How to Make Your Own GIFs

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Make your own GIFs with Photoshop, or a free app
GIFs (or JIFs, depending on who you ask) are the bread and butter of a good Internet conversation these days. While it’s easy to find reaction GIFs with a simple Google search, sometimes it's impossible to find that exact GIF you want. With this in mind, here are two simple ways to make your own animated images.
Step 1: Our first step, of course, will be to download the video clip you want to make into a GIF. One of the simplest solutions is downloading clips using Download YouTube Extension for Firefox. Alternatively, users could also use a web tool like KeepVid.

Step 2: Next, you’ll want to cut your clip to length to make it easier to work with and convert.
I recommend Free Video Cutter for a simple and free solution.

Step 3: Now that we’ve got all that done, its time to actually make GIFs. We’ll start with launching Photoshop CC, our GIF creator of choice, and load the clip. Do this by going to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers.

Step 4: Photoshop will prompt you with a dialog box. If you haven't already cut the clip to length, you can do so here, too. Additionally, users can limit the number of frames Photoshop uses to create a GIF to lower the file size, but at the cost of a choppier animation.

Step 5: After a bit, your video should be split into multiple layers. Next, we’ll select File > Save for web.

Step 6: There are multiple settings in this new window. Here is where you can cut your file size (it should be below 2MB) by tweaking these following three settings.

• Dimensions: The size of your GIF just as it is with still images. Lowering this will dramatically reduce the size of the file. Unless you need a 1080p GIF, this should be your first stop.
• Dither: Effectively, this setting changes image quality. The higher the number, the better your GIF will look, and with it a bigger file size as well.
• Lossy: This pretty much sacrifices image quality in favor of smaller file size. Balance is the key!

Step 7: Now just hit save and you’re done!
The simpler (and free!) route

OK, not all of us have Photoshop or want to use such a complicated image editor. Luckily for everyone, there’s a simpler, free solution called the Giffing Tool. Download, install, and start the app.

Step 1: Upon opening the Giffing Tool, you'll find a multitude of ways to record video. You can also open GIFs to edit them. We’ll stick to simply recording YouTube clips for now. Click the drop-down next to New and select YouTube 640 x 350.
Step 2: This option will give you a box to hover over your video, and can record up to 10 seconds of footage.

Step 3: Once that’s done, a new edit window will appear with your recorded footage. The first thing you’ll want to do here is cut your GIF to length by selecting and dragging the tabs on either side of the blue time bar.

Step 4: After that, it’s just a matter of reducing the image size and quality to ensure your file isn’t too large. Of course, you can get as in-depth as you'd like by adding captions, effects, or cropping the GIF more.
Step 5: Once you’re done, simply save and keep on giffing.

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