How to Easily Create a Gif (Video)

So I’ve shown you how to easily put gifs in your messages on your iPhone and one of my favorite keyboards for Android has a snazzy feature to insert gifs, as well. But what if you want to know how to make a gif in the first place? Why be limited to just the gifs in these apps and the ones already permeated throughout the world wide web?

Gifs, if you aren’t familiar, are a file format type on the web that allow you to have a series of images automatically loop over and over. In other words, gifs are what those animated images of cats high-fiving their owners are actually called. And while you can find plenty of of them on sites like Giphy.com, it might be fun for you to try your hand at making your own.

Googling for how to make gifs will give you a plethora of sites that can help make this process super easy, but I find a lot of them either add watermarks to your gifs or they cost money so the one I recommend is MakeaGif.com. You can follow the below steps for most of the options out there though, so if you don’t want to use MakeaGif, feel free to use any of the others you find.

Use MakeaGif to Make a Gif

First, head to Makeagif.com and sign up for a free account.

Once you confirm your email you can then login.

Next, click Create a Gif at the top right.

You can then choose what method you’d like to use to create your gif. The available options are:

• Upload photos – that it will then stitch together into a gif.
• Use a YouTube video – you can insert a link to a youtube video that you’d like to trim a small section from and create a gif that way.
• Upload a video – same as the YouTube option but from a video on your computer instead of one already on YouTube.
• Webcam – and finally, you can use a webcam to take a quick video and turn it into a gif right then and there.

Here’s how to use each method.

Upload Photos

1. You can upload photos to the site and it’ll stitch them all together, crop them, and animate them all magically for you.

2. Click Pictures to Gif at the top of the site.

3. Drag and drop the photos you want to use to the uploader (and it works best if you choose photos that are all similar, positioned similarly, and the movements between each is slight –think of it like a flip book animation) and then click Continue.

4. On the next page, you can choose your animation speed, how you’d like the images cropped (they all have to be the same size to make the gif so this is the method you want for the site to accomplish that), and then some options for putting the gif on their site (I just choose private and put in the least amount of info since I don’t want to share the gif).

5. After you’ve chosen what you want, click Create a Gif and it’ll create the gif and you can see it in action.

6. If it’s what you want, click Download and make sure it’s set to gif and you’re all set.

Use a YouTube Video or Upload Your Own Video

While using photos works, it’s really not the best way as it requires some serious planning on your part to really make the gif look like a proper animation. The better way to make a gif usually, is to use a video.

The site has two options for this and they work similarly –the only difference being that one you can paste a YouTube link to a video and the other you can upload your own.

Pick the Video

1. If you want to use an existing YouTube video, simply click YouTube to Gif then head to YouTube and pick whatever video you want.

2. Copy the URL to that video from YouTube and paste it into the MakeaGif site and click continue.

3. For uploading your own, just click Video to Gif at the top of the site and then click Upload and choose the video file from your computer.

Create a Gif Out of the Video

4. Once the YouTube video or uploaded video are ready, simply scroll to the part in the video you want to turn into a gif.

5. Choose how much of the clip you want the gif to be.

6. Give it a name and click Create Gif.

7. You can then see it in action and download it for your sharing pleasure.

Use the Webcam

1. Finally, you can also use the webcam on your computer if you have one by clicking on Webcam to Gif.

2. Then allow access to the webcam if needed and click Record Video to start recording.

3. Click Stop Recording to stop and click Continue if you are happy with the gif preview at the top right.

4. After that, you can adjust the settings for it just like we did with the Photos to Gif option and click Create a Gif.

5. After a bit you’ll see your gif and can click Download to save it for yourself.

There you go, you can now spread your new found gif and see if you can single-handily break the internet.

Let me know if this was helpful in the comments below and feel free to share your gifs there, too (keep it PG-13 please, unless you’re a hot girl, of course, then do whatever you feel comfortable doing).