Reduce GIF Size Using Photoshop And Other Tools

GIFs are often used in websites and blogs to deliver highly engaging content. They make your content easy to read, comprehend and overwhelming for the eyes. GIFs are also commonly used on social media platforms and instant messaging services for emotive reactions.

If your professional work requires dealing with a lot of GIF files — particularly if you’re a website designer, graphics designer, animator or a creative professional — you might have occasionally faced the problem of large GIFs. Such GIFs can take a lot of time to load, consume higher bandwidth and overall degrade the visitor’s experience. Worry not, there are easy ways to reduce GIF size both using Photoshop and other Internet-based tools.

Tips to Reduce GIF Size Using Adobe Photoshop

Trim & Shorten the GIF

If the GIF is too long, you can trim and shorten it. It is the natural way to reduce the size of your GIF. You can trim the GIFs using the Timeline panel. To open the Timeline panel, click on Window > Timeline.

Export GIF for Web (Compress Images)

Export to Web option does most of the GIF optimization without you having to do anything. Export to Web option is designed to compress your GIF and automatically reduce the size to be able to publish it online.

1. To use the Export to Web option, go to the File menu and select the Export option.
2. In the new dialog, choose Save for Web. Alternatively, you can quickly load the Export for Web by pressing Alt + Shift keys together, followed by Ctrl + S.
3. In the new dialog, make sure that the “Optimized” checkbox is pre checked. If not, check it.
4. Set the “Format” to GIF in the drop-down box.
5. In the “Quality” textbox, enter 75 or 85, depending on how much quality you want to retain.
6. Click on “Save…” and specify a name for your new GIF file and then click on Save button.

Delete Unwanted or Duplicate Frames

Duplicate frames in the GIF are very common. You can get rid of such duplicate and unwanted frames in your GIF using the Timeline panel. For example: While screen capturing on your PC, there may be every third or fourth frame that may be duplicate. You can select such frames using the Timeline panel and then use the Delete icon underneath to get rid of them.

Avoid Unnecessary Dithering

Do you use the Dithering Tools too often? Many people use the Dithering Tools to fill up the missing colors in the image. Although it is a great tool to improve the quality of the image and polish it, there are some drawbacks to it. For example: Using Dithering excessively can increase the image size. It’s best to use it only when really necessary and keep the amount of dithering to the lowest required.

Other Helpful Free Tools to Reduce GIF Size

Using Optimizilla Online Image Compressor (Free)

Not an expert in Photoshop? No worries, there are free, easy to use online tools like Optimizilla that require absolutely no technical expertise. The process is simple.

1. Open Optimizilla https://imagecompressor.com/ in your browser.
2. Click on Upload Files and select your GIFs. Alternatively, you can drag and drop them in the Drop your files here section.
3. Wait for a moment. Your GIFs will be auto-optimized one by one. You will see the real-time progress.
4. You can download them one by one, or wait until all GIFs are optimized. Once all GIFs are optimized, a Download All button will be visible.

Kraken.io (Freemium)

Unlike Optimizilla Online Image Compressor, Kraken.io is a feature-rich online tool. It offers many more advanced features. There are also options to upload files, paste URLs or crunch pages, However, these options are only available for the Pro users. If you’ve a Zip file full of GIFs, you can upload it directly. You can select your desired optimization type among lossy, lossless and expert. Kraken.io automatically sets the compression settings to produce high-quality GIFs with minimal size.

Types of GIF Compressions

When you compress an image, it encodes every bit of data in your image using special algorithms that take up less space. When you re-open the file again, it decodes the data in its original format. Please note that some compression types can degrade the quality of your GIF.

• Lossless Compression: During the lossless type of compression, no information is lost from a single pixel. This is your best bet if you want to reduce the file size without compromising on the quality of your GIF.
• Lossy Compression: Lossy Compression can be significantly effective to reduce the size of your GIF. Lossy Compression can be very effective to reduce the size of your GIF – typically from 60% up to 80%. However, sometimes it can actually degrade the quality of your GIF to an unacceptable level. It is recommended to backup your GIFs before compressing with Lossy Compression.

Steps:

1. Open Kraken.io in your web browser.
2. Upload your GIFs. There are multiple supported methods:
   • File Uploader: You can upload GIFs manually by either dragging them over in the app or manually selecting them from the Open dialog box.
   • Upload a Zip containing your Images: This option lets you select a single Zip file containing all of your GIFs. This is your best bet if your GIFs are stored in a compressed GIF file.
   • Import: Do you store GIFs in online cloud storage platforms? You can also import your GIFs from Google Drive, Dropbox and Box by clicking the relevant buttons.
   • Paste URLs: If you’ve a comma-separated list of URLs, you can directly paste it to automatically retrieve them from web sources and optimize directly. Please note that this option is only available for the paying users.
   • Page Cruncher: This option lets you automatically retrieve GIFs from a specific web page. This option is available for only paying users.
3. Now, select your desired compression type among Lossless or Lossy Compression.
4. Once you upload your GIFs and select a compression type, your GIFs will be processed and compressed.
5. You can now download them to your computer.