How To Find Or Make Gifs Online?

Marketers are always looking for an edge against competitors. Typically, they find this edge by being innovative with their content or marketing message. Rarely have marketers been able to innovate with media unless new media technologies have been developed. Notable instances in the history of mankind where marketers have innovated with new media technologies are the television, the movies, and the internet. Since the World Wide Web became a household fixture, there hasn’t been any media-related innovation in marketing unless, of course, you consider gifs.

We spoke about marketing gifs in our last week’s post and we don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to see gifs as a new form of media. After all, they do straddle two horses at the same time i.e. videos and images. If you’re a marketing expert who follows recent trends in the industry then you already would be aware of the potential of marketing gifs. If you aren’t current on industry trends but still read our earlier post, then you’re in the same boat as well.

However, if you haven’t been following industry trends and haven’t read that post, we recommend reading it because this post, in a way, is a continuation of that one. This post, you see, assumes that you need marketing gifs and explains where you can find them or how you can make your own. Consider.

Find Gifs Online

The easiest way to use marketing gifs is to get them from countless stock gif websites on the internet. In the last couple of years, gifs have become so popular that you’ll see them floating all over the internet now. This popularity, combined with the ease with which they can be created, means that there are now countless stock gifs that you can use for your own marketing campaigns. Here are some suggestions on where you should start looking.

1. Google: Google is the go-to place for anything that you’re looking for online. You use the right words and Google will take you straight to what you want. In that regard, there is no better concierge in the world than Google. To find gifs on Google, just use the right keywords and go to Image Search. When on the search results page, click on “Search Tools”, go to “Type” and then select “Animated”. This should give you loads of gifs pertaining to what you searched for.
2. Giphy: Giphy is easily the best website on the internet in terms of quantum of units. In fact, it is the leading website when it comes to gif related services offered too. We’ll discuss the services Giphy provides later in this post. Giphy is a good source if you’re looking for gifs simply because of its functionality. Its database is rich and it offers clean categories and search functionalities.
3. Reddit: Reddit, as opposed to being a service provider, is a forum for everyone. Threads in Reddit are known as subreddits. Reddit is very famous amongst internet denizens, which means that you’ll find a wide variety of generic and eccentric gifs floating on various subreddits. Search for gifs in general but specifically look for “reaction gifs”, “analogy gifs”, “dance gifs”, and “high-quality gifs”.
4. Tumblr: Tumblr is very similar to Reddit in the sense that you’ll find lots of user-generated gifs here. More notably, however, Tumblr will give you access to gifs that haven’t yet become famous on the internet, provided you’re willing to dig deep into its annals and alleys. You’ll find as much variety on Tumblr as there are people in the world.
5. Imgur: Imgur is another website similar to Tumblr and Reddit. It is as vast as the other two, which means that there is no limit to what you can find on this website. They have a random search function that is fun for wasting time or stumbling upon something special. Otherwise, you can and should use the search function or you’ll never resurface from your Imgur jaunt.

Make Gifs Online

Copyright will always be an issue with content taken off the internet, regardless of where you source it from. This is why larger and more notable businesses are advised to make their own marketing content as opposed to finding stuff online even if the plan is to repurpose the content. Fortunately, it isn’t all that difficult to make gifs online. Here are your options if you’re looking to learn how to make gifs online.

1. Gifs.com: If you want to make gifs online, then you’d be hard-pressed to find anything better than gifs.com. This website will take your chosen URL and convert it into a gif for you. Along the way, you’ll, of course, get loads of editing options and tools to play with before pressing the magic button.
2. Giphy: Giphy is easily the best option on the internet for gif junkies looking to not only find gifs online but also make gifs online. We mentioned it as a repository earlier in the post but it also happens to be a great place to make gifs. Giphy doesn’t just offer one way to make gifs but three separate methods. The gif maker tool on Giphy is for converting videos, whether online or uploaded, into gifs. The Giphy slideshow tool is useful if you want to combine multiple still images or, better yet, existing gifs to create one colossal gif. The gif editor tool will help you edit any gif on Giphy or another place online through captions, stickers, and even filters.
3. Gifmaker.me: This website will also help you make gifs online by giving you the option to stitch together images of various types. It is a good resource simply because of its detailed control panel. The control panel on this website will allow you to do everything from add text and use filters to changing the transition durations of images.
4. Recordit: You can always make gifs online but sometimes you want your gifs to be instructional as opposed to being entertaining. In such scenarios, it is likely that you want to show your viewers something from your own device. Recordit is a good software programme for such tasks. It will help you record what you’re doing on your computer and create gifs out of your recording.

Making Gifs with Photoshop

When you make gifs online, you save a lot of time, effort, and even money but, at the same time, you do put restrictions on yourself in terms of what you can do. If you’re the true creator and innovator then web app constraints wouldn’t sit well with you. You can’t make gifs online and take care of your artistic streak. For people like you, the trusted old Photoshop software programme is the best option. You can create gifs of various types on Photoshop with ease provided you have some experience with the software programme.

Gifs tend to be a culmination of multiple similar looking images, which are called “frames”. Generally, gifs tend to have about 60 frames. In the majority of cases, these images are sequential in nature i.e. similar images that, when stuck together, look like videos. If you have sequential images, then all you need to do to turn them into a gif is use the “load files into stack” feature of Photoshop.

With non-sequential images, though, you’ll need to use the “layer” function of Photoshop. This isn’t all that different from editing images in the software. All you need to do is put your chosen images in independent layers, activate the “timeline” function and arrange the images/layers in the right sequence. Once done, you just use the “make frames from layers” function and export your gif.

Using videos to make gifs on Photoshop can be as simple as using videos to make gifs online. You just need to import “video frames to layers”. You will have to choose the duration of the video to be converted and also pick which frames to convert into layers. All video frames won’t need to be converted. If you convert all of them, then your gif will become too heavy. Once you have your layers and have edited them to include your text and captions, you can export the result into a gif.