Turn a stack of photos into a GIF.

An animated GIF is a single file that holds a series of still frames plus timing information telling the viewer how long to show each one before moving to the next. Play them fast enough and the eye reads motion. That simplicity is why GIFs loop automatically and play in almost any app without a video player.

The catch is that GIF is an old format with two hard limits: each frame can use at most 256 colours, and it has no efficient compression for photographic content. That makes GIFs great for short, graphic, looping moments — a reaction, a logo animation, a quick demo — and poor for anything long or photographic, where the file balloons. Knowing this up front saves you from making a 40 MB GIF that no one can send.

Frame rate — frames per second, or fps — decides how smooth the animation feels and how large the file gets. Every frame you add is more data to store, so there is a direct trade between smoothness and size. The sweet spot depends on the content.

For a slideshow of photos where each image simply holds for a beat, you do not need many frames per second at all — you set how long each photo stays on screen (say one second each) and the GIF steps through them. For motion that should look fluid, like a short animation, 10 to 15 fps usually looks smooth enough while keeping the file reasonable; going much above 15 fps rarely improves the look but keeps inflating the size. If a GIF feels choppy, add frames; if it is too heavy, remove some and let each linger a little longer.

If your source is a video clip rather than a set of photos, you can convert it straight to a GIF, but be realistic about length. A few seconds is fine; more than about ten and the file grows unwieldy because of GIF's weak compression. For anything longer or more photographic, a short muted video (MP4) or an animated WebP will look better and weigh a fraction as much — many platforms even accept a looping video where you would once have used a GIF.

So the decision tree is short. Building a loop from images, or clipping a tiny graphic moment: make a GIF. Sharing a longer or photographic clip: keep it as video, or use a video-to-GIF tool only for the brief highlight you want to loop. Matching the format to the content is what keeps your file small enough to actually send.