GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is an image format mainly used to create animations. This format holds multiple pictures at once and when loaded in a certain way, it creates a video-like feeling.
Nowadays it is a popular way to share funny animations or short clips on the internet and is also used in web publishing. GIFs are created using special tools called GIF recorders or GIF makers.
In this article, I will discuss the 10 best tools for creating GIFs on the Linux platform.
Byzanz
Byzanz is a command-line tool and GNOME panel applet which can be used to record your current desktop in the form of animated GIFs or videos. It is especially used in web publishing and creating GIFs for other purposes.
You can use it on GNOME as well as non GTK desktop environments like KDE.
Features of Byzanz
The key features of Byzanz are –
- Easy to use the command-line tool
- You can record GIFs and videos
- Supports recording the entire screen, single window, or arbitrary region
- It can record the mouse cursor
- Offers a delay timer so that you can better prepare for recording
- Additionally, it allows capturing audio
Peek
Peek is a GUI-based gif recorder that makes it easy to define an area on your screen and create a short animated gif. It is used for showing UI features of an application or reporting a bug.
Peek has a simple and easy-to-use interface you just need to place the Peek window over the area that you want to record and click on the Record button to start the recording once done click on Stop.
Features of Peek
The key features of Peek are –
- Free and opensource
- Simple and easy to use user interface
- Optimized tool for generating animated GIFs
- You can also record video in WebM or MP4 formats
- It can generate GIFs quickly
FFmpeg
FFmpeg (Fast Forward Moving Picture Experts Group) is a free and open-source software suite that consists of various libraries and programs for handling audio, video, and other media files and streams. It is consist of mainly three command-line tools and these are –
- ffmpeg – This command is used for converting audio or video formats it can be used to encode or decode media in real-time.
- ffplay– A simple media player
- ffprobe– Used to display media information
It can be used to decode, encode, transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter, and play various types of video and audio. By using ffmpeg command you can create GIFs from video files easily.
Features of FFmpeg
- It provides very high-speed audio and video conversion
- Supports almost all the audio and video formats
- It is highly portable
- Highly secure
- Many modern players use it in the backend
- It also supports basic editing and video scaling
- Provides post-production effects
Gifcurry
Gifcurry is a free and open-source tool to create GIFs from a video file. You simply need to load a video file, trim it, make some edits, and save it as a gif file. It provides both a GUI and command-line options for creating GIFs.
It provides a simple editor using which you can perform operations like crop, resize, add text to GIF, etc. For Linux, it provides an AppImage file which can be downloaded from its release page on GitHub.
The key features are Gifcurry –
- Free and opensource
- Easy to use user interface
- Provides inbuilt editor
- It can also be used on the command line
- Provides options to add text
Silentcast
Silentcast is a lightweight free and opensource GIF recording tool. Apart from gifs it also allows recording media files in webm and mp4 formats.
The GUI of Silentcast allow recoding in fullscreen, a selected window or specific selected area on your screen. Also it can auto resize selected window to a given width and hight.
Features of Silentcast
The key features of Silentcast are –
- Free and opensource
- Cross platform
- Simple and easy to use GUI
- Support recording in GIF, webm and mp4 formats
- A gif or video can be recorded in fullscreen, a selected window or a specific area on your screen.
Gifine
Gifine is a free and opensource tool for recording and editing short gif files or videos. It is an GTK application in which you can load a directory of frame, or select a region of your desktop to record, once it is loaded you can trim and can export it to gif or mp4 formats.
It uses ffmpeg for recording desktop and GraphicsMagick and gifsicle for creating and optimizing gif files.
Features of Gifine
The key features of Gifine are –
- Free and opensource
- Simple and easy to use user interface
- You can quickly record desktop in gif or mp4 formats
- You can select custom area on a screen for recording
GiftedMotion
GiftedMotion is a simple yet powerful Java application for creating animated GIFs by using your own pictures. The source file could be in PNG, GIFs, JPEG and BMP.
You just need to order the frame by choosing the time when each of them will be visible and you can start recording. Overall this tool is simple and extremely easy to use.
Features of GiftedMotion
The key feature of GiftedMotion are –
- Simple, free and easy to use gif tool
- It is platform independent
- Supports multiple languages
- No steep learning curve
- No installation required you can directly run it on your system
- Takes input in PNG, JPG / JPEG, BMP and GIF formats
- Allow editing existing images
- It has preview funtion
GIMP
GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program is a free and open-source software for high-quality image manipulation, image editing, free form drawing, converting images from one format to another, etc. It is cross-platform and is available for installation on Linux, Windows, macOS, and some other operating systems.
This program is suitable for graphics designers, photographers, illustrators, and scientists. It provides sophisticated tools to accomplish an image editing task easily. The functionality of GIMP can be enhanced by using third-party plugins. We can use it for making GIFs.
Features of GIMP
The key features of GIMP are –
- Completely free and opensource
- It has all the essential features and editing tools
- Anyone can quickly learn and start using it
- You can create GIFs using many layers
- Support multiple image formats
- Allows image format conversion
Imagemagick
ImageMagick is a free, open-source, and cross-platform application that is used to create, convert and modify images. It was developed by John Cristy in 1987.
ImageMagick utilizes multiple computational threads to increase the performance and support over 200 image file-formats including Gifs.
Features of ImageMagick
Some key features of ImageMagick are given below.
- Supports image file format conversion
- You can easily resize, rotate, crop, flip and trim an image.
- You can add shapes and text to an image.
- You can decorate an image by adding a border and frame to it.
- You add special effects such as blur, sharpen, tint, etc.
- You can create a gif animation file.
- Extract features, describe shapes, and recognize patterns in images.
- Supports processing of large size images which is in Mega, Giga, or Tera pixels.
Kgif
Kgif is a simple, free and opensource shell script which is used to create a gif file from active window. It was designed especially to capture the terminal activities.
Kgif captures activities in multiple PNG images which is combined later to create a animated gif file. You can also modify this script according to your needs.
Features of Kgif
The key features of Kgif are –
- Free and opensource
- Simple and effective
- Can be modified according to your needs
- It can work effectively on low resource machines
Conclusion
So here we have discussed 10 best tools for creating GIFs in a Linux system. Now if you have a query or feedback then write us in the comments below.