What are animated GIFs for, what are their advantages and what tools or apps can you use to create them? Read the blog post now!

Create animated GIF | print24

Create animated GIF

Do you love animated GIFs and want to create your own? In this blog post, we'll show you how you can create your GIFs using various tools, apps or PowerPoint. Let your creativity run wild and create funny, exciting or informative animations!

Animated GIFs are incredibly popular. They can be used in almost any situation and make you smile in most cases. GIF stands for the abbreviation "Graphics Interchange Format". They can be found in all common social media platforms, messaging services, websites or homepages or even forums and account profile pages. Since this graphic format with the file extension .gif allows movements, in contrast to others such as JPEG, it is a special feature. The bitmap image format supports 256 colours. If the graphics are enlarged, however, their quality suffers. With a GIF, individual images can be compressed and several image transparencies can be superimposed. A suitable graphics program or a web browser is required to play the sequence of images that have been defined in advance as a moving film sequence. There are various ways to create an animated GIF. Learn more about them and how to use them in our blog post now!

Creating a picture with the help of a graphics tablet

<h3>Animated GIFs - the basics</h3>A GIF plays back individual images with a time delay, so that animations can be played in an endless loop. It also provides fixed sequences of images, which are limited to a fixed playback rate. GIF is suitable for images with low colour depth and animations. A GIF is characterised by its colours, transparencies and image size. With only 256 displayable colours, GIFs produce colour gradations that make the photo appear somewhat coarser due to the additional "dithering effect". Animated GIFs are therefore mainly displayed in small format and, with a maximum size of 65,535 × 65,535 pixels, achieve even smaller file sizes than JPEG files. If you want to create an animated GIF, you can also assign transparencies to the colour entries, which allows you to change its outer shape from angular to round, for example. Depending on how many frames you use to create an animated GIF, the resulting animation runs more smoothly. Wherever you want to attract attention with movements, you can use animated GIFs. The advantage of animated GIFs over videos is that they can be created with much less effort. You can use animated GIFs as logos on slides or in templates, for example. You can also use them as animated pictograms, as eye-catchers and to visualise a trend in diagrams. For more complex topics, GIFs are also suitable for illustrating processes. You can also create a slide show with animated GIFs.

Examples of gifs

<h3>Tools to create animated GIFs</h3>Which different tools can be used to create animated GIFs yourself? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the individual programmes? There are various options here, such as Any to GIF, GifCam, Free GIF Maker or AniMake. Any to GIF makes it possible to create GIFs by converting images. Accordingly, it is an easy and practical option to combine several images into one animated GIF. First, you download the free tool to your PC. Then you can start the software and click on "Add images", which opens an open dialogue. While holding down the Ctrl key, you can now click to select exactly the images you want to use to create your animated GIF. Click on "Open" and the images appear in the preview. You can then use drag &amp; drop to determine the desired order. By default, Any to GIF is set to 400 milliseconds, which is the time a single image is displayed in the animated GIF. You can adjust the time up or down in increments of 10 by clicking on "Delay Time". If you select "Animation", you can view the preview. To save the animated GIF, select "GIF" at the bottom right and enter a desired file name and destination path. Finally, click on "Save". GifCam does not have to be installed, it can be started directly from the file GifCam.exe. The special feature of this tool is that it films what happens on the PC monitor and then converts it into an animated GIF. To do this, you must first define the size of the programme window, which corresponds to the size of the recording. Then click on "Rec" to start the recording and on "Stop" to end it. Save the file by clicking on "Save" and specify the file name and file path. Confirm with a click on "Save". Alternatively, you can also create videos in AVI containers. To do this, select the arrow next to "Save" and then "Export to AVI". You can then save the file with the desired name and path. You can play the file with a media player such as VLC. With the help of Free GIF Maker you can convert videos into GIFs. To do this, you must select the "Add file" field in the program and import an existing video file. Then click on "Create". The encoding progress should then be displayed. Once the program has finished converting, you can open the target folder in the file manager with "Open Folder" and save the animated GIF. AniMake is used to create a GIF with animations. No previous knowledge is required for the free tool, which you must download. It is made for internet applications and is suitable for creating animated GIF images from single photos. Several GIF images are stored in a file in such a way that the images are automatically played as a film. Animations can be created from individual images; alternatively, videos can also be converted into GIF format with a click of the mouse.

Gifs can also be created using Microsoft PowerPoint

<h3>Creating animated GIFs with PowerPoint</h3>As an alternative to the tools presented, it is also possible to create animated GIFs with Microsoft PowerPoint. The best way to do this is to use the Morph slide transition. You can proceed as follows:Before you start adding slide content, you should determine the size and shape of the GIF. If you use the standard wide-format slide, your GIF will also have an aspect ratio of 16:9 at the end. To create an animated GIF with PowerPoint, you should first open a new slide and then under the tab "Design/Customise" - "Slide Size" - "Custom Slide Size" set the slide to the desired size. The morph transition requires two slides that have a common object. Insert this, for example a pictogram, on the slide with "Insert/Illustrations" - "Pictograms". In the thumbnail view, you can then create a duplicate of the slide with the commands "Ctrl + Shift + D". Then change the position, colour or text of the object on the duplicate according to your wishes. Then click on the duplicate and activate the option "Morph" via the tab "Transitions/Transition to this slide". Via the group "Transition to this slide" you should then click on "Effect options" to select how the morph transition works. In the case of the pictogram, you must then select the "Objects" option. You can then view the transition via the tab "Transitions/Preview" and "Preview". Now how is the animated GIF created? Quite simply by selecting the command sequence "File/Export" in the menu and then "Create animated GIF". You can then specify the size of the GIF and confirm with "Create GIF". The display duration of a slide should also be specified. The result is an animated GIF using a morph transition.

Giphy as an example of an app for creating gifs

<h3>The most practical apps for animated GIFs</h3>You can also create GIFs on your smartphone or other mobile devices. There are various apps to choose from here. GIPHY is one of the best-known free apps and was developed by Giphy.com. Animated GIFs can be created from videos and photos with, for example, stickers, filters or captions. GIPHY is suitable for both Android and iOS. ImgPlay is also an app that is suitable for Android and IOS. If you use the Lite version, a watermark is placed on your animated GIF when it is saved. If you don't want this and also want to gain a larger selection between different stickers, canvases or filters, you can upgrade the app for about 7.99 euros. The app GifArts also offers the possibility to create an animated GIF via Android and IOS. You can select one, five, ten or 15 images for an animation. Free filters, overlays, stickers or fonts make the GIF even more interesting. JIBJAB is an app that requires you to register first. Then you can convert your face into an animated GIF with a video edit. For about 2.99 euros you get the all-round package with which you can integrate music or different faces. The app is also available for Android and IOS.

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<h2>Create animated GIF - we show how it's done</h2>

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