6 Free and Best Online Tools to Create GIF Animation Images

Do you want to quickly create some eye-catchy animated GIF images without using any professional image editing software like Adobe Photoshop  or Ulead GIF Animator? GIF animations are a nice way to show off your creativity in the form of Avatars or Logos on forums and social networking sites. There are many free online tools to create GIF images by uploading images. Some of them let you create simple animations whereas some let you apply  special effects in quick and easy steps. Here is a list of free and good online GIF making tools.

1. Imator

Imator is a free and user-friendly tool which lets you create GIF animations.  A maximum limit on the number of uploaded images could not be found on the website. We have been able to upload more than 20 images without any warning.
Imator gives you an easy way to create Ad banners of different formats and sizes like the commonly used Leaderboards, Skyscrapers, Large, Medium and Small Rectangles and Square Buttons. You can quickly create a 125×125 button to display as an Avatar on a social media or micro blogging site like Twitter. Imator lets you specify a custom image size from the advanced properties. A good thing is that you can position the frames inside the GIF image by simply dragging the image around. Click on the   icon to start repositioning the image.
Images can be uploaded from your PC, Flickr or any URL. Imator displays the images as frames on a scrolling reel. Drag and drop the images to rearrange the frames in the animation. The animation speed can be chosen from a drop-down list. However, there is no option to set custom values for the animation speed.
 
You can also choose a background color to the animation from a pop-up color palette. By default the background is transparent. Imator uploads the created GIF file, the link to which is available for only some days. You can download the image to your PC. With Imator, you can also edit any GIF images by uploading them. A very useful tool to quickly create standard size banners.

2. Loogix

Loogix is yet another free and easy to use online GIF animation maker. You can upload a maximum of 10 pictures from your PC. Loogix does not give many options for customizing the GIF images. For example, you cannot set custom dimensions or animation speed to the created GIF image. The image size can be set to a maximum of 400 pixels wide.  Also you cannot upload images from any photo-sharing site or web URL.

However Loogix is really good at creating animations with some special and funny effects. All effects are applied only to a single image. For creating effects to your animation, choose any of the displayed effects from the Loogix’s main page. This will take you to the page where you can upload an image and apply any one of the 12 animation effects.

Guggle	Zoom	Painting	Recursion

Some of the effects available are  “Blur“, “Guggle“, “Motley“, “Explosion”, “Swirl”, “RadialBlur”, “BlackWhite” etc. Loogix uploads the created GIF image to it’s server and gives a permanent link to embed it. You can publish the embed code directly to any web sites like Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, HI5, Bebo, Blogger, Live Spaces etc with a single click.

3. Gickr

Gickr lets you upload pictures from your PC, Flickr, Picasa and even YouTube. A maximum of 10 photos can be uploaded. Gickr lets you customize the size and animation speed of the created GIF image. The animation speed can be set to any value between 0 and 10 seconds, with a 0.1 seconds grading. The final GIF image can be of maximum 450 pixels wide. A GIF file made from YouTube video can have a maximum number of 45 frames. Simply specify the URL of the YouTube video to create an animated GIF.

Gickr uploads the image to it’s server and gives you an embed code to quickly post to any blogging service or social networking site. You can also download the animation to your PC. If you want to quickly create an animation from a short YouTube video, then Gickr is the right choice.

4. Picasion

With Picasion, you can quickly create animated GIF pictures by grabbing them from your PC, Flickr or Picasa Web, and post it to MySpace, LiveJournal, Bebo, Digg, Facebook etc. Picasion lets you also resize your images quickly before creating animated GIFs. You can quickly apply a few effects to your image like color tones and rotation while resizing it.

You can upload a maximum of 10 JPG, GIF or PNG images. The image size can be set to a maximum of 450 px. Picasion gives quick access to some preset animation speeds. You can also set a custom speed between 0 and 10 seconds, with a 0.1 seconds grading. The animated GIF loops infinitely.

Picasion uploads the created GIF to it’s gallery and gives you an easy to embed code for your use on social or blogging sites. You can also save the GIF to your PC. 

5. GifNinja

GifNinja gives a very user-friendly interface to make GIF images. A maximum of 5 images can be uploaded from your PC. You can also upload a zip file containing the five images. The animation speed can be set easily with a scroll bar and the live preview shows you exactly how your animation looks before creating it. You can even convert a 4 second avi, mpg, mpeg, mov, 3gp, flv, or an mp4 video to a GIF image by uploading the video from your PC.
GifNinja uploads the created GIF and gives embed code to paste it into your blog or social networking site. You can also save the image to your hard disk.
GifNinja also lets you split an animated GIF into frames. The images from a split GIF file can be downloaded as a zip file to your PC. GifNinja lets you add animations to it’s gallery. By registering with the website you can comment and rate the publicly available GIF animations.

6. Make A GIF

Make a GIF has a simple to use interface. The animation speed can be set in milliseconds. Images of different sizes can be resized to a the biggest or smallest image. Or you can set the dimensions of the output GIF to a custom size. A maximum of 12 images can be uploaded, each up to 1 MB in size. You can choose to loop the animation infinitely or not.

The created GIF image is uploaded to their server and is discarded after a week. Make a GIF does not give an easy way to save the GIF image to your PC. You have to open the image from the given URL and save it from your browser.