What Is a GIF? A Guide To Creating and Using GIFs (2024)

The world of Harry Potter brims with magical wonders that set it other than our reality. Along with dragons, exploding candy, and flying broomsticks, the wizarding world is blessed with enchanting photographic imagery: In every newspaper the images move.

Back in the actual world, flying broomsticks could also be a bit of far-fetched, but due to the GIF image file format, anyone online can benefit from the magic of animated photos.

What’s a GIF?

GIF stands for “graphics interchange format.” GIFs typically are animated and resemble short, repeating video clips without sound. They’re often shared on social media or embedded in other digital content. There’s no have to press a button—GIFs play mechanically in a continuous loop.

The GIF file format was invented within the late Nineteen Eighties by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite. It was originally designed to make sharing animated images easier by decreasing the file size. GIFs use lossless compression to realize a small file size without sacrificing image quality. As a result of the small size of the image format, GIFs load quickly and play seamlessly in most web browsers, even on mobile devices.

How do you pronounce GIF?

The pronunciation of GIF is a subject of mild debate. Wilhite and his team initially noted that GIF must be pronounced with a soft G, just like the words gerrymander or giraffe. But because the GIF format grew more popular another hard G pronunciation emerged. Today, GIF is often pronounced with a tough G, like goose or giggle.

Why use GIFs?

Incorporating GIFs might help bolster your social media and marketing materials. Listed below are a number of of the precise advantages:

Expression

Adding a GIF to text-based communication is an efficient strategy to lighten the mood or make clear the intended tone behind your message. Animated GIFs can convey emotions like frustration, sarcasm, and excitement, and these moving images are easy to interpret. Including GIFs in your social media and marketing content can add levity to your messaging and establish a powerful brand voice, which can enable you foster relationships together with your audience.

Shareability

Sharing visual content on social media platforms can enable you reach a wider audience and boost your engagement rate. In line with a market data report from independent market research platform Gintux, social media users are 40 times more more likely to share a post if it accommodates imagery. Animated GIF files are especially shareable—their small size allows them to load quickly and play easily.

Cultural commentary

Posting a GIF is a straightforward strategy to take part in web culture. Operating like animated memes, GIFs often feature clips from popular movies, TV shows, and viral videos. Sharing a culturally relevant image can spark recognition that helps users hook up with your content. 

Accessibility

You don’t need a dedicated video team or high-quality equipment to start out making and sharing GIFs. Quite a few free online tools can generate GIFs in seconds, and platforms like GIPHY and EZGif don’t require any editing or coding skills. Making a GIF out of your favorite TV show or YouTube video, for instance, is a straightforward strategy to add visual interest to your content.

Tools for making GIFs

Photo or video professionals may use tools like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Premiere to create GIFs, but image editing skills are under no circumstances a requirement. Many online and app-based GIF creators have easy, user-friendly controls.

To make a GIF, start by choosing or uploading source footage. These tools may require video files, public web videos, or multiple images for GIF generation. They typically accept MOV, GIF, JPG, MPG, WebM, and PNG files.

Consider these tools to start out generating your individual GIFs:

GIPHY

GIPHY is a resource for locating and creating GIFs. After making a free account, upload a file or paste any web link to tug footage from a publicly posted video. Then, move the sliding bars to pick out a video section to convert right into a repeating animation. GIPHY also includes tools that add text, stickers, and premade filters to GIFs. When satisfied together with your GIF, copy a shareable link or download the file to your computer.

For mobile devices, there’s also an app version of GIPHY with native recording capabilities, named GIPHY cam.

EZGif

EZGif is an easy web platform with various GIF-creation features. It’s free to make use of and doesn’t require an account. EZGif offers a video-to-GIF tool, a resizer, an optimizer to diminish file sizes, and a GIF creation tool for creating animations from still images.

Canva

Canva is a graphic design tool that may create GIFs and other image formats. Canva offers an app and a web-based platform with native graphic design tools. This product is particularly well-suited for users who wish to add easy graphics to their GIF images.

Gifstory

GIFstory is a mobile app designed for creating GIFs on the go. You’ll be able to select video clips out of your camera roll or record video footage together with your smartphone using the built-in camera and quickly convert it right into a GIF file. GIFstory includes editing tools for trimming the video clips and adding basic filters.;

use GIFs

You’ll be able to share GIFs on a big selection of platforms. Along with posting on social media, you may embed these image files on web sites, insert them into emails, and share them on messaging apps.

One of the best strategy to use GIFs depends upon your product, audience, and brand identity. Listed below are some popular ways to include GIFs into your online messaging:

Create social media content

GIFs are a well-liked file format on social media platforms including Instagram, X, Threads, and Facebook. Brands often use GIFs to specific emotions and take part in viral social media trends. 

Reply to comments

Replying to comments on social media is an important a part of community management. Responding to social media users helps you form personal connections, boost engagement, and answer customer queries. Using a GIF is a fast strategy to post a reply and express how you are feeling concerning the comment.

Spruce up your emails

GIFs aren’t only for social media. Combining eye-catching visual and written content could make your digital communications more engaging. Adding animation might help break up long blocks of text in marketing emails and encourage customers to maintain reading.

Rejoice

GIFs are sometimes funny and playful. Using GIFs can add humor to your content and showcase your brand’s personality. When sharing humorous GIFs, consider the tone of the imagery and make sure that it aligns together with your brand guidelines.

Showcase your product

You need to use video footage or still images as source material to create a GIF that showcases your product’s best features. Consider embedding this file type in your website or product pages to show your product’s unique appeal. For instance, in the event you sell foldable coffee cups, a GIF can effectively show potential customers the best way to collapse and pack them up.

Educate your customers

Community management often involves customer support elements. Users can leverage social media to achieve out with product questions or comments. Consider creating an informative GIF for a user-friendly strategy to address incessantly asked questions.

For instance, if users have trouble locating a feature inside your product, create an animation demonstrating the best way to access it. Moving imagery could also be easier to grasp than written explanations or a single image. When you’ve created the GIF, you need to use it to reply to questions that arise.