Your ultimate guide to GIFs: How to create them, when to use them and why they’re essential for marketing

GIFs are great.

And they’re everywhere.

We use them at Buffer in our customer service tweets, our emails, our Slack channel. We include GIFs in marketing emails and team announcements. Anywhere there’s a message; there’s the chance for a GIF.

And what’s more, we’ve found GIFs get great results! GIFs in tweets are one of our top tips for more Twitter engagement. One of our most popular transactional emails we send to customers features a GIF.

Want to know how to create GIFs yourself? And know when and where to share them?

We’ve collected all the best tools, tips, and tricks for an A+ GIF game. Take a look at the list here, and feel free to leave a comment with anything more we can add or help with!

What we’ll share in this post:

In this article, we’ll give you all you need on how to start making the most impact with GIFs, including:

1. How to create your own GIFs
2. Where to find brilliant pre-made GIFs
3. When to use GIFs in your marketing

Let’s start with a quick guide on some of the best tools available to create your own GIFs…

9 simple apps and tools for creating your own GIFs in minutes

How to create GIFs from video

1. Gifs.com

If you’re looking to create a GIF from a YouTube video, Instagram post or Vine, Gifs.com is the perfect tool.

With Gifs.com, all you need to do is paste the URL of the video you’d like to convert to a GIF, and you’re all set. The app features a range of great editing tools as well, including the ability to add captions and crop the image.

2. Giphy GIF Maker

Giphy is home to one of the internet’s biggest GIF collections (more on that a little further below), but it also has some brilliant GIF making tools. The first of which, GIF Maker, enables you to create GIFs directly from video files or YouTube links.

To use GIF Maker, simply paste a video URL or upload a video file, and you’ll then be able to create a GIF and edit it within Giphy’s simple-to-use interface. With GIF Maker, you can choose the point in the video from which you’d like the GIF to start, choose the duration, and add a caption.

Once you’re happy with the way your GIF feels, click ‘Create GIF’ and it’ll be added to Giphy ready to share across any social network.

How to stitch together photos

3. Giphy Slideshow

Slideshow, another tool made by Giphy, enables you to combine your pictures and GIFs to create animated GIF slideshows.

To get started with Slideshow, you first need to choose the still images or GIFs you’d like to use(you can combine both stills and GIFs). Then, once your images are uploaded you can choose the order in which they should appear in your GIF and the length of time the still images will appear in your slideshow before going to the next image.

4. Gifmaker.me

Gifmaker.me is a great free tool that allows you to create animated gifs and slideshows from images. Gifmaker features a useful ‘Control Panel’ allowing you to customize your GIF by changing the canvas size, speed of transitions and the number of times the GIF should repeat.

5. Imgflip

Imgflip is similar to Gifmaker.me and enables you to create a GIF from multiple images and also turn video into a GIF. Imgflip allows you to edit your GIF, too, by adding text, changing the delay and toggling with the image size. To export your final GIF without a watermark, you’ll need to be a Pro member, though.

How to edit a GIF

6. GIF Editor

Giphy’s GIF Editor is a brilliant tool to edit and enhance pre-existing GIFs. The free-to-use product provides you with the opportunity to add animated stickers, fun filters, and captions to your GIFs.

To start editing a GIF, simply choose a GIF to edit by entering a GIF URL or any Giphy link or by uploading an image file from your computer. Once your GIF is ready for editing you can choose to add any stickers from Giphy’s library and choose from a wide range of filters (such as inverting your GIF or making it black and white), before adding a caption and exporting the finished item.

How to create a screencast GIF

7. CloudApp

Sometimes it can be super-useful to create GIFs directly from your computer screen. This technique is great to give tutorials or walk-throughs on how to use a product and also extremely handy for customer service.

CloudApp is incredibly useful and amazingly simple. It allows you to take screen recordings, annotate images, record webcam videos and much more – it’s my go-to app for GIFs.

Once you have CloudApp installed, you can record screencasts, download them as GIFS and even share them with a unique URL generated for each recording you make.

8. Recordit

Similar to CloudApp, Recordit allows you to select a section of your screen and create a GIF in seconds. Also like Cloud App, it’s a bit of software that you install to your computer (available for Windows and Mac). You can see from the GIF above how quick and easy it is to use.

9. Sir Gifs A Lot 

Sir Gifs A Lot is a Slack-based app that lets you create GIFs from your webcam. Once you’ve connected the app to your Slack, you can create a recording by simply typing /gifalot. This is one of our favorite Slack integrations and provides us we a great way to have a bit of fun together.

Bonus tutorial: How to make GIFs in Photoshop

Creating GIFs in Photoshop takes a little more time than any of the other apps and products we’ve mentioned so far, but it also gives you the most freedom to create exactly what you’re looking for.

Here’s an example of a GIF we made in Photoshop using the technique we’ll explain below:

Step 1: Load images into Photoshop

If you already have a sequence of images ready

GIFs are made up of a series of images (or frames), and if you already have a bunch of images you’d like to turn into a GIF, open Photoshop, the select File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack. Then select ‘Browse’ and choose which files you’d like to include within your GIF.

(P.S. This GIF was created using CloudApp, mentioned above)

If you don’t have an image sequence ready

If you don’t have a pre-made sequence of images you’d like to use, you can create a set of new layers within Photoshop to act as the frames in your GIF. To add a new layer to your Photoshop project, chose Layer > New > Layer.

When all your layers are ready, it’s time to move onto Step 2 and create your animation.

Step 2: Create your animation

To create a GIF, you need a Timeline. A Timeline will help you organize your images into a flowing animation ready to export as a GIF. To get started with your Timeline, click Window > Timeline.

You’ll then see a Timeline appear at the bottom of your screen.

Next, you need to create your animation. To do this, click ‘Create Frame Animation’ within your Timeline and then click the menu in the right-hand corner of your Timeline and choose ‘Make Frames From Layers.’

Now that all of your frames are in place, it’s a good idea to run through your animation by hitting the Play button in the bottom left of your Timeline. If any frames are out of place, you can drag and drop them to a new position in the Timeline.

Step 3: Export your GIF

Once you’re happy with the way your GIF is looking, it’s time to export it for use on your website, social media profiles, or anywhere you’d like to share it. To export your GIF, click File >Export > Save for Web (Legacy).

You’ll now see the ‘Save for Web’ window, and this is where you can choose the type of GIF you’d like to create. You can see all of the available options by clicking Presets. The choices include GIF 32, GIF 64 and GIF 128 – you can also choose Dithered or No Dither. The number after the GIF indicates the number of colors that’ll be included in your GIF and including Dither helps to alleviate color banding.

How to convert a video into a GIF using Photoshop

Photoshop can also help you convert a video into a GIF by transforming each frame of the video into a frame within Photoshop. To import a video, click File > Import > Video Frames to Layers. You’ll then have the option to choose how much of the video you import and whether you’d like to pull in every frame (for longer GIFs, importing every other frame should be sufficient quality).

Once you’ve imported your video, you can add text, captions and edits within Photoshop and then follow Step 3 above to export your GIF.

5 must-visit websites to find the perfect pre-made GIF

There are tons of GIF resources out there; here are just a few of our favorites:

1. Buffer Mood Board

There’s a chance we’re a tiny bit partial to our own resource, the Buffer Mood Board. Find positive, safe-for-work GIFs for specific occasions like hello, thank you, goodbye and more.

And then share them directly from Buffer in one easy step!

We’re particularly excited to share the Mood Board as it comes along with our announcement that you can now share and schedule GIFs from the Buffer dashboard or extension!

2. Giphy

With tons of GIFs and GIFs alone, a great search function and pre-selected categories, Giphy is the gold standard of GIF finding.

3. Google image search

Perhaps the best-known place to search for anything — including GIFs — is Google. To include only GIF images in your search, navigate to an image search and then use the search tools to choose animated images under “Type”.

4. Tumblr

Tumblr is often Ground Zero for GIF culture and finding the memes of tomorrow before they blow up. Explore all GIFs here, or search for a specific GIF type using the Tumblr search bar.

5. Imgur

You never quite know what you’re going to find on Imgur, a viral photo, video, and GIF hub that gets over 150 million monthly visitors.

Try your luck with the site’s grab bag of new and viral GIFs here, or search by topic or activity.

A quick note of caution: If you or your company is in a highly regulated area or might be a bit wary of using copyrighted work in your social sharing, it might be worthwhile to consider the risk attached to using GIFs. Never fear, though—you can still make your own GIFs!

When to use GIFs and why they’re essential for every marketer

1. Use GIFs to show your brand’s personality

Social media is fun—why else would we spend so much time on it? Brands who manage to stay human and share authentically can create a deep and special relationship with their audience, and funny/weird/endearing GIFs can be a part of that.

Who’s using it? Denny’s has built a devoted fan base by being just a bit “out there” with its social media presence, including wacky but mesmerizing GIFs like this one.

2. Use GIFs to show off a product

Want to give your audience a closer look at your product? GIFs can show off the kind of details and motion that can entice shoppers.

Gladiators Are Back and Sneakers Are Here to Stay: A Look at Spring’s Two Hottest Shoes http://t.co/pkP8k27U0r pic.twitter.com/jlMoN5z8Ph

— Marie Claire (@marieclaire) August 16, 2015