GIF Maker: Make a GIF From Photos

Make an animated GIF from several photos

An animated GIF is a series of still images shown one after another, looping or just once, with no sound. Here, each photo you add becomes a frame of the GIF: the first one opens the animation, the last one ends it. That way you can make a mini slideshow, a before-and-after, a stop motion (an action broken down photo by photo), a series of screenshots for a tutorial or an animated birthday message. Your photos don't need to be the same size or shape: the GIF takes the format of the first image (or a format you choose: square, 4:3, 16:9, 9:16) and each photo is placed inside it, either whole with a background color around it, or cropped to fill the whole frame. No software to install: the tool works in the browser on a computer, an iPhone or an Android phone, to turn JPG, PNG or WebP images into a GIF.

What frame duration, width and file size should you pick?

How long each frame lasts sets the speed: between 0.1 and 0.2 seconds, the frames flow like a cartoon or a stop motion; around 0.5 seconds, you can still make out each frame; from 1 to 3 seconds, it's a slideshow where each photo has time to be seen. For the width, 320 px works for messaging apps, forums and small thumbnails, 480 px is a good middle ground for most uses, and 640 px or the original width (capped at 1,000 px) is for web pages and presentations. The file size grows with the width, the height and the number of frames: as a rough guide, twelve photos at 480 px weigh about 1 MB, about 2 MB at 640 px, and much more if the photos are very detailed. Going from 640 to 320 px wide cuts the file size by three or four times. If the file is too big for your messaging app or forum, reduce the width, remove some frames or choose “Lighter”.

Why are GIF colors limited?

The GIF format can only show up to 256 colors per frame, while a photo has thousands: without care, gradients (a sky, skin) break up into bands. To limit this, the tool picks a separate 256-color palette for each photo, matched to its tones, and smooths the transitions with light dithering (tiny dots that blend neighboring colors). The “Lighter” option cuts the palette down to 64 colors: the file is about a third smaller, with slightly less subtle colors. To keep a photo's full quality, an MP4 video works better than a GIF; but GIF is still the format everyone can open anywhere, with no player, which is why it's so popular in messages, emails and forums.

Supported formats, iPhone photos, animated GIFs and transparency

You can add JPG or JPEG, PNG, WebP, BMP, AVIF (if your browser can read it) and iPhone HEIC photos, which are converted automatically. The orientation of phone photos is respected. A GIF that's already animated counts as a single frame, its first one: to turn a video clip into a GIF, use “Video to GIF”. The GIF created here has no transparency: empty areas, or the transparent parts of a PNG, are filled with the background color you choose (white, black or another color). And to put your photos together into a video with music, use the “Slideshow Maker With Music” instead.