When you’re embroiled in a commenting war, sometimes your best course of action isn’t words. After all, when there’s James Van Der Memes available, how could you possibly express your emotions any better? Maybe if you were the star of a gif series yourself. New app GIF SHOP makes it easier than ever to create your own moving images on iPhones 3GS and 4, fourth-generation iPod Touch and iPad 2.
GIF SHOP is incredibly easy to use: Just tap the screen to capture a still of the video image. You’ll see an onion-skin version of the image you just snapped so you can line up edges of your next shot. You can play with the skin’s opacity via the slider bar within the “Settings” button, where you can also specify the gif’s resolution. Continue tapping the screen to capture new frames. When you’re ready to view your gif, hit the “Play” button. While your frames are flipping, use the slider bar to set the animation’s speed. You can select for the frames to loop or flip back and forth with the double-ended or circular-arrow icon. Individual frames will appear across the top of the screen, and you can tap each to delete if you don’t like how it fits the animation (there’s no reordering available, though). Hit the checkmark to keep your gif if you want to work on it later, or just save for posterity.
When you’re happy with your creation, you can send the gif embedded in an email, or you can copy the gif to send as an MMS. The app will also allow you how to sign up with a free GIF SHOP account to use as your host, which will allow you to share the gif online over Facebook or Twitter. GIF SHOP is full-featured, and with the save function isn’t missing much of anything in terms of functionality — although the ability to add images from the camera roll would be nice.
GIF SHOP’s ease of use and reasonable purchase price mean there’s going to be an onslaught of iPhone-created animations popping up across social media networks soon.
Download the free Appolicious iPhone app
