Image Tools·4 min read

GIF Maker: Turn Images Into an Animated GIF

An animated GIF made from still images is one of the simplest ways to show a sequence: a product from four angles, a before and after, three steps of a setup screen, or a hand-drawn flip animation. The GIF Maker assembles the frames in your browser, times each one, fits them onto one canvas and encodes the result with a palette built from your pictures. This guide walks through the settings that decide how the animation feels and how big the file ends up.

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What a GIF from images is good for

Sequences, not footage.

Slideshow GIFs work where video does not: email newsletters, documentation, marketplace descriptions that accept images only, and chat apps. They show change over time without anyone pressing play.

They are a poor fit for long sequences of photographs with fine detail, because GIF stores each frame fully and in 256 colours. For those, the same tool can save an MP4 instead.

A worked example: a four-angle product GIF

From four photos to one loop.

Take four photos of a backpack: front, side, back and open. Drop them onto the GIF Maker. They appear as frames in the order you added them. The open photo came first by accident, so drag it to the end, or use its arrow buttons.

Set Default delay per frame to 900 ms, and type 1800 in the first frame's delay box so the front view stays twice as long before the loop restarts. Set Width to 600 px and Canvas shape to Square, because the shop shows square images, and Fit images to Fit inside with a white border, since the photos are slightly different sizes.

Click Make GIF. The first run downloads the FFmpeg engine; after that the animation is built in a few seconds and shows with its file size, ready to download.

Order and timing

Delay decides the feel.

Short delays read as motion and long delays read as a slideshow. Around 80 to 150 ms per frame suits drawn animation, 800 to 1500 ms suits product views, and two seconds or more suits screenshots people need to read. Any frame can have its own delay, which is the easiest way to hold a title or a final result a little longer.

Ping-pong plays the frames forwards and then backwards, so the motion swings back and forth without jumping from the last frame to the first. It suits before and after pairs, rotations and gentle movement. Duplicate a frame when you want it to appear twice in the sequence rather than just for longer.

Drag frames to reorder, or use the arrow buttons from the keyboard.
Reverse order flips the whole sequence in one click.
Loop can repeat forever, play once, or repeat three extra times.

Canvas, fit and size

Mixed images, one frame.

Every frame is drawn onto the same canvas. Like first image uses the proportions of the first picture, and Square, 16:9 and 4:5 match common platform shapes. Fit inside keeps each whole image and fills the gaps with your border colour, Fill and crop covers the canvas and trims edges, and Stretch forces each image to the canvas, which distorts photos but can suit simple graphics.

Width drives file size more than anything else apart from frame count. A 600 pixel GIF has four times the pixels of a 300 pixel one, and every frame pays that cost.

Colour quality, and when to choose MP4

The 256 colour limit.

GIF allows 256 colours per frame. The GIF Maker picks those colours from your own images and smooths gradients with diffusion dithering, which looks far better than a generic palette. Screenshots and flat graphics usually come out exact; photographs with skies or skin can show slight banding.

If colour matters more than compatibility, choose MP4 video. It is usually many times smaller and keeps full colour, and websites and most social platforms accept it. Keep GIF for places where animation must play without a video player.

Preparing images before you add them

Better input, better GIF.

The GIF Maker fits every image onto the same canvas, so similar framing across the photos matters more than any setting. Shoot product views from the same distance and height, and crop screenshots to the same area before adding them, so frames do not jump around as the animation plays.

Consistent lighting and backgrounds help the colour palette too. When every frame shares the same white or grey background, most of the 256 colours can go to the subject, and the file compresses well because large areas stay the same from frame to frame.

iPhone HEIC photos are converted in the browser when you add them, and you can paste screenshots straight from the clipboard with Ctrl+V. Very large camera photos work, but they are scaled to the width you choose, so there is no benefit in feeding 6000 pixel images into a 600 pixel GIF beyond a little extra waiting.

Common GIF maker mistakes

Easy fixes.

These cause most disappointing results:

Very large source photos at full width, producing a GIF of tens of megabytes.
Every frame at the same short delay in a slideshow, so nobody can read the steps.
Mixed portrait and landscape images with Stretch, which squashes faces and products.
Using GIF for a long photo sequence where MP4 would be smaller and sharper.

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