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Giphy launches a super simple GIF creator for the web

Giphy launches a super simple GIF creator for the web

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As a denizen of the internet, I frequently find myself wanting to turn YouTube videos into GIFs, but I've never been very good at doing it on my own. Fortunately, the internet's overwhelming love for GIFs has resulted in the creation of some pretty simple GIF creators, and Giphy is releasing a brand new one this afternoon.

Just drop in a YouTube link and choose your clip

Giphy's new GIF Maker just requires you to drop in a YouTube link, navigate to a starting point in the video, and choose how long the GIF should run for. You can also add a caption and position the text more-or-less wherever you want on top of the GIF. And that's it. Once you hit "create GIF," Giphy will spit out your creation as a GIF and a higher-quality HTML5 animation. Giphy's GIF Maker also accepts direct video links, but links from streaming sites other than YouTube — like Vimeo — don't appear to work.

If GIF Maker sounds familiar, it's probably because Imgur released basically this exact same tool in January. Neither tool is necessarily better than the other, though Imgur seems to create higher-quality animations and Giphy does a much better job with captions. Giphy has been exploring other ways to make GIFs, too. Its most exciting tool is the iPhone app Giphy Cam, which lets you make ridiculous and fun GIFs using your phone's camera.