Oct 09, 2011 Mac OS X Tutorials and App reviews from HowTech 102,015 views 1:44 How to convert.GIF into video formats like MP4 MOV AVI WMV (FREE) (No Software needed) - Duration: 2:09. Jan 12, 2019 What a great piece of expert advice. Key to the whole thing for Mac Users is this: Open up the “Terminal” app, copy and paste the command above (being sure to replace the URL with that of the GIF that you want) into the “Terminal” app, then hit enter.
If you want to start making your own GIFs and join the ranks of other high-class internet users, here’s how to make GIFs on Mac.
You can’t go a day without seeing an animated GIF on the internet — they’re becoming extremely popular. Whether it’s a funny GIF of a cat or a reaction GIF to get your emotions across digitally, GIFs are a staple of today’s internet.
While you can find a GIF for pretty much any situation, there are times where you wish you had a very specific GIF in mind, and this is where making your own GIF can come in handy.
Read: How to Post GIFs on Facebook
However, before we get into the creative process of making a GIF, it’s important to know what a GIF is.
What Is a GIF?
It’s likely you stumbled upon this post maybe having a good idea of what a GIF is and just wanted to learn how to make them yourself, or you could be someone who’s new to the internet and aren’t quite sure what exactly a “GIF” is. Don’t worry, we’re here to help.
GIF is actually just an image file format, just like .JPG or .PNG, so you could see an image called “josh-funny-face.gif” and it could be a still image rather than a GIF that you’re probably used to seeing.
However, an “animated GIF” is a moving image that uses the .GIF file extension, as it’s one of the very few file extensions that can support moving images.
An animated GIF is nothing more than a short video that loops over and over again, and it essentially just takes the many still frames of that video and flashes each one for a split second, creating the illusion that you’re watching a video. It’s really the same concept as a flip book, and flip books could even be considered real-life animated GIFs in a way.
The reason why most people call “animated GIFs” just plain “GIFs” is that most images using the .GIF file extension are animated anyway, so it’s just easier to say “GIFs.” However, it’s important to know that .GIF is simply just another image file format, just like any other file format.
How to Make GIFs on Mac
There are many ways to make your own GIFs, and there are even online tools that make it easy to do.
Imgur and Giphy (two very popular image hosting sites that host a lot of GIFs) both have online tools for easily creating GIFs of your own.
Imgur’s tool simply allows you to paste in a video URL from YouTube or another video site and it will create a GIF out of the video.
Giphy’s tool is a bit more feature-filled, allowing you to enter in a video URL or even upload your own video file from your computer. You can even edit when you want the GIF to start and stop within the video.
If you want more control over how you create GIFs, you can use various Mac software.
GifGrabber is one option that some of us at Notebooks.com enjoy. Personally, I like using GIF Brewery, as it’s pretty feature-filled and lets you do a whole lot of stuff. There is a slight learning curve, and it’s likely you’ll never know what every single feature does, but that’s not too important to know.
To start, open up GIF Brewery and then drag and drop a video onto the dock icon. You can also click on the dock icon and use Finder to locate a video to open.
From here, the video will open in GIF Brewery and you can begin making your GIF. You can use the scrub bar at the bottom to scrub through the video and find the specific place that you want to make your GIF. In my GIF, I’ll be making a GIF of Scully giving a thumbs up in an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
When you’re scrubbing through the video to find a specific point, you can also use the arrow keys to go forward a frame or backward a frame to get an exact segment of the video.
When you find the point where you want your GIF to start, click on Set Start. Then, when you find the point where you want your GIF to stop, click on Set End. In the lower-right corner, it’ll say how long the GIF will be, in seconds.
You can then use the various tools at the top to crop, resize or add text to your GIF. When you’re done, click on GIF Properties.
Place a checkmark next to Automatically Calculate Count & Delay and change Frames Per Second to 24. You could get away with a lower number, which makes the file size smaller (that’s a good thing), but you risk making your GIF look choppy. 24 is ideal for a smooth-playing GIF.
Next, close out of GIF Properties and then click on Create GIF. This will create a preview of your GIF and tell you how big the file size is. If you’re happy, go ahead and click Save.
You can then upload the GIF to Imgur or whatever image hosting service you prefer and you’ll be off to the races!
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GIFs have got a huge craze today! I love to share them with my friends to express various shades of emotions. That apart, they can be used for the promotion of brands and products as well. For instance, you can highlight your key products, simulate products’ demos and draw attention to call to actions. Want to get into action right away? Glance through this exclusive set of the best apps to create GIFs on Mac to take your penchant for those hilarious images to an altogether new level.
There are many ways to be creative with animated GIFs. You can create memes, record videos or images and convert them into funny GIFs. With the help of a number of editing tools, you will be able to give a preferred look to your comical images. Looking forward to exploring these top GIF creator apps for Mac? Let me walk along with you as well!
Best Apps to Create GIF on Mac in 2020
#1. Giphy Capture
Giphy Capture is the simplest yet powerful app. If you want to create a short and sweet animated GIF then, you can definitely go with this app. It helps you capture videos/images up to 30 seconds.
Giphy Capture offers super easy editing features. Pick any loop and adjust it to the frame. Moreover, you can give animated captions to add style to your GIF. This will make your GIF more attention-grabbing.
Price: Free
Download
#2. CloudApp
CloudApp performs exactly what it says. Creating GIFs with it is very easy. Its simple interface will let you convert video clips and annotated images into incredible GIFs.
CloudApp will allow you to modify size, frame delay, sequence, effects and more. Once you create GIFs, save it on your Mac. Later, share those beautiful GIFs on online platforms.
Price: Free (CloudApp Pro Monthly – $8.99)
Download
#3. GIF Keyboard
Simply put, “GIF Keyboard” has you fully covered with a wide variety of GIFs like reactions, music, funny and more. You can browse through the entire collection and choose the ones that seem perfect for your message. Oh yeah, it also features tons of trending GIFs so that your messaging time remains in the top gear.
You can use the app to save your favorite GIFs. If you want to create a special collection, you would really appreciate this feature. That aside, you will be able to use it with several apps including iMessage, Slack, Telegram, Facebook, Reddit and more.
Price: Free
Download
#4. GIF Brewery
Bringing stunning GIFs to the world. GIF Brewery is a powerful app that converts video files to incredible GIFs. You need to make a screen recording or import videos. Apply a few editing features.
Resize, crop and set frame rate – count – delay as you want. To make images look more attractive, you can use filters like color, captions and more. Your own GIF is ready to be saved and shared.
Price: Free
Download
#5. Cinemagraph Pro
If you are looking for a powerful app to create genuinely unique GIFs, take a look at Cinemagraph Pro. It turns a full-motion video into an animated image. It also gives you control and lets you choose what moves and what does not. Using this, you can create various kinds of GIFs, like one with water waves hitting the shore, but people on the beach are motionless.
When you launch the app for the first time, you are walked through an impressive tutorial, that shows you how to make the best of it. Apart from these, Cinemagraph Pro has several different tools that take your image to the next level. Give this one a green signal.
Price: Free (Solo – $4.99)
Download
#6. PicGIF Lite
Like creating GIFs? If yes, “PicGIF Lite” would be a great addition to your collection.
What I like a lot about this app is that it makes creating GIFs from photos and videos pretty simple. As this app works with several images and video formats like JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PNG, TGA, RAW, PIC, MOV, MPEG, MP4, M4V, 3GP, AVI etc, you will be able to design GIFs with ease.
You can set FPS or frame delay to perfectly fine tune the animation speed and also adjust the size of the GIFs. Moreover, PicGIF Lite lets you share your creation via iMessage, Tumblr and email as well.
Price: Free
Download
#7. Smart GIF Maker
Smart GIF Maker is such a cool app, helping you modify GIFs in a better way. Built with the simple user interface, Smart GIF Maker lets you add/delete frames and photos. You can set the GIFs loop counts and frame duration.
Simply, drag and drop images to frames. You can even change the order of frames. Once saved, you can export or share GIFs with your colleagues, friends, and family.
Price: Free (Watermarks – $1.99)
Download
How To Download A Gif From Giphy On Mac
#8. Gifable – GIF Screen Recorder
In just three easy steps, you can create hilarious GIFs on your Mac, all thanks to Gifable – screen recorder app. After clicking on the Gifable icon and dragging your mouse over the area to record, the app will automatically start recording.
This app is a perfect tool for bloggers, social media influencers, marketers, and people who create tutorials for followers. Before you can share your creation, you get a chance to see the preview of the GIF. For quick and easy copy-paste, you can use the clipboard.
Price: $1.99
Download
#9. GIF Live
GIF To Live is an epitome of advancements. It is packed with hi-end features that help you create brilliant GIFs. You can easily convert GIF and video to GIFs within a few clicks.
Its innovative frame organizer helps you create out of the box animations. You can drag and drop animations according to frames. Besides this, you can reverse animations and custom layouts to make it more personalized. Want to try this custom-built app? Go ahead, get the most out of its elegant features!
Price: $2.99
Download
#10. Ezgif
Unlike above listed Mac apps, Ezgif is an online GIF converter. It allows you to go with basic edits like crop, resize, optimize and more. You can even split and merge multiple GIFs in one frame.
You can capture up to 400 photos and videos to create GIFs. The app has the file-size limit of 30 MB. However, you won’t be able to host images or videos hence, ensure that you download GIFs once they are prepared.
Price: Free
Try It
That’s all, mate!
Over To You!
How To Download Gif Files
Have you liked these finest GIF creator apps for Mac? May I know the name of apps that are going to liven up your messaging time? Feel free to let us know their names and the features you have liked in them.
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Jignesh Padhiyar is the co-founder of iGeeksBlog.com who has a keen eye for news, rumors and all the unusual stuff that happens around Apple products. During his tight schedule, Jignesh finds some moments of respite to share side-splitting contents on social media.
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