Gif quality in Photoshop and Media Encoder

[fr_sdgh]

I've animated gifs with Photoshop and Media Encoder but those are not in the same quality! I'd checked "Use Maximum Render Quality" in Media Encoder already but Photoshop exports better one.

[Kevin-Monahan · Accepted solution]

To be honest, fr, most people prefer the quality of gifs created in Photoshop. It's the best tool for that job, I think. 

Regards,
Kevin

[imeilfx]

And it was that way for a long time. Why? Reason is simple:
GiF is a graphics/image format not a movie/video format and as such it is better coded into Photoshop. So always if yo work in any other software (AE, PPro) it is muh better to render video into f. eg. h254 and then import to PS and export as a GiF. 

[Kscannell]

Idk if that was a typo with "H.254" but:
*** You should export as a PNG sequnece and than imporat that sequecne into Photoshop as a video layer. PNGs are lossless, and any video encoder will inherintly lower the quality of the export before you even get it into Photoshop. 

Also, ensure that the timeline framerate is set to the origional videos framerate prior to importing, or Photoshop might cut some frames.

[Warren Heaton]

I'm going to add a third option:

Export ProRes HQ or ProRes 4444 with Alpha at the desired duration (keeping in mind that Photoshop caps the GIF animation at 500 frames) and frame size from AE or PR, import that into PS, then export for web (legacy) to set the GIF options.

H264 and H265 introduce compression, (although as a 1st generation should be fine in Photoshop). 

PNGs require establishing the frame rate and duration in Photoshop which was already done on the AE/PS side.