How to Add Text to a GIF

Graphics Interchange Format, also known as GIF, has become a preferred format for telling jokes and short stories worldwide. It gives web users new ways of expressing certain emotions that are hard to convey via emoticons. GIFs are short videos that are usually a few seconds long. GIFs often have special effects like transitions or overlayed texts. During the playback, animation repeats, giving an effect of a cycled video, which an experienced GIF creator can also use to his advantage.

If you’re interested in making GIFs out of movies or music videos, you need a suitable video editor to keep the high quality of the original footage. Try Movavi Video Editor! Using it, you can add a caption to a GIF, merge two videos to make a GIF even funnier, and add GIF effects and filters from a huge library. To find out more about Movavi Video Editor, watch the video below.

Adding words to a GIF isn’t complicated by itself. All you need is a good GIF editor. If you already use a video editor to put text on clips, you can stick to it and just convert your resulting video to the GIF format. Here’s a tutorial on how to do this with another Movavi program – Movavi Video Converter:
How to convert a video to GIF

If you’ve never used a video editor and are not ready to spend money on one, here’s a list of free tools to modify GIFs. All the tools work online, so they are available on any operating system.

Ezgif is an excellent tool for GIF editing. It’s completely free and adds no watermark to the output GIFs. The quality of the GIFs produced is really high too. As for the features, the software can crop, resize, and rotate GIFs, add effects, text, and custom watermarks. If you’re wondering how to slow down a GIF (or, on the opposite, speed it up), this software can do the trick for you. So, if you’re looking for a free GIF editor, start your search with this one.

Pros

• Completely free, no signup required

• Easy to use

Cons

• Has a file size limit of 35 MB

If you need a platform to get fun stickers, filters, and GIFs, GIPHY is a go-to. Since GIPHY stocks all the animations created and users can make their creations public, it’s not only an editing platform but also a massive platform for getting ready-made GIFs. So, if you have an excellent idea for a GIF, try searching it here. Maybe you won’t have to edit anything!

Pros

• Provides multiple ways to create a GIF image

• Has different customization tools

Cons

• Requires creating an account on the website

GIFGIFs is a platform that both has some stock GIFs and lets you edit your animated image. The difference between this website and the previous ones is that GIFGIFs focuses more on single features. If you’ve uploaded your picture at the GIF text editor page, you cannot switch to another tool and proceed with cropping or splitting. But since each tool works separately, they are perfectly optimized to do their tasks. And the website doesn’t require you to sign up, which is a huge advantage.

Pros

• Completely free, no signup required

• Has some unique fonts

Cons

• You can’t add text and resize a GIF at the same time.

All of the tools mentioned above are excellent in their niche. They will work correctly if you already have a GIF and just want to add a few lines. But what if you need a custom GIF from a movie or a music video? None of these tools allow you to upload a long video and cut out a few seconds to make a perfect GIF.

Which tool to use if you want to make a genuinely unique GIF? We suggest you try Movavi Video Editor. Below, you’ll find out how to add text to a GIF with this software and an explanation of how to use this program to make a GIF from a longer video.

1. Launch the program.

2. Upload your GIF to the application via the Add Files button.

3. Click the Titles tab, select the type of caption you like, and drag it to the Titles Track on the timeline.

4. Edit the text of your titles.

5. Export the file in GIF format.

Using Movavi Video Editor, you can cut out a part of a long video to turn it into a GIF. Locate the video you want to make an animated GIF out of, upload it to the program, and place it onto the timeline. Find the moment you want to use, cut it out using the Scissors icon, and delete the rest of the video. Then do all the edits you’ve thought of: add filters, text, join several videos, add transitions, etc. When you’re satisfied with the animation, click Export and set the output format to GIF.

To read the step-by-step guide on how to make a GIF from a video, follow the link below.

How to make a GIF from a video