Imgur’s new tool makes it easy to turn videos into high quality GIFs

A significant portion of the Internet is dominated by GIFs, including Reddit, the so-called “front page of the Internet.” The popular image sharing website known as Imgur that actually spawned from Reddit has helped make the sharing of GIFs much easier by offering an unobtrusive, lag-free platform to put them on. Now the website has taken things a step further by releasing a special tool that make it ridiculously easy to turn videos into high quality GIFs.

Popular image sharing site imgur has launched a new tool that’ll make many Internet users happy, particularly the ones who are constantly making GIFs out of various videos. The online tool — aptly called “video to GIF” — lets users simply paste a video URL and then create a great GIF file. Users can easily move back and forth in the chosen video and even add text overlays. Once they’re happy with their selection, imgur will do the hard work and package everything into an animated GIF image. As Engadget points out, the results are much better than regular GIF files, as imgur exports them as GIFV files, which have higher quality than regular GIF files and are much smaller. Once the GIF is created, a user can share it with friends using a variety of social networks, and embed it into websites, just like the short GIF at the end of this post.