Creating slideshow with GIF animation is easy with online tools that are free. In this video we will do a simple slideshow using the free GIF animation maker, Gickr.
Searching Google for the general term ‘online gif animation maker’ brings up over 15 million results. An exact search is likely to fetch much lesser results.
Up in the listed URLs on the search page comes GIFup among others. And I decide to check this out first. GIFup allows quite a few options to bring in pictures.
These include recording with webcam if you have it installed and working, fetching from your computer or a website you mention and also from Flickr.
I felt why not try another program to find out how that works, so I decide to go back to the search results.
This time my choice falls on Gickr. It sounds similar to Flickr, and as it turns out Gickr is a good tool for making the gif slideshow I want.
Like GIFup, Gickr too allows images to be brought in from Flickr. You can bring in images from YouTube, and also upload from your computer.
Like many other photo editing tools, Gickr is free and available online, so you can try all the options. I decide to try Flickr images.
For the tag ‘dog’ Flickr shows up a big variety of canine images. I select 3 out of them though Gickr allows you to go for a maximum of 10 images.
I settle for 4 seconds for each image to show while restricting the width to 120 pixels. There is a reason for this frugality. I want to keep my final size low.
Gickr works on my inputs and it takes a while to make the final animation.
The time of 4 seconds between 2 images makes the animation look like a real slideshow. You can download the animation, get its image link, and also the html code to embed in a webpage.
Lastly, remember 2 important points. The animation doesn’t stop; it loops.
This means if you have 10 photos in the slideshow, and once all are seen, the same process will repeat again. This may seem a bit awkward, but it’s a good ploy to keep visitors glued to your webpage.
The second point is the time for each image is the same. If you want some to be shown for a longer or shorter time than the others, it cannot be done.
However, in spite of these 2 smallish lacunae plus the inability to include audio, the gif slideshow through animation has surprisingly remained a big draw among webmasters.
Well, as the adage goes, everything has got some value. It’s the skill to extract that value that matters. Perhaps you’ll agree.
 This article of July 15th, 2009 is authored by Partha Bhattacharya, who runs this website. Catering to the clients' video needs aside, Partha also writes guest articles for other web publications. |
