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Participant
February 25, 2022
Answered

Unable to save a GIF from Photoshop

  • February 25, 2022
  • 10 replies
  • 58439 views

I have been trying to convert a video into a gif on Photoshop. However, when I go to save for web > export as gif and click save, I receive an error message that the operation cannot be completed due to memory. I have 50GB of storage available on my Mac, and 1.5 TB of storage available on an External Hard Drive. I have tried exporting to both my hard drive and straight to my desktop. 

 

I am on Photoshop v23.2.1

On macOS Monterey 12.2.1

 

My computer - 

13" Macbook Pro 2019

1.4 GHz

8 GB memory 

 

I have read previous threads regarding this issue, but have not seen any from 2022 or using this latest version of Photoshop.

 

These are the fixes I have tried that have been recommended -

-Restarting Photoshop

-Resetting Photoshop preferences

-Giving Photoshop additional access in the system prefrences on my mac (under privacy & accessibility)

 

If there are any other possible solutions to this, please let me know. 

 

Correct answer Created.By.KaylaD

Go to Photoshop- Prefrences - Image Processing and change it to "Cloud" and "More Stable"

Restart photoshop and try again. Its the only thing that has worked for me when nothing else did but I was finally able to export a GIF

10 replies

Participant
April 18, 2025

I switched my Image Processing settings to "Cloud" and "More Stable" and it's still not working. Anyone have a solution in 2025?

Participant
April 23, 2025

Would love to hear from an Adobe expert on this. It's quite a frustrating problem

Participant
July 4, 2024

Hi Everyone,

 

I'm having this exact problem today, trying to export a transparent gif - I've tried every solution listed here but still have the error message 😞 Any idea ideas very welcome at the end of a frustrating day, thanks team!

 

Scott

Inspiring
July 9, 2023

All the suggestions in here are worthwhile but how I ended up doing it was clicking the little stack layer icon in the timeline so my animation became instead of single frames to stacked video frames and then hey presto! finally it very quickly exported to web as an animated gif.

Participant
July 17, 2023

Hi, do you have a screenshot of the stack layer icon? I can't seem to find it.

Inspiring
July 25, 2023

guil1herme
Participant
April 27, 2023

I don't know if this helps but I was having the same problem and once I reduced the video frame rate I was able to export

Participant
October 20, 2022

Did you find a solution? I am having the same problem. 

Participant
October 20, 2022

Nope... still the same issues incurred.

 

have now resorted to using an online gif compressor to convert MP4/mov assets from after effects to a GIF. Pretty annoying to have no solution on it, as I've done just about everything I can think of. 

Participant
April 3, 2024

Go to Photoshop- Prefrences - Image Processing and change it to "Cloud" and "More Stable"

Restart photoshop and try again. Its the only thing that has worked for me when nothing else did but I was finally able to export a GIF


Hello, 

I am having the issue where I try to Save for Web (legacy) to make a gif and when I do it saves it as almost a slideshow, where I have to click through my gif. I have watched several youtube tutorials and even tried your method, but still nothing worked. I can send a screen shot of what it comes up as. Do you have any solutions that might work? 

Participant
August 29, 2022

likewise. Why are these issues happening now?

 

Participant
August 19, 2022

What percentage of available RAM are you giving Photoshop in Photoshop > Preferences > Performance?

I dropped mine down to 50%, as I'd jacked it up to 70% for some past project. Dropping it back down allowed a large GIF export from an MOV file under Save for Web to be successful. 

Participant
February 7, 2023

This worked for me.

Legend
February 27, 2022

You may actually be out of memory if you only have 8GB of RAM. Can you post the PSD you're having trouble saving the GIF from?

Participant
June 27, 2022

Hi,
I have the same exact error, not enough memory to complete the operation, when saving for web a GIF 128 dithered.

 

I have 16 GB of RAM, and plenty storage 800 GB left. Updated photopshop to the lates CC version, and I do not know what else to do...

Participant
August 19, 2022

I am also experiencing the exact same issue, haven't incurred this issue before, sometimes simultaneously exporting out of after effects in the past... strange now it's become an issue. Can't export gif under any export settings if exporting out of save for web. Really could use some help here. Have tried all the fixes suggested by OP of this article.

Participant
February 26, 2022

It says "Could not complete this operation. There was not enough memory available."

 

Michael Bullo
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 26, 2022

Could you please post the exact error message given by Photoshop.

Participant
July 25, 2023

Participant
July 25, 2023

Hi, I have this problem ....