Review of 5 Best GIF Editors [Features and Detailed Guide]

Want to add or remove images from GIF, trim, crop or rotate a GIF? You need a good GIF editor.

Many image editors offered on the market can help you cut GIFs or do other editing operations with ease. There are also some specially-designed GIF editor and GIF maker tools that can help you edit animated GIFs. How to choose the best GIF editor?

This post lists 5 best GIF editors for you to select from. You can learn the key features of each GIF editor and then pick the one that suits you most to edit and optimize your GIF files.

Part 1. How to Choose the Best GIF Editor

What is the best GIF editor? With so many GIF editing tools, including free online GIF editors/makers offered on the internet, you may feel hard to select the best or even a good GIF editor. Surely you don't want to try them one by one. Considering that, this part shares some tips for you to quickly find the right GIF editor.

GIF editing features. When you select a GIF editor, you should figure out what specific editing function you need. Some GIF editors only carry the trim or crop feature. If you want to add or remove images from GIF, resize GIF, add texts, or do other editing operations, you can't use them.

No GIF file size and other limits. Many GIF editors have size limit to your added or uploaded GIF file, especially for some free online GIF editors. Moreover, some of them require account sign-in or sign-up.

Output GIF settings. If you like to get more output GIF settings to custom GIF resolution, quality, loop animation, and more, you should pay attention to that. Cause many GIF editors will directly export the edited GIF for you.

High GIF quality. Surely you don't want to lose any image quality after the GIF editing. A good GIF editor should help you edit GIF while keeping the source file quality. You may notice that, some GIF editor even allows you to enhance the output GIF quality.

Easy to use. Many image editors like Adobe Photoshop can help you edit GIFs. But you may feel quite complex to use it. Therefore, when you choose to cut, crop, resize, or optimize a GIF, you should use an easy-to-use GIF editing tool.

No watermark and ads. Some online or free GIF editors will insert watermark to your edited GIF. You have to upgrade to a paid version to remove watermark from GIF. While using an online GIF editor, you may see many ads. If you don't want watermark or ads, you should take them into account.

Part 2. Top 5 GIF Editor Review

This part introduces you to 5 great GIF editors. You can learn main features, pros and cons of each GIF editor and then make your choice.

Video Converter Ultimate GIF Maker

Video Converter Ultimate is a powerful video, audio and image editor that can help you edit GIF files. It is designed with many frequently-used editing features for you to edit GIF. For instance, you can use it to cut GIF, rotate GIF, crop GIF, resize GIF, adjust GIF effects, apply filters to GIF, add text or image watermark to GIF, and more. As a GIF editor, it also enables you to custom various output GIF settings, such as GIF resolution, frame rate, zoom mode, and loop animation.

This GIF editor offers 3 options for you to output a GIF file, Large GIF, Medium GIF, and Small GIF. It has the capability to enhance the GIF quality easily. More than just a GIF editor, it also has a separate GIF Maker for you to create GIFs from photos or video clips. What's more, this recommended Video Converter Ultimate is equipped with many other editing and converting functions. You should free download it and have a try.

Ezgif - Online GIF maker and image editor

Ezgif is a very popular online GIF editing and converting tool. It has an Online GIF maker and image editor for you to directly edit GIF on your web browsers like Chrome, IE, Safari, or Yahoo. When it works as a GIF editor, it allows you to crop/cut/rotate/resize/reverse/split GIF, optimize GIF, add text, adjust effects, and more. In addition, it is able to convert video to GIF and make GIF out of the video or JPG/PNG images.

The max file size of your uploaded animated GIF is limited to 35MB. Besides the local GIF files, you are also allowed to edit an online GIF through its URL. This free online GIF editor doesn't offer output GIF options for you. It won't add any watermark to the output GIF file. But you will see many ads on its site.

VEED GIF Editor

VEED GIF Editor is a free online GIF maker and editor tool. It provides you with a simple way to cut GIF, add text to GIF, crop and rotate GIF, and split animated GIF. Moreover, it can help you change the looping speed of your GIF, and resize GIF for different social media platforms. As a free GIF maker, it allows you to create, edit and convert videos to GIFs. Besides the local animated GIFs, it also can edit a GIF file from Dropbox or an online GIF through its URL.

When you enter the GIF editing page, you can handily edit GIF with various editing features it offers. You won't see any ads on this online GIF maker site. However, the free version will add a watermark to your edited GIF file. You have to upgrade to a paid version to remove it.

Gifntext

Gifntext is a powerful, online, and free GIF editor which is mainly designed for adding texts or images to GIFs. It enables you to edit a GIF file from the local hard drive or an online GIF. As a free GIF editor, it carries many basic editing features, including trim, reverse, crop, control GIF speed, transparent, and add text or image to GIF.

Gifntext can offer you a great GIF editing experience. But compared with other GIF editors, it gives a relatively slow GIF generating speed. Through our tests, it usually stuck at 91%. After editing on Gifntext, you can choose to copy the GIF URL or download GIF for later sharing. No watermark will be inserted into your output GIF file.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular and powerful image editors. It supports various GIF files and allows you to edit GIF based on your need. As a GIF editor, it allows you to cut GIF, crop GIF, adjust effects, and do other operations. But we have to admit that it's quite complex to edit a GIF in Photoshop.

Photoshop is a very expensive image editor. But it offers you a free trial of 30 days. It is not a good GIF editor option if you only use Photoshop to edit GIFs. Check how to make a GIF in Photoshop to learn more information about creating and editing GIF using Photoshop.

Part 3. How to Edit a GIF Without Losing Quality

Here in this part, we take the recommended GIF editor software, Video Converter Ultimate, as an example to show you how to edit a GIF while keeping the source file quality.

How to Make a GIF for Text Message

Step 1First, you can double click on the download button above and follow the instructions to free install and launch this GIF editor on your computer. Click Add Files or the big plus icon to import your GIF file(s). You are allowed to edit one or multiple GIFs at a time.

Step 2If you want to trim GIF, you can directly click on the Cut icon under your added GIF file. If you want to combine several GIFs together, you can tick the Merge into one file.

Step 3To crop/rotate GIF or adjust GIF effects, you can click the Edit icon. When you enter the main GIF editing window, you can free edit GIF based on your need. During this step, you are also able to add text or image watermark to GIF. Click the OK button to save your changes.

Step 4Choose GIF as the output format from the drop-down list of Convert All to. You are offered 3 GIF output options, Large GIF, Medium GIF, and Small GIF. You can also click the Edit Profile icon to custom more GIF settings. You are allowed to custom frame rate, resolution, color settings, and enable the loop animation.

Step 5Select a suitable destination file folder for the edited GIF. Click the Convert All button to save it on your computer.

Part 4. FAQs of GIF Editor

Conclusion

We have mainly talked about 5 best GIF editors in this post. Moreover, you can learn a detailed guide to edit a GIF with ease. For more questions about GIF editor or GIF editing, you can leave us a message.