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How to change the mb size of a gif

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
December 7, 2019
11 replies
216681 views

Looking to post a gif on twitter, but it says the file size is too big any ideas?

Anywhere

M

maria_fca

Participant

Hello!

This method works pretty well with small secuence or small size animations, but if you have a poor computer like me, PS will claim lack of memory while saving the file.

There's an alternative:

1. Create your GIF in Premiere Pro and export reducing the most you can, so your GIF is no more than 200 MB. In my experience, reduce frame rate really worked and frame heigh/width.

2. Go to https://ezgif.com/optimize, upload your GIF, move compress level bar up to what it suits you best. Export.

This worked for me today. From 96 MB to 18MB. And you can optimize that compressed GIF again.

Also EZGIF allows you to buil GIFs, convert videos to GIFs, add text, etc. Great tool. I use it since 2016. Buy them a coffee!

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

@Agni7

Great reminder about the frame count limit for an animated GIF in Photoshop. It's somewhere around 510 frames. If taking the Photoshop route, the duration of the GIF can be extended by going with a lower frame rate (like 10 or 15 for 30fps source video or 8 or 12 for 24fps source video) before opening the video file in Photoshop for export to animated GIF.

Agni7

Known Participant

If you are unable to reduce GIF file size from within Premiere Pro, you could try the Adobe Media Encoder. I do agree though that for animated GIF format, there are pretty less options to tweak things so that the file size is within the limits.
As mentioned in previous comments, the Quality slider is kind of helpful, although you will get better results if you consider reducing the Frame Rate and the Dimensions of the final output.

Apart from the Photoshop trick, there is currently another way which also involves creating an mp4 file instead of an animated GIF directly from Premiere.

After exporting the mp4 file, you can check out Adobe Express compress GIF webpage. This doesn't require any subscription or credit card details, so this is completely free. I tried out a couple of files and the medium quality option itself gave quite good results, which were much better than the generic GIF convertors available online.

This is to be noted that for higher duration videos, you may encounter errors in Photoshop. The Adobe Express option, on the other hand, is reliable most of the time.

Hope this helps!

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Consider using Photoshop's Save for Web (Legacy) option to get the file size of an animated GIF optimized by reducing the number of colors and the frame size (two of the main things that affect the file size of an animated GIF).

To try this approach, design the animated GIF in Premiere Pro at a low frame rate (15, 12, 10, or 😎 and export it from Premiere Pro or Media Encoder using an Apple ProRes 422 preset. If including transparency, export to Apple ProRes 4444 with Alpha. Photoshop has a limit of about 520 frames (I forget the exact limit), so keep an eye on the duration of the movie being exported (short animations have fewer frames total which helps to reduce the file size of the animated GIF as well). Use File > Open in Photoshop to open the ProRes movie in a Photoshop Video Timeline and then File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy) to get to the GIF options.

If I could change one thing about the Animated GIF options in Adobe Media Encoder, there would be a pop-up menu to switch to "Photoshop Mode".

ComboKit.Net

Participant

You can try using https://combokit.net/tiny-gif this will help you tiny a lot of size of gif file.

S

Stellar_sincerityB839

Participant

Thank you Conrad C that helped a LOT!

A

ashleysally00

Participant

Hi! I had the same problem. If you created the gif in procreate and toggle on "web ready" before exporting it, it greatly reduces the file size. Not sure if that will help.

Kevin J. Monahan Jr.

Community Manager

Hi Community,

I moved this to the Ideas forum. If you are struggling with this issue, as well, please upvote this feature request. Upvoting this feature request will put this issue on the product team's radar, so please do so.

Thanks,

Kevin

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio

B

Baffy19

Legend

Kevin, a great solution for the function. I vote

Conrad_C

Community Expert

Another solution that has helped me is the Gifski app. That link is to the Mac version which I use, but there is a Windows app here.

Gifski provides more control than Premiere Pro or Adobe Media Encoder, and is able to create much smaller animated GIF files. It has fewer manual controls than Save for Web (Legacy) in Photoshop, but the way Gifski works creates better-looking video at a smaller size, without having to spend a lot of time hand-tweaking the GIF color palette.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

I have not seen a reliable way to reduce file size of an animated GIF when exporting directly from Premiere Pro or Adobe Media Encoder. They just don’t provide enough detailed control over animated GIF options. All they offer is just one Quality slider.

If that Quality slider doesn’t reduce the size enough, try these:

Reduce the duration.
Reduce the frame size (pixel dimensions).
Reduce the frame rate.

These can all be done in the Export Settings dialog box for Premiere Pro or Media Encoder.

If the animated GIF still isn’t small enough, you have exhausted what the Adobe video applications can do here, so you have to get it done in Photoshop:

Export as a regular video file.
Open that in Photoshop.
Open the Timeline panel (Window > Timeline), and in the Timeline panel menu, choose Set Timeline Frame Rate. Lower that frame rate as much as you can tolerate.
Choose File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy).
Set the export file type to GIF. That displays the GIF optimization controls.
Now apply standard GIF optimization techniques, which I won’t go into in detail but are things like:

Reduce the number of colors in the GIF palette. Lock important colors if needed.
Reduce the amount of dithering.
Reduce the frame size (pixel dimensions).

Watch the estimated file size in the bottom left corner to see which changes reduce the file size the most.

Making adjustments may be slow because Save for Web (Legacy) is very old code. But for now, this is the only good place to properly optimize an animated GIF in Adobe software, that I know of.

If these changes compromise the quality of the video too much, you have run into the limitations of the creaky old 1990s animated GIF format, which was never designed for continuous tone video. If nothing gets the file size down far enough, that means you should post it somewhere as a normal video, and embed that into the Twitter post.

(Another alternative: See my post further down about the Gifski app, which works better than anything Adobe has.)

(Edit, 2024) Another alternative recently came out from Adobe: Use the Convert to GIF feature that’s part of the Adobe Express online service. You can use it directly from the Quick Actions panel in Adobe Bridge 2025 or later, or at the Adobe Express Convert to GIF web page. The problem with this is that the are only options are size/quality (Small, Medium, Large), aspect ratio, and trimming, so it might not have enough optimization options for the file size/quality balance you need.

P

Prashant5C0E

Participant

Thanks Conrad C,

Your solution works. Ain't no way you can reduce the file size in Adobe Media Encoder effectively. I exported it is a .mp4 and used Photoshop to convert it to a smaller .gif using the save for web(legacy) format. Danke!

A

Anonymous

Huge props for replying that this solution worked. I will try it myself. Thanks!

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