Animated GIFs

GIFs are making a *big* comeback, thanks to the popularity of sites like tumblr, reddit, and imgur. And here I thought the Geocities style was behind us and I'd never have to make a GIF animation for the Web again (someday, I want to post my "Animated GIF parade" circa 1999 on https://webio.me, but I'm unsure about the copyright status). Anyway, here's an edited version of a GIF tutorial for making smooth-looking GIFs. ~ Diggity (talk) 12:35, 18 March 2014 (EDT)

Note: The PNG format was created to replace GIFs, and you should use it for non-animated images (esp. those requiring transparency) that are not photos. Use JPEG for photo-realistic images. GIF images used to be patent-encumbered, but can now be used freely.

How to produce high-quality GIFs with GIMP

Adapted from SarcasticUserName's post on imgur.

Getting Started

• Download GIMP here, then take a look at GIMPtricks for video tutorials. Or, just dig in (you can't hurt anything)!

GIF Quality

Many image boards and community sites will show a GIF preview, and then allow you to "zoom" by clicking or mousing over the image. A recommended max image size for high-quality, "zoomable" GIFs is 611px. That gives you a starting point, so that you can then try to stay under upload caps on specific websites (e.g. 5MB limit on upload filesize).

Filesize increases not only with the image quality, but how the image was compressed and, in the case of animation, the number and quality of each frame. Animation frames in the GIF will show up as Layers in GIMP.

One tip for reducing filesize would be to reduce the canvas size to include only the important part of the gif instead of scaling down the image. Try to crop the image to fit only the portion of the GIF you need to show, but keep the overall size at 611px (or thereabouts).

• Video: GIMP Basics 4 - How to Crop and resize an image

More Resources

• Video: How to Make Gifs Using Gimp
• AviDemux for video editing
  • Other video editors
• LICEcap GIF recorder: for creating animated GIF "screencasts", alternative to GifCam
• Libre_Recommendations#Misc_2 Video encoder options