How to make an animated gif

HOW TO MAKE A GIF USING VIRTUALDUB AND PHOTOSHOP CS5 IN 10 EASY STEPS.

First of all we need 2 programs:

VirtualDub (freeware) / avidemux2 (for mac users)- thanks for the recommendation atomicnumber20 ;)

Photoshop (trial)

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Well, let’s start with virtualdub, we’re gonna use it to cut the desired sequence of which we want to make a gif.

Step 1. Opening a video file with virtualdub:

Run virtualdub, go to “File”, then click on “Open video file…”and select one video file with .avi extension.

Step 2. Selecting the sequence we want to convert into a gif:

we’re gonna mark the beginning and the end of the future gif, to do this go to the desired part of the video, pause it and click on the indicated button below:

With this now we have defined the beggining of the sequence, to indicate the end do the same but pressing the other button:

Step 3. Save the selected sequence:

Once we have selected the beginning and the end of the sequence, we’ve to save it, to do this you only need to go to “Files” and select “Save segmented AVI…”

Choose a name and an ubication and then click on save.

Step 4. Importing the frames from the video to photoshop:

Open photoshop and go to “File”>”Import”>”video frames to layers”

,select the video you have just created and choose one of the options to import the frames (“From beginning to end” to import ALL the frames of the video or “Selected Range Only” to select for yourself the range of frames you want to import), then press “Ok”

Step 5, Showing the “Animation” window in Photoshop:

Once you’ve imported the frames of your video into photoshop you should see a section in which you can edit each frame of the future gif, if you don’t see that section, just go to “Window” and select the “Animation” option; you should see it now ;)

Step 6, Deleting the unnecesary frames:

In order to make the gif lighter we need to delete the  unnecesary frames ,frames that aren’t part of the gif, repeated frames, etc. For delete the frames just select them and click on the bin below the “animation” window

Step 7, Adjusting the size of the gif:

To change the size of the whole gif we’ll do the following:

Link all the layers in the “layers” tab

then go to “Image”>”Image size…” and choose the new dimensions of the gif

Step 8, Adding text to the gif (Optional):

Pick the text tool and select the area in which you want to add the text.

You can also add effects to the text by double clicking on each text layer

Finally if you have more than one text layer you can toggle the visibility of each one by clicking on the eye icon on the left side of each layer:

Step 9, Configuring the delay of the frames:

Before save the gif we’re gonna change the delay between each frame in order to make the gif as fluid as possible, to do this just select the frame(s) and left-click on the bottom arrow, there’s gonna display a menu in which you can change the delay (in seconds).

Step 10, Save and optimize the gif:

Now it’s time for save our gif, for this  we need to go to “File”>”Save for Web & Devices…”

Then it should open a new window in which we can optimize the gif and save it. (remember that the max size for an animated gif on tumblr can’t exceed 999KB)

There’re many ways  to configure the gif, I’m gonna show you 2, the easiest configuration:

With this one basically you only can change the palette of the gif.

Another one:

with this config. you can change palette, dither (100%[better quality]-0%[worst quality]) and lossy (0[better quality]-100[worst quality])

Just try some configurations to find which is the better for your gif ;)

You can see the size of your gif in the lower-left corner of the “Save for Web & Devices…” window:

Finally press the “save” button and… congrats!! you’ve just created your gif!!, here’s mine:

That’s all!!, if you don’t understand anything, let me know through my askbox and I’ll try to solve your doubts ;D