Every week, for a while now, I write a column called Vertedero Animado de la Semana, where I gather a bunch of animated GIFs and share them with all of you. It's a very popular column, so I put a lot of care into it. I not only try to pick good GIFs but also to ensure that the files are well optimized, so they don't take too long to load. And in that regard, the website EZGIF is my best ally. So here's my recommendation.
EZGIF has become an essential tool for my work at NeoTeo. I haven't found any other program that can replace it, mainly because of its effective GIF optimization algorithms. I've tried almost every program out there, but none reduces file size as much as this little online gem. To do it, it uses Gifsicle and the Lossy GIF compressor, which together deliver amazing results. Depending on the compression level and the GIF at hand, EZGIF's algorithm can optimize the image by 100% or even more. Don't believe me? Look at this example.
Original Image: 2.17MB
Compression Level 100: 921KB
Compression Level 200: 683KB
Optimized GIF
In terms of GIF optimization, EZGIF offers several more tools that are hard to find in other programs (at least all together). It can reduce the color palette, remove duplicate frames, and optimize transparency. And if you need to recover a corrupted GIF, it can also un-optimize an image.
Editing Tools
But EZGIF wouldn't be a complete toolbox if it didn't have extensive editing options to fine-tune your image. From the online app, you can crop, rotate, resize, and change the GIF's speed. You can also add effects, write text on it (frame by frame), and remove any frame you want, among other things. Each of these tools offers a wide range of options, so the final result fits your taste. The best part is that you can load images by URL, without having to upload them from your computer, which speeds up the process a lot if, like me, you have to process many in the shortest possible time.
How to Make an Animated GIF with EZGIF
The online tool has two options for creating animated GIFs. On one hand, you have the GIF Maker, which lets you create an animation from one or more GIF, JPG, PNG, APNG, and WebP files. Once you upload the files (you can even compress them into a zip), you can easily fine-tune your creation with all available editing options. The second option is Video to GIF, which lets you create an animated GIF from a video file or a URL to the file itself. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with URLs from services like YouTube or Vimeo, but for that there are other programs.
Once the file is uploaded to the website, you'll have several basic tools to edit it (rotate, resize, crop, change speed, and even add subtitles to the video, among others). The resulting file can be a GIF, an APNG, or a WebP. As if that weren't enough, you can also convert a GIF to an MP4 if you like. Comprehensive. To see the result, check out the animated GIF we made from the music video "Let's All Chant" by Michael Zager Band.
The best part is that once you upload a file, whatever it is, you can use any and all of the service's tools and edit it in any of its forms. That is, you can create a GIF from a video and then edit and optimize it to your liking without extra steps. Really, after many searches, I haven't been able to find a service as complete and with such optimization capacity as EZGIF. A gem!
