1. Best Gif Creator App For Mac

Advertisement GIFs are the Everything you ever wanted to know about the history of GIFs, how they've evolved, and their cultural impact and significance. From to sites like MakeUseOf, they’re high among the preferred forms of online communication — but, unless you’re able to create your own GIFs, you might find that you’re unable to source the perfect animation to express your innermost thoughts. Luckily, it’s easier than ever before to create GIFs from scratch. These three utilities will get you up and running before you can say With the resurgence of the Graphics Interchange Format in its animated incarnation, the HOT debate about how to pronounce that gem of an acronym has also come to the front again.

There are two fighters. LICEcap is about as barebones as it gets when it comes to GIF recorders. When you open the utility up, you’ll only see a few bits of extra information accompanying the area that you’re going to record; the max FPS of the resulting GIF, its length and width in pixels, and the all-important record button.

You can use the size fields to make precise adjustments to the You can use a screen recorder to create tutorials, document bugs for troubleshooting, or track unsolicited activity on your desktop in your absence. Choose from one of our recommended tools. — alternatively, dragging the edges of the window works too. When you have things set up as required, press Record to start capturing your GIF. While LICEcap is recording, you can either click Stop to end your GIF and save it to a specified folder, or click Pause and then Insert to add text frames. When you’re ready to graduate onto something with a bit more complexity than LICEcap, Quickly make an animated GIF of anything.

GifCam is a free, portable app for Windows that provides you with a simple frame. Resize and position it, then hit record - everything that happens within that. Its basic functionality will be very easy to grasp, if you have already used LICEcap. Press Rec to start capturing your GIF, then press Stop if you want to pause or bring your recording to an end.

Once your work is done, click Save and you can select where you want to store your animation. However, this is just GifCam at its simplest. Using the dropdown options present on the Rec and Save buttons gives you much more control over your GIFs. Click on Rec to tweak the framerate to your specifications and alter settings like cursor visibility.

Best Gif Creator App For Mac

The Save dropdown allows you to preview your file and select between varying levels of image quality. During a preview, the animation’s file size will be presented next to the current quality setting. The Edit button opens your recording in a frame-by-frame view where you can adjust finer details. You can add text, Wouldn't it be cool if we could use this green screen effect for a live broadcast - like on Google Hangouts, or Skype? 'Yes indeed it would be, James' is the answer you're looking for. To help smooth out the animation, and even add mirrored frames to allow your animation to play back and forth. The Edit interface is a great help if you’re attempting to make GIFs that loop.

Here’s a handy tip to avoid frustration when you’re working with GifCam; if you need to create more than one GIF, make sure you use the New command from the Rec dropdown after every capture. Otherwise, you’ll end up with one unwieldy animation that compiles all the footage you recorded, rather than separate files. Unlike LICEcap and GifCam, ScreenToGif doesn’t initialize straight into a capture window.

Instead, you’ll be given four choices. Recorder will be the most familiar, as it operates in much the same way as the other utilities we’ve looked at, but even it offers up a few more customization options.

The framerate and window size tools are fairly self-explanatory, but the crop symbol to the left of the settings icon is the really useful gadget. By clicking on it and dragging your cursor to another window, you can force ScreenToGif to snap its capture window to that size. The Webcam mode works much the same way, but using the video feed from your webcam as its source. The Board option allows you to draw freely, capturing frames automatically as you go — this means that you don’t have to worry about starting and stopping the recording, you can focus on your content. Board mode is excellent for Diagrams and charts are not solely the domain of office workers and people in the business world. These six free online tools give you the power of instant visualization., but it’s also a lot of fun to mess around with.

However, it’s the Editor mode that gives ScreenToGif the biggest edge over its rivals. This section of the utility goes far beyond the editing capabilities of GifCam, providing unparalleled control over your finished product from within the tool itself. You can scribble over individual frames, add a watermark, and even take advantage of built-in transition effects. If you’re set on creating the GIF from start to finish with one tool, ScreenToGif is definitely the correct choice — although you would of course have even more control by Photoshop is the most popular image editing app out there and GIMP is the best free alternative to it. Which should you use?

To make edits on a frame-by-frame basis. Do you have tips for other readers on how to capture the most effective GIFs?

Or are you looking to get some help with your own project? Either way, feel free to join the conversation in the comments section below. Explore more about:,.

Everyone has a few favorite GIFs, go-to images to share on the family text chain or in the Slack channels where the boss isn't lurking. While it might be funny to send that favorite GIF again, why not try your hand at personalizing your own homemade version? Whether it's a funny video you captured or a quick reaction selfie, it's time to put yourself out there with your GIFs. As a general rule, you'll have lots of options to choose from in creating your own GIFs if you get yourself in the habit of shooting short videos with your phone.

Mobile photographers can still explore GIF making through burst photos, or use of Apple's Live Photo options on newer phones. Anything that produces a burst of photos in short succession can be made into a GIF, though the resulting animation will usually be a little less smooth than utilizing a video source. As GIFs have grown in popularity, even stodgy old text message chains are coming to life with moving images. GIF maker apps now offer a wide variety of features and many are experimenting with augmented reality inspired add ons like moving stickers and background animation. We played with dozens of GIF-making apps, took lots of videos and selfies, and can recommend the following easy-to-use solutions to create your first animated masterpiece.