Free GIF Maker Review – Simple Guide to Choose Method to Make GIFs Free of Charge
Last Updated on January 10, 2023 by Peter Wood
When you need to make some high-quality animated GIFs, what are the best free GIF makers on different devices? Whether you need to create animated GIFs from photos, videos, file animations, or even from scratch. Here are the standard for the best free GIF makers as well as 10 toolkits for different platforms you should know.
Part 1: How to Choose the Best Free GIF Maker
Before choosing a free GIF maker, what are the standards you should follow? Since there are dozens of freeware on the website, you cannot download all these programs to make the desired GIF animation. Whether you need to use it on your computers or generate files on smartphones, here are the best choices you should not miss.
Easy User Interface
If you just need to create GIF animations from photos or videos, the easy user interface of the free GIF maker will help you get the desired files easily. Even if you make to get some complicated animated GIFs, some free GIF makers with AI algorithms can remove the background and apply filters before generating stunning animated GIFs.
Functional Diversity
Why should you choose animated GIF instead of video? GIF provides some special filters, which are much better than videos, such as back-and-forth, stop-motion, jitter, wiggle, and more. The basic HSL color correction should be a plus for the free GIF maker. Moreover, you can add stickers and text before generating GIF animation.
Supported Formats
To make an interesting GIF animation, you can insert a photo into a video, combine different animation files, convert funny videos to animated GIFs, or extract the photos from videos, you have to use different file formats, such as JPEG, PNG, GIF, MP4, MOV, and more. It should be better to choose the free GIF makers that support AVIF, WebP, APNG, and more.
Stable and Fast
When you need to export high-quality videos with large file sizes, it should be difficult to import some large videos or a series of photos to a free GIF maker online. Make sure the free toolkit does not have any restrictions for the size or number of photos. Without advanced algorithms, it is hard to export high-quality animated GIFs.
Part 2: The 4 Best Free GIF Makers Online
EZGIF
EZGIF is the most popular free GIF creator and editor, which enable you to make animated GIFs from a series of photos or convert videos into GIFs in a few clicks. Moreover, there are multiple editing features to resize, crop, rotate, and optimize GIFs.
Pros
1. Remove the background of images to generate transparent GIFs.
2. Provide features to compress and resize animated GIFs directly.
3. Edit the photos and videos and enhance the HSL parameters.
Cons
1. Provide file size limitations for both import and output files.
2. Difficult to preview the instant effect and manage the process.
Canva
Canva is another free GIF creation tool to make GIF animations with stickers, text, quirky templates, and more. You can apply transitions, animations, filters, and frames. Moreover, there are media elements from the extensive library that you can use for your animated GIFs.
Pros
1. Custom subtitles, captions, annotations, word animation, etc.
2. Create GIFs from images/animations and capture files in motion.
3. Choose multiple templates and modify themes, colors, and text.
Cons
1. Cannot modify the size of GIFs and provide limited editing tools.
2. Difficult to export high-quality animated GIFs online.
Kawping
Kawping is an online method to create animated GIFs from videos and images. The free GIF maker also enables you to create GIFs with speed adjustments, text, transitions, animations, filters, and instant resizing GIFs online. Moreover, you can remove the image backgrounds.
Pros
1. Provide transitions for stitching photos, such as drop, fade, etc.
2. Adjust the timeline for photos, effects, stickers, watermarks, and more.
3. Create GIF animations for images, videos, and text via templates.
Cons
1. Need to upgrade to remove watermarks for the animated GIF.
2. Limits for file size, project time, GIF resolution, and others.
Flixier
Flixier is a full-fledged video editor and GIF maker. It enables you to add text, sounds, transitions, auto-subtitles, and more to animated GIFs. It enables you to sync the projects in real-time and share files instantly. You can speed up the animation with more than 2 million built-in music.
Pros
1. Add both static and dynamic text with over 2000+ fonts available.
2. Create GIF animations from videos, images, and video URLs.
3. Backup projects on the cloud and access from Windows/Mac/online.
Cons
1. Requires a stable network to sync the files and edit GIFs online.
2. Difficult to master and edit animated GIFs, especially for newbies.
Part 3: The 4 Best Free GIF Makers for Win/Mac
WidsMob GIF
WidsMob GIF is a versatile GIF maker to create animated GIFs from photos, videos, and animated files. It enables you to adjust the HSL color, tweak the GIF size, choose GIF settings, and more. You can add stickers and text with the desired position and curves. Besides, some stunning filters make the animated GIF special. Moreover, it uses advanced algorithms to export the GIF with 20% higher quality than others.
1. Convert photos, videos, and animated files into animated GIFs.
2. Add stickers, text, background color, loop count, GIF filters, etc.
3. Correct media file colors via brightness, contrast, and saturation.
4. Tweak GIF quality, frame rate, GIF size, and scale proportionally.
Step 1: Once you have installed WidsMob GIF, launch the program and click the Photo to GIF button to convert images to GIF animations. Click the Add Frames button and select the desired images in the pop-up dialog box to import the images.
Step 2: When you imported the desired photos, you can adjust the sequence of the images at the bottom with drag-n-drop. Click the Play button to make sure the right sequence. Moreover, you can also correct the colors for photos and videos from Frame Adjustment.
Step 3: Go to the GIF Size menu and click the Options button to select the appropriate option, such as the Twitter button or enter the desired vault of the sizes. Moreover, you can check the Background Color option and select the desired colors accordingly.
Step 4: Click the GIF Settings menu and adjust the slider of Quality to export the animated GIF with the desired quality. Moreover, you can also enter the Loop Count to define the loop time. After the adjustment, click the Export GIF button to save the photo as a GIF animation.
GIMP
GIMP is more than a photo editor you can also use it as a free GIF maker with some basic editing features on Windows and Mac. It provides multiple editing features, like cropping, resizing, flipping, rotating, and changing color modes. Moreover, you can adjust the loop option for the GIFs.
Pros
1. Fine image editing functions to polish the photos for animated GIFs.
2. Provide a simplified operation process to have better image editing.
3. Choose delay or disposal for all photo frames of the GIF animation.
Cons
1. It should be too difficult to generate photos into GIFs for beginners.
2. The presentation of images is not intuitive and difficult to understand.
Photoscape
Photoscape is another free GIF maker with plenty of free tools to edit your photos before making them into animated GIFs. It also enables you to make a sequence of images into a GIF. There are features to set the desired effect, change the photo arrangements, resize the files, and more.
Pros
1. Apply slide up, slide down, convert to black, convert to white, and more.
2. Provide different align modes to stretch images and adjust GIF resolution.
3. Change display time for only one frame or apply it for all frames easily.
Cons
1. Lack of features to add watermarks, stickers, and others to the project.
2. Cannot apply different filters or export high-quality animated GIFs.
GiftedMotion
GiftedMotion is an open-source GIF maker that enables you to create GIF animations. It enables you to adjust frame settings, tweak export settings, and provide more than 50 odd features. It enables you to adjust the image position within the frames of the image output.
Pros
1. Provide an easy user interface to operate and no need to learn.
2. Built-in instant preview function to check the animated GIF directly.
3. No need to install the free GIF maker, add the JAR to your desktop.
Cons
1. Need to install Java to create animated GIFs from media files.
2. Slow loading for editing large files and difficult to process.
Part 4: The 2 Best Free GIF Makers for iOS/Android
Giphy Cam
When you need to find an all-in-one free GIF maker, GIPHY CAM is a nice choice to make multiple animated GIFs, including stickers, filters, frames, text, and more. There are enormous numbers of original filters, such as VHS, video games, and much more you can apply.
Pros
1. Take photos/videos and add an overlay to make animated GIFs.
2. Add text captions and other stunning elements to GIF animations.
3. Predicate its uniqueness in the longevity of animated GIFs.
Cons
1. Do not provide the crop feature to cut out the desired part for GIFs.
2. Difficult to generate GIF animation or save GIFs in high quality.
GIFShop
GIFShop is a versatile free GIF maker on Android devices, which enables you to transform images and videos into animated GIFs. You can also record your screen and create a GIF from the video. Moreover, there are multiple features to create Instagram-style boomerangs.
Pros
1. Provide multiple editing features and filters to generate animated GIFs.
2. Adjust GIF settings with max frames of GIFs, GIF locations, and others.
3. Locate a vast variety of thousands of GIFs from the GIF library easily.
Cons
1. Difficult to export the GIF animation with high quality and desired size.
2. Cannot apply filters, tweak effects, and make some basic adjustments.
