Easily Create Smooth 16-Frame Animated GIFs with GIFVid²
GIFVid ($2.99) by Eiji Nishidai is a fully featured mobile GIF authoring environment for your iPhone.
The Internet can be found with hilarious animated GIFs all the time. Not sure what a GIF is? It's a series of still that are put together and saved into a clip with a bit of color loss, but they are still great to look at, and can definitely bring in some laughs.
GIFVid² makes it super easy to create your own awesome little GIF clips right on your iPhone. The app creates 16 frame GIFs, so it's better than some of the other animated GIF makers in the store.
When you launch the app, you're immediately taken to the Documents screen. Thumbnails of created GIFs will appear here, along with the button for a new clip. Edit will let you manage your created clips.
To make a new animated GIF, tap the button. You'll get taken to a camera view, with options for LED flash and front-facing camera at the top (iPhone 4 only, respectively). Underneath the viewfinder is the timer for how long your clip should be. The shorter the length, the faster the app will snap the photos. If you want a longer clip, there will be more time between shots to help you prepare for following shots.
The manual option allows you to take care of the shooting yourself -- so there is no time limit or interim between clip shots.
Once you're done shooting your clip, you can then view it in the Preview mode. You can adjust the frame rate, play it in reverse, and even adjust image settings.
When you tweak image settings, you can adjust the image offset, brightness, contrast, blur, and loop interval. Saving these tweaks will result in the app having to process your clip again, but sometimes making the tweaks is well worth it.
Done creating your masterpiece? Time to share it! You can share via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Imgur (as anonymous). There is also the ability to set your animated GIF as your Twitter profile image. Clips can be sent by email as well, or exported via Photo Album (as a video) or iTunes File Sharing (as a GIF).
Gallery allows you to view animated GIFs from other users who have uploaded them. You can view Recent, Best, or Random for a surprise. These clips can be saved as Favorites for viewing in the Favorites tab, as well as your own uploads.
In Settings, you will find options for size of your GIF (Unlimited, or restricted to 250 or 500KB, or 1MB). Dithering can be toggled, as well as adding the GIFVid Logo (off by default). For uploads, you can have up to three custom tags that will get attached to your GIF automatically. A Clear Cache option is provided to clear intermediate data.
GIFVid² is fun and produces great looking animated GIFs. If you're into creating silly or awesome animations with your phone, then definitely check out GIFVid².
To celebrate the release of version 2.0, GIFVid² is on sale for $1.99. Hurry before the price goes back up to $2.99!
