fonts, outlines and shadows, and how to keep text readable at small sizes.

• How to make a GIF with a transparent background

  Draw on a transparent canvas and export a GIF that shows the page behind it — plus why GIF transparency has hard edges and how to work with that.

• How to make a GIF loop smoothly

  Seamless loops, matching the first and last frame, walk cycles, and the ping-pong trick for motion that never has to resolve.

• GIF or MP4: which should you use?

  How the two formats differ on size, quality, colour and autoplay, and a simple rule for picking one for any given place you want to post.

• How to make a GIF file smaller

  Why GIFs get heavy, and which setting to change first: dimensions, frame rate, length, colours and transparency.