GIFs are everywhere. The once-humble animated image is now the unofficial language of the web. GIFs are the quickest way to express an emotion on Twitter, and you can waste hours watching them on Reddit and Facebook.

There are loads of places to find GIFs, but nothing beats making your own. You can create an animated GIF in Photoshop by converting videos or using a series of static images. Let's take a look at how to do both.

Make a GIF in Photoshop From a Video

There are lots of ways to convert a video to a GIF, and it's also very easy to create a GIF in Photoshop using one of your own movies.

Start by going to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers. You don't need to create a new file first. Select your video and click Open.

make gif in photoshop from video

In the dialog box that follows, you can choose whether to import the entire video or only a select portion. If you opt for the latter, drag the trim handles beneath the preview window inwards to set new start and end points. Everything between these handles will be imported; everything outside discarded.

Bear in mind that the more video you import, the larger your resulting GIF will be.

make gif in photoshop from video

If you're importing a large clip, selecting Limit to Every 2 Frames (or more) is a simple way of reducing the size without affecting quality too much. Don't cut too many frames, though, or you won't end up with a smooth GIF.

Make sure Make Frame Animation is checked, then click OK. The video will start importing. It may take a while depending on how large it is. When it's done, you'll have a new image file, where each frame of the video is placed on its own layer.

At the bottom of the screen is the Timeline palette. This shows all the frames that will make up your GIF, which each frame corresponding to a different layer in the image.

make gif in photoshop from video

You can add or remove frames or edit any of the existing layers just as you would a normal layer on any other image. But for a straight export of a video to a GIF, simply hit the Play button at the bottom for a preview. When you're happy, you're ready to save the GIF.

How to Export a GIF in Photoshop

Go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy). In the box that opens, set the format to GIF, Colors to 256, and reduce the Image Size to something smaller as a way of keeping the overall file size down.

export gif in photoshop

You can see how large your resulting file will be in the bottom left of the Preview window. If it's too big, drag the Lossy slider to the right. This will affect the quality, but also reduce the file size significantly.

save gif in photoshop

Finally, hit Save to export your animated GIF.

Related: How to Make a GIF From a Video

Create a GIF in Photoshop Using Still Images

If you don't have a video to use, you can create a GIF manually from a series of static images. There are apps to help you animate photos on your phone, and you can also do it in Photoshop.

You make your GIF from a single image file containing several layers, and the layers are used to provide the content for each frame of your animation. There are two ways to get started.

If you've already made the images for your animation, import them by going to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack.

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Click Browse, select all the images you need, and hit OK. Each image will then be placed on its own individual layer within the same file.

Alternatively, if you haven't already made the images, do so now. Remember that each part of the animation should go on its own layer.

Edit an Animated GIF in Photoshop

Here's how it works:

  • When you manually create a frame in the animation, every layer in your image that is set to Visible will be included in that frame.
  • Layers set to Hidden won't be included in the frame.

You create your animation by showing or hiding different layers within the image for each frame.

So, for the first frame you might want to set the background layer to Visible and all the other layers to Hidden. Then, in the second frame you might want to make the second layer visible, and then the third layer in the third frame, and so on. It'll become clear once you get started.

First, go to Window > Timeline. In the center of the panel that opens, click Create Frame Animation. This creates the first frame of your animation. In the Layers palette, hide the layers you don't want to be part of this frame by unchecking the Eye icons.

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Now click the New Frame button, which will duplicate the previous frame. Once again, hide the layers you don't want to include in this new frame and make visible the ones that you do.

animated gif photoshop instructions

Repeat this process until you've added all the frames you need in your GIF.

animated gif photoshop instructions

Set the Frame Rate and Make a Looping GIF

To finish off, set the Frame Delay—this is, in effect, the frame rate. Click the first frame, then Shift-click the last frame.

Now, click the dropdown arrow beneath one of the frames and select a delay. No delay means the animation will run through rapidly, while a specific number of seconds means each frame will stay on screen for that length of time.

animated gif photoshop instructions

Finally, set the Looping Options, which you'll find at the bottom of the Timeline panel. It sets how many times the GIF will play. In most cases, you'll want to set it to Forever.

animated gif photoshop instructions

Now hit the Play button at the bottom of the screen to preview your GIF. You should now see your animated GIF in action.

animated gif photoshop instructions

You can edit frames just by selecting them and adjusting which layers are visible (you can also adjust the opacity or make other more advanced tweaks). Add more layers if you need them, or hit the Trash Can icon to delete them.

When you're happy, you can skip ahead to the Export a GIF section. Or read on to refine the animation and create a smooth GIF.

Advanced Animations With Tweening

Photoshop supports a powerful animation feature called tweening. This enables you to create smooth GIF animations by automatically generating transitional frames between two existing frames.

For example, say you wanted a layer to fade in. You would create one frame with that layer set to Hidden, and another with it set to Visible. Then you would "tween" between those two frames, and Photoshop does the rest.

In our example, we're going to tween between all the frames to give our starry sky more of a twinkling effect.

First, select the first frame and click the Tween button on the toolbar at the bottom of the Timeline panel.

advanced animated gif photoshop instructions

In the dialog box that opens, set Tween with to Next Frame, and Frames to Add to the number of transitional frames you want. A higher number means a smoother but slower effect. Click OK to generate the new frames.

advanced animated gif photoshop instructions

Now repeat the process for the other original frames you created. When you get the last one you may want to set Tween with to First Frame. This helps create a smooth transition back to the start of a looping GIF.

advanced animated gif photoshop instructions

Hit the Play button to preview the effect.

Export a GIF in Photoshop

When you're finished, you should first save your file in the PSD format. This will save all the layer and animation information so you can come back and edit it later on if you need to. After that, you can export it as a GIF.

Go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy). In the dialog box that opens, make sure the format is set to GIF, and the Colors option is set to 256 (this ensures maximum quality).

save animated gif in photoshop

Other settings you may want to change include the Image Size and Looping Options if you didn't do that before.

The preview window shows what size the file will be when you save it. You can also click the Preview button to test the animation in a browser window. Finally, click Save to save and export your GIF.

save animated gif in photoshop

Create and Edit GIFs in Photoshop

It's pretty easy to make a GIF in Photoshop, and it's worth doing because it gives you complete control over the result.

And if you don't have Photoshop, don't worry. There are plenty of less expensive editors that have GIF-making functionality as well.