GIF Maker: Turn Images Into an Animated GIF

An animated GIF is still one of the easiest ways to make something move where video does not fit: an email newsletter, a product page, a chat message, a slide, a README, a forum post. A GIF plays on its own, loops without a play button, and works almost everywhere images work. The most common way to make one is also the simplest: take a few still images and show them one after another.

This GIF maker turns 2 to 150 images into an animated GIF in your browser. You control the order, the timing of every frame, the loop, the size, the fit and the background, and you can add a caption or smooth crossfades. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no watermark.

How to make a GIF from images

1. Drop your images into the box above, or click it to choose them. JPG, PNG, WebP, BMP and AVIF work; a GIF you add counts as one frame (its first frame).
2. Put the frames in order. Drag a frame onto another to move it, or use the ◀ and ▶ buttons under each frame, which also work on phones. Reverse order flips the whole sequence.
3. Set Seconds per frame for all frames, for example 0.5. To hold one frame longer, type a different time in that frame's box; custom times get a gold border.
4. Choose the Loop: forever, play once, 3 times or 5 times.
5. Optional: pick a Transition to crossfade between frames.
6. Choose the Width, the Shape (same as the first image, square, portrait 4:5, landscape 16:9 or vertical 9:16) and the Fit: fit whole image with bars, or fill the frame and crop the edges.
7. Set the Background to a color or transparent, and the number of Colors.
8. Optional: type a Caption and pick its position and size.
9. Check the summary line (size, frame count and loop length), click Make GIF, then Download GIF.

Settings explained

Images of different sizes and shapes

Real photo sets are rarely uniform: a few portrait shots, a few landscape ones, a screenshot, a square logo. The GIF needs one canvas size for every frame, so the maker decides it from the Shape setting and places each image into it.

• Shape "Same as the first image" uses the first frame's proportions. Put your most typical image first.
• Fit whole image (add bars) shows every image completely and fills the leftover space with the background color. Nothing is cut, but bars appear on images with a different shape.
• Fill frame (crop edges) scales each image until the canvas is covered and trims what spills over, keeping the center. The GIF looks cleaner, but edges of odd-shaped images are lost.

Example: three landscape photos and one portrait photo in a 4:5 portrait GIF. With Fit, the landscape photos get bars above and below; with Fill, they lose their left and right sides. If that cuts off something important, crop those images by hand first with the image cropper, then add them.

Getting the timing right

Timing is what makes a GIF feel deliberate rather than jittery. Some starting points:

• Product color swatches: 0.8 to 1.2 seconds per color, so shoppers can actually see each one.
• Before and after: two frames at 1.5 seconds each, with a smooth crossfade.
• Step by step or a recipe: 1.5 to 2.5 seconds per step, longer on the final result.
• Stop motion or a flip book: 0.08 to 0.15 seconds per frame, with many frames.
• A message that must be read: hold the frame with text for 2 to 3 seconds. A good rule is about 0.3 seconds per word, never less than a second and a half.

GIF stores frame times in hundredths of a second, and browsers treat very short times (below about 0.02 seconds) as 0.1 seconds, so the fastest setting here is 0.02. If you change the global Seconds per frame, all frames return to that time; set custom times last.

Sizes for where the GIF will go

Instagram and TikTok do not accept GIF uploads as posts; they want video. Use GIFs where they belong (email, web, chat, docs), and post a video version on social apps.

Keeping the file small

GIF is an old format with simple compression, so files grow fast. The summary line before you click Make GIF shows the width, height, number of frames and loop length, and the result shows the file size. If it is too big, change these, in this order of impact:

1. Width. Going from 800 to 480 pixels cuts the pixel count by almost two thirds.
2. Frames. Remove near-duplicate frames, and skip crossfades, which add 4 or 8 frames per transition.
3. Colors. 128 or 64 colors are fine for graphics, text and flat illustrations. Photos show banding below 256.
4. Busy detail. Grain, noise and fine textures compress badly. Simpler images give smaller GIFs.

For an existing GIF, the GIF compressor reduces colors, size and frames and stores only the pixels that change between frames, which often halves the file or better. The result screen links to it with Make it smaller.

GIFs in email

Email is where GIFs earn their keep, because most email clients do not play video inline. Gmail, Apple Mail and current Outlook apps play animated GIFs. Older Outlook versions for Windows show only the first frame, so design for that:

• Make the first frame complete on its own. Put the product and the key message in frame one, so nothing is lost when the animation does not play.
• Keep it light. A GIF under about 1 MB appears quickly on mobile data. Use 480 or 600 pixels wide, which matches typical email widths.
• Do not hide the call to action in a late frame. Many readers scroll past before frame five. Put the button in the email itself, not only in the GIF.
• Add alt text in your email editor that says what the GIF shows, for readers with images turned off.
• Play once or loop: a looping GIF draws attention; a GIF that plays once and stops on a clear final frame feels calmer. Both work.

Worked example: a color swatch GIF for a newsletter

A store sells a tote bag in five colors and wants one image in the weekly email that shows them all.

1. Drop the five product photos in, in the order the colors appear on the product page.
2. Set Seconds per frame to 1, Loop to Forever and Transition to Crossfade, short.
3. Choose Width 600, Shape Square 1:1 and Fit Fill frame, so all five bags fill the square the same way.
4. Keep the background white and Colors at 256.
5. Add the caption "5 colors, now in stock" at the bottom, size Medium.
6. Click Make GIF. The summary shows 25 frames: 5 photos plus 4 crossfade frames after each, including the fade from the last color back to the first.

If the file comes out above 1 MB, switch the transition off, which drops it to 5 frames, or lower the width to 480. Either change usually brings a GIF like this well under the target.

Captions

The caption is drawn on every frame in bold white letters with a black outline, the classic GIF look that reads on light and dark images. It shrinks automatically if the text is too long for the width. Keep it short, such as "New colors in stock" or "Sale ends Friday", and choose top or bottom so it does not cover the important part of the images. For more styling, such as fonts, colors and several text blocks, add text to the images first with the add text to photo tool, then build the GIF.

Ideas that work well

• Color and variant switcher for a product page or email: one product, one frame per color.
• Before and after for cleaning, repair, design or photo editing services.
• Mini tutorials: four to six screenshots of an app or a setup, one step per frame.
• Countdown frames for a launch or a sale, ending on a frame that holds longer.
• Team or event recap as a quick photo slideshow for an internal newsletter.

Posting the same products to several social networks every week? AM Jarvis's Social Autopilot writes and schedules Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook posts from your store products.

From video instead of images

If your source is a screen recording or a phone clip, the video to GIF converter is the better tool: it picks frames from the video at a set rate, with trimming, speed and boomerang options. This maker is for still images you want to sequence yourself.

Troubleshooting

• The Make GIF button is greyed out: add at least one image. With one image the result is a still GIF; add a second to animate.
• A frame is missing: files the browser cannot read, such as HEIC photos in Chrome, are skipped and listed in a message. Convert them first with the HEIC to JPG converter.
• Frames flash or jump: mixed image shapes with Fit whole image add bars that change from frame to frame. Use Fill frame, or crop the images to one shape first.
• Colors look banded: raise Colors to 256. Smooth gradients and skies always band a little in GIF, because each frame can only hold 256 colors.
• The GIF plays too fast in one app: some apps ignore frame times below 0.02 seconds or speed up very short ones. Use 0.05 seconds or more for reliable speed.
• Dragging frames does not work on my phone: use the ◀ and ▶ buttons under each frame instead.

Quality notes and limits

• Every frame gets its own palette of up to 256 colors, chosen from that frame, so photos keep their colors as well as GIF allows.
• Transparent GIFs have one fully transparent color, so soft edges and shadows turn into hard edges. For soft transparency, a PNG or a WebP animation would be needed.
• Up to 150 images per GIF. Each image is scaled to at most 1,600 pixels when added, which is more than the largest GIF width of 1,080.
• Making a GIF takes from a second to about a minute, depending on width, frame count and your device. You can cancel at any time.
• Your images are processed in your browser with the open source gifenc encoder. Nothing is uploaded or stored.