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How to Make an Animated GIF from Images

Last reviewed October 12, 2026

An animated GIF is just a sequence of pictures shown one after another. If you have a set of images, such as screenshots of a process, photos from a trip or drawn frames of an animation, you can turn them into a looping GIF in a minute. Here is how to do it with Anvil and how to get a good-looking result.

Make a GIF in five steps

  1. Open the Images tool and choose GIF as the target format.
  2. Drop in your images. Add at least two. They appear in a list in the order you added them, and that order is the order of the animation.
  3. Remove a frame with its X button, or use the replace option to swap one for a different file.
  4. Set the frame duration in milliseconds. The default is 200, which shows five frames per second.
  5. Press Convert and download the animated GIF. It loops forever.

Frame order and speed

Frames play in the order they are listed, so name or add your files in the order you want them shown. If a frame is in the wrong place, remove it and add it again at the end, or rebuild the list.

Frame duration controls the speed. 100 milliseconds is fast and fluid, 200 is a relaxed default, and 500 to 1000 suits slideshows where each picture should be read. The shortest duration Anvil allows is 20 milliseconds.

Getting good results

  • Use images with the same dimensions. A GIF has a single size, so Anvil resizes every frame to match the first one. Starting with matching sizes avoids stretching.
  • Put your best, most representative picture first, since it sets the size and is often shown as a preview.
  • Keep the number of frames and the image size modest. Every frame adds to the file size, so a long animation at full resolution can become very large.
  • Remember that GIF supports only 256 colours. Flat graphics, screenshots and drawings look good, while photographs can show banding.
  • Each image can be up to 25 MB.

When a GIF is not the best choice

GIF is universal, which is why it is still used in chat and email, but it is an inefficient format. For long clips or photographic video, an MP4 or WebM file is far smaller and looks better. You can convert video formats with the guide on extracting audio and converting video. If you need a small image rather than an animation, see compressing images for the web.

Try it now

Open the Images tool. It is free, needs no account, and your files are deleted right after conversion.

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