GIF Maker

GIF maker (from images): how it works

Stitches a set of still images, in the order you add them, into one animated GIF with a frame delay and loop you choose. The encoding happens in your browser with gif.js, which quantizes each frame to a 256-colour palette in a Web Worker.

Input

PNG, JPG, or WebP stills

Default frame delay

300 ms (~3.3 fps)

Default width

480 px (max 1600 px per side)

Colours per frame

Up to 256 (gif.js / NeuQuant)

Looping

Loop forever or play once

What to know about the GIF format here

Because each frame is a full 256-colour image, a 20-frame GIF is roughly 20 stacked pictures — so frame count and width drive the file size far more than the length in seconds does.

Tips for the best result

• The editor defaults to a 300 ms frame delay (about 3.3 frames per second), which suits a step-by-step or before/after; drop it toward 80–100 ms (10–12 fps) for motion that should look fluid.
• Keep the output width modest — around 480 px is plenty for a chat or a post — because halving the width cuts the pixel count (and roughly the file size) to about a quarter.
• Use images that share one width and height; frames of different sizes are scaled to the output width and can letterbox, so crop them to a common size first.
• Turn on dithering (Floyd–Steinberg) only for photographic frames with smooth gradients — it hides colour banding but makes the file noticeably larger; leave it off for flat graphics and text.

When to use this

Reach for this when you already have the individual frames — exported slides, burst photos, a hand-drawn flip, a logo loop — and you want a single looping file you can paste anywhere without a video player.

How GIF files behave

• A GIF stores up to 256 colours per frame from a palette it picks for that frame, so flat graphics, logos, line art, and screen recordings reproduce cleanly, while photographic gradients and skin tones can band or dither.
• GIF compression (LZW) is lossless per frame — it never adds JPEG-style blocky artefacts — but because every frame is essentially a full image, the file grows quickly with more frames, more pixels, and more colours.
• Animation timing is stored as a per-frame delay in hundredths of a second, and looping is set by a small repeat marker (the Netscape extension), which is why a GIF can loop forever on its own with no player controls.
• A GIF has no audio track and no real alpha blending — only a single fully-transparent colour — so it is built for short, silent, looping motion rather than full video; a muted MP4 or WebM is far smaller for anything longer than a few seconds.