Whether you pronounce it “gif” or the wrong way, you can’t deny that these short,
soundless, moving pictures have become a staple of modern communication.
What’s more satisfying than finding the perfect gif to respond with?
Making your own.
In this video, I’ll show you a free and easy way to level up your gif game and make
your own custom gifs.
Let’s get into it.
To start off, you do need some type of device, like a phone, tablet, or PC, that can record
video or screen capture.
Most operating systems either have those features built in or have free apps you can download.
For the examples in this video, I’m going to use the video camera on my iPhone and the
built in screen recording function on my Mac.
First, let’s make a gif on mobile.
My brother just sent me a text message asking if I liked the Harry and David’s gift sampler
he sent me for Christmas.
Of course I did.
In fact, I liked it so much, I want to respond with a custom gif.
The Giphy app for iOS and Android is a free gif library that also allows you to record
and save custom gifs.
Using the app, I’m going to click create in the upper right hand corner.
Now I’m going to press and hold the center button to record.
I’m going to crop it down to a square by clicking the crop button in the upper right
and selecting 1:1.
From here I can reposition the picture and then click the check Mark.
Now I want to add a bit of text, so I’m going to click the text button, type in my
text, click done, and reposition the text so it looks just right.
Now that my gif is done, I’ll click the purple arrow on the bottom right.
Now I’ll click share gif, and save gif.
Now the custom gif is in my photo library and I can text it to my brother.
Next, I’ll show you how to make a gif on desktop.
I just got a notification on Slack that one of my coworkers got a promotion.
I want to congratulate her with a gif from her favorite classic 90s movie, Tremors.
First, I’m gonna search for the clip I want to grab on YouTube, then I’m gonna screen
capture while I play it.
If you’re on a Mac, you can screen capture by pressing the command, option, and 5 keys.
Choose “record selected portion”, resize the window to fit the capture area, check
your options to make sure the video downloads where you want it to, and then press record.
Once you’ve finished recording, press the stop button in the toolbar.
To convert this video to a gif, we’re going to go to ezgif.com.
From the homepage, I’m going to choose “video to gif,” click “choose file” to select
my screen capture, and then click upload video.
The video I captured is longer than I want the finished gif to be, so I’m going to
click play, and then drag the playhead to where I want the gif to start, and then next
to “start time” I’ll click use current position.
I’ll repeat this for the End time.
In the next section are options to adjust the size, framerate, and rendering method.
You can leave these for now.
Then click Convert to gif and enjoy the swaying cat while you wait for your gif to render.
Now that my gif is done rendering, I want to make some adjustments to lower the file
size and make it easier to share.
First, I’m going to crop the image by clicking the crop button.
I’m going to choose square, resize and reposition the crop, and then click ok.
Now I’m going to resize the gif by clicking resize.
I only need to put in the width and it will automatically adjust the height.
A good standard width is 480 pixels.
Now I’ll click ok.
I want to add some text, so I’m going to click the “Write” tool below the gif preview.
Ill type my text into the first box and click “set” You can drag your text to position
it where you’d like it to be in the frame.
The text is automatically set to the full duration of the gif, so I’ll scroll to the
bottom and click ok.
The file size is still a bit too large, I want to try to bring it down below 1 megabyte,
so I’m going to click optimize gif.
You can experiment with the slider until you are able to bring the file size down without
losing too much quality.
Now my gif is finished!
I’m going to click the save button and save the gif to my computer so I can upload it
in Slack and congratulate my coworker.
And that’s it.
Custom gifs can have many applications.
You can use them to demonstrate how to use your product, as a part of a marketing campaign,
or even as a way to add a little fun to your communications with your customers.
How will you use custom gifs?
Let us know in the comments.
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Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.