Here at InVision, animated GIFs play a powerful part in our marketing and education. Heck, at one point in time, we even opted to use GIFs on our homepage instead of fancy code-based animations.
People always ask us how we make our GIFs, so we figured it was time to spill the beans.
Designing GIFs
1. The secret sauce
Here’s my dirty little secret: all my GIFs start as videos.
I usually make them in ScreenFlow, which is also what I use for our product videos. It’s simple enough to learn quickly, but packs some pretty useful animation tools.
After I export the animation as a video file, I import it into Photoshop via File > Import > Video Frames As Layers.
2. Fewer colors = more fun
If you want amazing GIFs, you need to be really selective about your use of color. Not only will it play a huge part in your file size, but using less color lets you make longer, more involved GIFs that are still relatively small in file size. (For me, small is under 1MB)
“Want an amazing GIF? Be selective about your use of color.”
3. When possible, use motion blur
Programs like ScreenFlow and After Effects let you export your video with motion blur. This not only makes your animation look more professional, but it also helps you fudge things a bit if you have to drop frames from your GIF in Photoshop for the sake of file size.
4. Be (kind of) lazy
Imagine all the other things I could have added to the GIF at the top of this post. Little tooltips with usernames on them, a cursor clicking the plus button, hovering over the faces, unveiling more tooltips and hover states. People don’t need to see everything to get the picture, so only show what you need to—your time and file size are limited.
Exporting GIFs
Before you stress out about following all the tips below, just try exporting your GIF. If it’s a reasonable file size, good job! Keep doing what you’re doing. If it’s too big, try these out.
1. Drop duplicate frames
Your animation most likely pauses or rests at some point. If you look closely, you’ll notice that these moments contain a bunch of duplicate frames with a duration of 0.03 seconds. If there are 10 duplicate frames, delete 9 of them, and set the duration of that one frame to something longer, like 1 second.
If that doesn’t help, try re-importing your video, but this time select Limit To Every 2 Frames. It should cut your file size significantly.
2. Cut down on colors
When you’re saving your GIF in Photoshop, you’ll see a “colors” drop-down on your right. Play around with this. Set it as low as possible without turning your GIF into a hunk of junk.
3. Tweak your lossy
If I’m being honest, I don’t even know what lossy means. But I do know that if you set it somewhere between 1 and 10, you’ll shave off some kilobytes without killing your quality.
(Psst. Andy, this is what lossy means. Ed.)
None of this is working! Help!
If you’ve tried everything above but you just can’t seem to squash that GIF down, it’s time to take a step back. Are you trying to accomplish too much? Is there another way to achieve your goal? What if you broke it into a couple different GIFs? Like most creative products, your GIF will do better if it focuses on just one thing.
Want to read more about GIFs? Check out a href=”https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/cinemagraphs/”this great post about cinemagraphs.
Bonus video: the super-fast making of
Pick it apart: Download the video file I made this article’s animated GIF with! (You’ll need ScreenFlow 5 to open it.)
Head spinning? Here are some automatic GIF making tools
If all these tips have you feeling overwhelmed, give these options a try.
GIPHY GIF Maker (free)
You can keep your GIFs private if you have an account. Otherwise all your GIFs belong to GIPHY.
EZGIF (free)
While it’s not as simple or easy on the eyes as GIPHY, it does offer some extra controls.
GifBrewery 3 ($4.99)
I don’t buy apps to make GIFs, but if I did, it’d definitely be this one.
What did I miss?
Do you have a killer tip I should add to this post? Want to talk more about GIFs? Hit me up on Twitter @andyorsow, or just ping us @InVisionApp.
Oh, and you’ll probably love these Game of Thrones GIFs by Eran Mendel.
by Andy Orsow
Designer and product marketer at InVision, resident GIF-ologist and video maker.
