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One of the most memorizing advents of the internet is “The GIF.” Nowadays, we see them everywhere. GIFS are moments from film and photography that are endlessly looped to repeat. They are surprisingly quick and easy to make. You can use images from both your still or motion camera to create them. The only software you need to make a GIF is iMovie (or equivalent), as well as Quicktime and Photoshop. What Is In a Frame, The first step is to get your head around the concept of “frames.” Any film or animation is made up of a series of still-images called “frames.” These frames are sequenced together to give the illusion of movement. Remember back to childhood and playing with the flipbook, Each image changed slightly to create the impression of motion. The same ‘flipbook principle’ applies here. Your sequence will be made up of a series of still-images (or ‘frames’) that must be trimmed down and then looped.

It is not essential to get bogged down in all this film-jargon. Just remember that the first and last “frame” of your sequence must be identical. In most cases, if the first and final frame are different then “the loop” will not be seamless. The best GIFS are very simple. The image below displays how looping a short sequence can be beautiful. Feel free to use either still or motion images. If sequencing together still-images, shoot the subject with the flipbook principle in mind. Movement between frames should be minimal. The first and last frames need particular attention as they must match. The first GIF of The Obelisk was created solely via still-images. Notice that it is only the colour that changes from frame to frame. The actual figure does not move at all. There are a multitude of options when sequencing your GIF, and you do not necessarily need movement.

Once you have shot your sequence, turn it into a movie. Import the frames into a simple film editing program like iMovie. If using iMovie, do yourself a big favour and turn the annoying “Ken Burns Effect” off. Also make sure to set the Duration of each frame (or “clip”) to 0.04 seconds. It is vital that all the frames are set to the same time-frame. Once you are happy with the sequence, export the project using Quicktime. Save the Quicktime project to your desktop so that it is easy to locate. After the film has been successfully imported, open Photoshop and go through the following steps. Now, set the quality of your image. Press “File” then “Save for Web”. Once this prompt opens, set your “Colours” to a high setting (about 256). Keep the “Dither” high and the “Lossy” low. Congratulations, you have just created your first GIF! Now that you know how to make a GIF, we’d love to see the what you create with this post. Please share your creations with us on our Facebook page, or submit them in the comments section below.

Then we have the image format. If you want to have the best quality possible on your caps, select PNG, but keep in mind that it will take some time to capture. I usually choose JPEG but when I want to make a larger gif I choose PNG. On the numbers and size to extract make sure it’s set as “continuously” and “original size”. And finally the frames. I always use the option “every frame”. It will give you a lot of frames but I like to choose the best ones for my gif, so I always end up deleting at least half of them. If you don’t want to do that, you can choose the other options too. Just play around with the settings and see which one is better for you. Now you’re ready to start screen capturing. You just need to click on “start” and it will start taking caps. Don’t forget you have to click play on the video on the part you want it to cap, it won’t do it on pause. Once you’re finished capturing, click on “stop”. Now that you have your frames, open Photoshop.

This little window will come up, and on the drop-down menu, choose “folder” and then click “browse”. You have to search for the folder where your screen caps are (don’t forget the folder can only have the caps and nothing else on it, otherwise photoshop will open every file on that folder). Click OK and wait until all the caps open to Photoshop. It may take a while, depending how many caps you have, how large they are and how fast your computer is. Once you have all of your caps loaded, go to Window and click on Animation and a little bar will show up on the bottom. The frames will show up on the bar, but they are backwards so then click on “Reverse frames” (on the same menu above). Now this is the hardest part. If you want to have a pretty gif, you have to edit it. If you’re not sure how to edit it, just play around with the levels, curves and brightness/contrast. You can search for psds on tumblr to help you have an idea of how to use each tool. See also this script to learn how to sharpen all of your frames (layers) with just a couple of clicks. After you’re done editing, you save your gif. Now that tumblr increased the photo size limit to 1MB, it’s a lot easier to make bigger gifs with better image quality.