Use Adobe Premiere to create your own GIFs from video

What is Adobe Premiere and what is it for?

Premiere is a video editing and post-production software developed by Adobe which has managed to become one of the industry standards. Although it was created and geared towards professional video editing, it is increasingly used by home users to edit their own home videos made with digital cameras or cell phones.

The application has a very complete interface that can be personalized and organized into different workspaces to develop the different stages of editing. It is characterized by taking in support almost all video formats , as well as RAW formats. This allows us to work with audio, color, graphics, and effects outside of the video itself, as well as export the results to various formats and devices.

One of its possibilities is to be able to create a GIF , both animated and static. We can insert these elements later in forums, social networks or send them by email or instant messaging. While this may seem like a complicated task, it is something that can be done easily with just a few steps.

What types of GIFs can we create with Premiere

When we talk about GIF, we are talking about a graphic interchange format whose origin dates back to 1987. These files are made up of a series of images which follow one another and which are reproduced in a loop and without sound for short periods of time, usually between 5 and 10 seconds. The GIF format is characterized by the admission of transparencies, which allows us to obtain animation effects that occur in fractions of a second, giving us the feeling of having movement.

Since the advent of the Internet, the use of GIF files has become extremely popular . Above all, with the presence of the first smartphones on the market, contributing to their expansion and making a form of expression more effective than text and photography. In addition, it is very frequently used in business marketing . Companies see GIF as an element capable of attracting attention through various visual impacts.

Among its main advantages over other multimedia media such as video or image is that it is a very light format . In addition, it supports a maximum of 256 colors, they are very dynamic, so it is a kind of combination between image and video formats, which can bring together the best of both formats.

Using Adobe Premiere video editing software, we can create two different types of GIFs , both animated and static. Animated GIF is generally known to be formed by image sequences creating a low frame rate video effect. While the static GIF is just a normal digital image.

Easily create a GIF with Adobe Premiere

To start creating a GIF with Adobe Premiere, the first thing we need is to install the app. To use it, you will need to pay a subscription of 24,19 euros per month . On a trial basis, we can download a free version for 7 days from their Website .

Create an animated GIF

To create our animated GIF, the first thing to do is to create a "New Project" in Adobe Premiere from the "File" tab. We need to give the project a name, as well as the location where we want it to be located.

Once our project has been created, we return to the “File” tab and now we will select the “Import” option. From there we select the video we are going to use to convert it to an animated GIF. Once inserted, we need to drag and drop the imported video from the Project section to the section chronology.

Then, we access the “File” menu again and this time we select the “Export” and “Media” option or we can directly use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + M. In the new window, at the bottom left In the “ Original interval ", select" Entire clip ". In case we want to choose a sequence of the video, we choose "Custom" and adjust the duration in the sequence bar that we'll use to create the animated GIF. If you look at the top right, in the "Format" section, you must select the "Animated GIF" option.

Now we go to the “Video” tab and select the desired width and height for the GIF (or leave them as is by default) and enter the frame rate (eg 10 fps). Finally, just click “Export” to convert our original video file to an animated GIF file.

Create a static GIF

If we want to create a Static GIF, you have to access the "File" menu and select the "Import" option and choose the video on which you want to make a static image of a frame and click on “Open”. Once we have added the video to our project, we need to drag and drop it on the timeline .

Then we go back to the “File” section and click on “Export” and “Media”. In the next window at the bottom left, in the “Original interval” section, we select “Custom” and using the slider, we select the desired image to be captured as a GIF.

In the upper right part of the “Format” menu, we select the “GIF” option. In the "Video" section, we write the desired dimensions in the Width and Height section or we leave the one that is preset by default. Finally, click "Export" to save the static image of the selected video image in GIF format.