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Tumblr's app can now turn your photos and videos into GIFs

Tumblr's app can now turn your photos and videos into GIFs

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How wasn't this already a feature?

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The next time you go to post a photo on Tumblr, you may find a bunch of GIFs ready and waiting to be posted instead. Tumblr is updating its iOS app today with a new feature that lets it turn photo bursts and videos into GIFs. It works really well, automatically detecting GIFable moments in your camera roll and presenting them right alongside your other images, nearly ready to post. If you have a long video or burst, Tumblr will ask you to trim the GIF down to about three seconds. You can also choose to speed up or slow down a GIF and whether you want it to restart over and over again or if it should play back and forth endlessly, hiding the cut.

Tumblr has been playing up its role as the home of the GIF lately, introducing a GIF search function, a dedicated GIF-watching section, and even making videos work more like GIFs. Letting you create and post original GIFs from its mobile app is a pretty natural addition at this point — it's almost surprising that Tumblr didn't already have it.

Though GIFs are a key part of Tumblr, other sites and apps are embracing the format. Giphy is a site purely dedicated to collecting GIFs, and earlier this year it released a dedicated — and really fun — GIF making app for the iPhone. Imgur has gotten in on the GIF game, too, creating a web tool that turns YouTube videos and other clips into high-quality GIF-like animations. At this point, there are a lot of places you can go to find and create some GIFs. Tumblr's GIF creator is coming out on iOS today; it's headed to Android "soon."