Animated GIFs

A Contemporary Definition
New Uses And Ways
Your Own Animated GIFs
Readymade GIFS
PowerPoint And Animated GIFs

A Contemporary Definition

Animated GIFs aren't as omnipresent as they once were. In a bandwidth starved world, they were an easy way to add impact to a webpage. Bandwidth issues are still relevant. But nowadays many mainstream sites only use animated GIFs if they can add value to a design. That doesn't mean that animated GIFs aren't popular. There are whole sites online which are dedicated only to animated GIFS and a slew of new software which make creating them very easy.

A quick search on Google Images for animated GIFs shows up many results, as can be seen in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Animated GIFs, searching on Google Images

Maybe, you don't want to go through all the trouble of creating your own animated GIFs. There are so many of them available online, free for you to choose and use. Many more come with clipart collections or subscriptions to online stock photo galleries.

New Uses And Ways

Animated GIFs have been long associated with webpages, but that's changing. Show time software like Microsoft PowerPoint have embraced the animated GIF format.

Although there's no dearth of free and commercial animated GIF creation programs, newer applications are being introduced all the time across various computing platforms.

A generation of understated animated GIFs is relieving the format of the 'flashy' reputation long associated with it.

Create Your Own Animated GIFs

There are several desktop-based and online programs that let you created animated GIFs. These include:

Animated GIF software like Giffing Tool, Easy GIF Animator, GIF Construction Set Professional, etc.

Mainstream image editors like Adobe Photoshop, and Corel’s PhotoPaint, Painter, and Paintshop Pro.

Plug-in architecture programs like Ulead GIF-X, AutoFX Webvise Totality, etc.

Web Design software like Adobe Flash, Totally Hip Web Painter, Xara X, etc.

Readymade GIFs

You can download many animated GIFs for free from resources online. A few of them are listed below:

You’ll find thousands of animated GIFs in various categories on the AnimatedImages.org site.

Find funny, cute, and reaction GIFs on the GIPHY site.

More people use Tenor to find animated GIFs that expres thoughts or feelings.

GIFGIFs lets you link and share animated GIFs on MySpace, eBay, HI5, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.

Download about ten thousand GIF animated images on Clipartsmania.com.

Free Gifs and Animations has over 140 categories of animated GIFs and images that may be used on personal and non-profit educational websites and projects royalty free.

Amazing Animations is a vast directory of free animated GIFs and animations.

gifs-paradise.com offers over 27,000 animations in over 420 different categories to download.

PowerPoint And Animated GIFs

A great deal of this site is dedicated to PowerPoint users, and PowerPoint 2000 and newer versions support inserting and playing animated GIFs. Hopefully, you are not using PowerPoint 97 or an older version, which did not support animated GIFs.