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You can adjust color balance and whatnot with Photoshop at this point if you’d like. You can limit the import to every other (or every third, fourth, etc.) frame to make the file smaller, but this will also make the video choppier. You can choose to import the entire video from beginning to end or use sliders to select a smaller portion of the clip. Select the video file you want, and Photoshop will open it as a series of still frames. To do this, navigate to File > Import > Video Frames To Layers. The general rule of thumb is to convey your idea in as few frames as possible. Two or three seconds is great, five is pushing it, and 10 or more is possible with the right chopping, but the file will be large and hard to work with. Trim the footage down to only the length you want the GIF to play. Check out our guide on how to download YouTube videos if you need guidance on ripping footage from the web.
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This can be practically anything, but try to opt for a clip that is not too long, as brevity is key for a good GIF. Step 1: Find a good video sequence on the web that you want to turn into a GIF.
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If you don’t have Photoshop, other programs can give you some of the same functionality, such as GIMP, but if you want to get serious about making GIFs, Photoshop is the way to go. Adobe Photoshop is probably the best software available for making GIFs (or editing images in general). How to make an animated GIF from a video (Photoshop)īefore we jump right into the tutorial, we should address the elephant in the room. No need to worry: This simple tutorial should guide you through the process of making top-notch GIFs, even if we can’t definitively tell you how to pronounce it. But have you ever made your own GIF? You may have ideas for the grandest of GIFs, but maybe you don’t know how to make that dream a reality. Maybe you’ve used a GIF on your phone to send a funny animation to a friend, or you’ve seen them pop up in comments on Facebook. This, of course, only makes the humble GIF even more impressive. It served as an early example of something you could do online that you couldn’t do in print and has survived mostly unchanged since its inception in the late 1980s, remaining popular today despite the dramatic rise in high-quality web video formats. GIFs are modest, generally rendered in low resolution and limited frame rate, yet the format has become a darling of the internet.
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They’re like the flipbooks of the internet - great for conveying thoughts and emotions that words can’t describe, showcasing the antics of your adorable household pets, making abstract art, or giving you a good chuckle. Or maybe 50,000? A million, perhaps? OK, let’s not overanalyze the metaphor! The point is, GIFs are amazing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an animated GIF is worth 10,000.
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