The Digital Public Library of America is an organization that aims to gather the resources and archives of American libraries and museums to make them freely available on the internet.  The DPLA recently held two workshops about making GIFs, short web animations, with tools freely available on the web as well as professional image editing software.  The webinars aim to encourage use of public domain and archival images and video in the creation of GIFs.

GIF-Making 101

GIF-Making 101 introduced participants to techniques and methods for making GIFs through freely available web services.  These services take a short video or series of photos and turn them into an animation ready to be embedded on the web.  Links and resources can be found on the workshop page.

Advanced GIF-Making Techniques

The workshop for advanced techniques focused on methods for creating GIFs using Adobe Photoshop, the industry standard in image editing, and GIMP, an open source alternative.  While these methods may not be as fast as the free online services demonstrated in the GIF-Making 101 workshop, they allow for much more creative freedom and a more efficient workflow for complex projects.  Links and resources, including example files, can be found on the workshop page.