Best Free GIF Animator

We have seen many image file types, but probably the most popular and widely used ones on the Web are JPG, PNG and GIF formats. Among these three formats, GIF is the only file type that supports animation.

A GIF file can contain a single image, but an animated GIF file will need to have two or more images or frames combined, with each of them to be displayed for a few centi-seconds successively.

Making an animator GIF file is much easier than you would think with help of a GIF animator. You take a couple of images you like, put them in sequence, the animator will then combine them into one GIF file, together with your settings for the frame rate, looping, repeat and so on.

On the right is an animated GIF image of Newton's Cradle, comprising 36 frames and each showing up for about 2 to 5 centi-seconds. It's certainly more impressive than a static image if motions are needed in an image to convey more vivid messages to readers.

With one of these free GIF animators in this review, hopefully you'll find it handy for creating an animated GIF file for yourself too.

GIF Animator for Photos or Images

Photoscape is an image suite which comprises of a photo editor, GIF animator, image converter, splitter, photo layout, screen capture, color picker and other tools. The GIF editor included in the suite impressed me with its clear interface, ease of use, intuition and good features.

On the Animated GIF tab, you can select a few photos or images in various formats and drag them to the center panel, your animated GIF is then live and instantly displayed for you. Click the save button, give a file name and the animated GIF file is done.

On the frame strip, you can re-order the frames by drag and drop, or right-click a frame to change its display time. On the right panel, you can also adjust the canvas size, background color and photo alignment.

You can even change the transition effect to sliding a frame and the program will automatically add necessary frames to that effect for you, but of course this will increase the GIF file size.

If you think that's overkill to download a large program for just a GIF animator, then Microsoft GIF Animator is a good alternative.

From your file folder you can drag and drop multiple GIF files to the frame panel, then select looping and repeat, and set delay duration to each frame before saving to a new animated GIF file.

You can also easily re-order frames by pressing the up/down buttons. If you need more advanced features, settings are available for animation width and height, border, undraw method, transparency and so on.

That said, I find the user interface of the program rather small and its window cannot be maximized. It can be frustrating for users who are working on a GIF file consisting of more frames.

NB This program is no longer available from the Microsoft Download Center but is available at third party download sites.

GIF Animator for Icon Images

Besides the above programs, if you're looking for software which is designed for working with icons and would like to create animated icon images, Greenfish Icon Editor Pro is worth a try. It is designed for dealing with icon images, and treats adding new images as adding a new icon frame to an animated GIF.

Stick Figure Animator

And for a great deal of fun, try Pivot Stickfigure Animator, a simple stick figure animation program for you to create an animated GIF by moving sections of the standard stick figure. See this article A Free Animation Utility That can be Used by the Non-Artistic by Gizmo for more details.

Online GIF Animators

These are online GIF animators which allow you to upload images to create and download the animated GIF file, without the need to install any program.

• Picasion allows you to create an animated GIF file comprising of up to 10 images that you upload. Within just a few minutes you can then post it to a website or save it to your computer. Basic features are available for setting a frame size up to 450 pixels and a frame rate from slow to fast.
• GifNinja and Gickr are also other alternatives but with some restrictions such as allowing fewer frames or imposing watermarks.

• GiftedMotion, a small Java program in only 68 KB and is good for running on multi platforms. Multiple images need to be loaded in one go and they can't be separately added under the current version 1.21.
• UnFreez is a small program for creating animated GIF files but is short of more advanced features.
• Gimp, a free software raster graphics editor good for image editing and retouching. Using this as an animator requires you to go through a steep learning curve; think of every layer as an animation frame.

You might want to check out these articles too:

• Best Free Photo Slideshow Software
• Best Free Digital Image Editor
• Best Free Vector Graphics Editor
• Best Free Icon Editor and Replacer
• Best Free Web-Based Image Editor

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