How to make a GIF from pictures

The quick way

Drop two or more pictures on the GIF maker below, or choose them from your device. Each picture becomes one frame, and the list shows them in the order they will play. Drag a row to move it, use the arrows, or press Sort by name when your files are numbered, like exported frames or screenshots taken one after another.

Under the list a preview starts playing right away with the real timing, size and background. Change the frame duration, the repeat setting or the size and the preview follows at once. When it looks right, press Make animation and download the file. GIF is selected by default; animated WebP and MP4 are one click away and use the same frames and timing.

Choosing the speed

Speed is the time each frame stays on screen. You can type it in milliseconds or switch the unit to frames per second; 500 milliseconds and 2 frames per second are the same thing. What feels right depends on what the pictures show.

Different durations, loops and the last frame

Many good GIFs do not use one speed for everything. A title card or the final result should stay longer than the frames in between. Turn on Different duration per frame and every row gets its own Duration field; frames you do not touch keep the general speed.

Repeat decides how often the animation plays. Loop forever is what people expect from a GIF. Play once suits an animation that ends on a result and should stay there. Play 2, 3, 5 or 10 times sits in between. Inside the file, GIF stores the number of extra rounds and WebP the total number of plays; the tool writes the right value for each, so Play 3 times really plays three times in a browser.

The shortest duration you can set is 20 milliseconds, 50 frames per second. Browsers play GIF frames that are shorter than that at about 100 milliseconds instead, so a very fast animation would suddenly become slow. GIF also rounds every duration to hundredths of a second; WebP and MP4 keep milliseconds.

Pictures of different sizes

Photos from a phone, a screenshot and a downloaded image rarely share one size. The output size follows the first picture by default. Like the largest picture uses the biggest one, and Custom width lets you type a width; the height then follows the shape of the first picture.

Pictures with another shape are handled in one of two ways. Fit shows each picture complete, centered, and fills the empty edges with the background color. Fill covers the whole frame and crops the picture from the center, which looks cleaner when the important part is in the middle. For GIF and WebP you can also tick Transparent: the edges and any transparent parts of PNG files stay see-through. MP4 cannot store transparency, so it always uses the background color.

• Use Fit for screenshots, charts and anything with text near the edges.
• Use Fill for photo slideshows when all photos should cover the frame.
• Choose Custom width when the first picture is a large camera photo; 480 to 800 pixels is plenty for chats and web pages.

GIF, WebP or MP4: our measurements

We made two animations with the tool in Microsoft Edge on Windows, each with six frames of 800 milliseconds: six photos cut from one 12 megapixel phone picture, and six screenshots of a page where one line is added each time. Every set was saved at two widths in all three formats with the default settings.

The photos show the classic GIF problem: 256 colors per frame and no motion compression make it two to four times bigger than the others. The screenshots behave differently. Only the new line changes, and both GIF and WebP store just that changed area, so they end up smaller than the MP4.

Which format to download

GIF still opens everywhere: in email, in old forums, in every chat app and in every image viewer, and it loops by itself. Choose it when you do not know where the animation will end up, or when it is made of screenshots, icons or drawings.

Animated WebP is the better GIF for the web. It keeps full color and soft transparent edges and, for photos, was less than half the size of the GIF in our test. All current browsers show it. Safari can show animated WebP but cannot create it, so on an iPhone or Mac pick GIF or MP4 output.

MP4 is the smallest for photos and the right choice for social networks, which turn GIFs into videos anyway. A video has no transparency and the player decides about looping, so when you choose Play 3 times the frames are written into the video three times.

Common problems

Most surprises with homemade GIFs come from size and colors, not from the tool.

• The GIF is huge: lower the width, use fewer frames or switch to WebP or MP4. GIF output is limited to 1920 pixels on the longer side for this reason.
• Photos look grainy or banded: GIF shares 256 colors across all frames. WebP or MP4 keep full color.
• An added GIF does not move: an animated GIF counts as one frame and its first picture is used. To convert an existing GIF, use the GIF to video tool.
• The animation plays too slowly in a browser: check that no frame is shorter than 20 milliseconds.
• The order is wrong after adding files: press Sort by name, or drag the rows.