How to make a GIF from images
- Choose or drop your pictures — photos, drawings, screenshots or exported animation frames. Each image becomes one frame, up to 100.
- Set the order. File-name order is the most reliable: name the files
frame-1.png,frame-2.png… and numbers sort naturally, so 10 comes after 9. "As selected" keeps the order your device hands over, which differs between phones and computers. - Set how long each frame shows. 0.5–2 seconds makes a slideshow; 0.1 s or less turns a sequence of frames into motion.
- Pick the size and shape. The size is the longest side in pixels. The shape follows the first image unless you choose square, landscape, wide, portrait or tall.
- Choose what happens to images of another shape: fit inside shows the whole picture with white or black bars, crop to fill fills the frame and trims the edges.
- Download the GIF. The preview plays exactly what you'll get, with its file size, frame count and length.
Your pictures stay on your device
Most online GIF makers upload your photos to their server and hand back a link. This one doesn't: your browser decodes each picture, draws it on a canvas and writes the GIF itself, so family photos and work screenshots never leave your phone or computer. Change any setting and the GIF is rebuilt in a moment, with no waiting for an upload.
Frame time and speed
A GIF stores each frame's display time in hundredths of a second. The frame rate is simply one divided by that time:
| Each frame shows for | Frame rate | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| 2 s | 0.5 fps | Before-and-after, step-by-step instructions |
| 0.5 s | 2 fps | Photo slideshows, product colors |
| 0.1 s | 10 fps | Stop motion, simple drawn animation |
| 0.04 s | 25 fps | Smooth motion from many frames |
The shortest time you can set is 0.02 s (50 fps). Anything faster isn't worth it: most browsers play frames marked 0.01 s or 0 at 0.1 s, so an "ultra-fast" GIF actually crawls.
Worked example
Twelve phone photos taken upright measure 3,024 × 4,032 px. With the shape left on "like the first image" and a size of 480 px, every frame becomes 360 × 480 px — the longest side is 480, the other side keeps the 3:4 proportion. At 1 s per frame the GIF lasts 12 s; at 0.5 s it lasts 6 s. A landscape photo among them is fitted inside the same frame with bars above and below, or cropped at the sides if you pick "crop to fill".
What a GIF can and can't do
- 256 colors per frame. The GIF format (GIF89a) stores at most 256 colors in each frame. This tool picks the best 256 for every frame separately, which keeps photos natural, but smooth skies and skin gradients can show slight banding. Flat graphics, drawings and screenshots look perfect.
- Big files. GIF compression was designed in 1987 for simple graphics, so photos animate into large files. File size grows with the pixel count and the number of frames: a 480 × 360 frame has 172,800 pixels, an 800 × 600 frame 480,000 — almost three times as many. Halving the size is the quickest way to a lighter GIF.
- No sound and no see-through areas here. GIFs have no audio. Transparent parts of PNG images are filled with the background color you choose.
- Animated inputs: if one of your pictures is itself an animated GIF, only its first frame is used.
The limits — 100 images and 800 pixels on the longest side — keep the work within what a phone's memory can handle; frames are written one at a time, so even a long GIF never holds all the pictures in memory at once.
Want a GIF from a clip instead? Use Video to GIF. To shrink photos before sharing them as images, use the image compressor or the image resizer.
Frequently asked questions
Are my images uploaded?
No. The GIF is made by your own browser from the files on your device. Nothing is sent to a server, and the page keeps working offline once it has loaded.
How do I make the GIF faster or slower?
Change “Each frame shows for”. Smaller numbers play faster: 0.1 s is 10 frames per second, 0.5 s is 2 frames per second. The change applies to every frame.
Why is my GIF so large?
GIF is an old format with weak compression, and every frame is a full picture. Lower the size (longest side), use fewer images, or crop to a smaller shape. For long clips a video file is far smaller than any GIF.
Why do the colors look slightly different?
A GIF frame can hold only 256 colors. The tool chooses the best 256 for each frame, but gradients such as skies can show faint steps. Graphics and screenshots are not affected.
Can I make a GIF that plays only once?
Yes. Set Loop to “Play once”, or 2 or 3 times. Most chat apps and browsers respect the setting; a few always loop.
Last updated: October 15, 2026