GIF Maker
Animated GIFs are still the easiest way to drop a reaction into Slack, a tutorial into a README or a product micro-interaction into a landing page. This GIF maker stitches PNG/JPG frames — or a trimmed MP4 — into a looping 256-colour GIF and lets you tweak the frame rate, the canvas size and the loop count before you download.
How to build a GIF
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1
Add frames
Upload PNG/JPG images in order, or a short MP4 to be sampled into frames.
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2
Set the frame rate
Typical values: 8–12 fps for UI demos, 15–24 for video-like motion.
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3
Pick dimensions and loop
Resize the canvas and decide whether to loop forever or a fixed number of times.
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4
Export and download
The tool encodes with global palette optimisation and returns a single .gif file.
GIF format limits
| Attribute | Limit / behaviour |
|---|---|
| Colour depth | 256 colours per frame (8-bit palette) |
| Alpha | 1-bit — either fully transparent or fully opaque |
| Frame delay | Multiples of 10 ms — “60 fps GIF” actually caps at 50 |
| Compression | LZW — works best on flat, graphic images |
| File size | No hard limit, but browsers struggle past ~10 MB |
Tips to keep the file small
- Trim to the essential motion. Most “reaction GIFs” are 1–3 seconds.
- Downscale. A 480 px wide GIF is usually enough for Slack, Twitter and Notion.
- Drop frames first, then colours. Halving fps halves file size; dropping palette from 256 to 64 colours visibly damages gradients.
- Solid backgrounds compress best. Video-originated GIFs with noise baked in never shrink well.
When to reach for MP4 or WebM instead
If the target platform supports autoplaying short video (Twitter, modern web pages, Discord), MP4 (H.264) or WebM (VP9) are 5–10× smaller than a comparable GIF for the same quality. GIF is still king in chat, email and legacy docs.
Frequently Asked Questions
GIF is limited to 256 colours and uses a fixed palette per frame. Gradients dither into noise, and skin tones often pick up banding. For a smoother look, reduce motion detail or switch to MP4/WebM.
Yes, but only 1-bit transparency — a pixel is fully transparent or fully opaque. Soft anti-aliased edges against a transparent background tend to look fringed; consider APNG or WebP if you need smooth alpha.
12–15 fps is a good default. Slack downsamples anything faster; Twitter converts GIFs to MP4 server-side, so a lower fps input still looks fine.
Encoding runs on the page and the assembled GIF is returned for download. Source frames are not retained after the export.