About two years ago I sat down after a wedding to make GIFs for my client gallery and realized I didn’t have a single obvious answer to “how do I do this?” I had photos — burst sequences from the ceremony, candids from the reception — and I wanted animated moments. But the path from “folder of JPEGs” to “GIF my client would love” had about four different routes, each with serious tradeoffs that nobody spelled out clearly.
This is the article I wish I’d had then. It covers every real method for making a GIF from photos on a Mac, in order of how likely they are to fit your situation.
Quick answer
| Your situation | Best method | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Burst photos in Lightroom Classic | Burst2GIF plugin | Free / $29 lifetime |
| Any photos, full control | Photoshop | CC subscription |
| Exported JPEGs, quality matters | Gifski | Free |
| One-off GIF, nothing to install | ezgif.com | Free (web) |
The “best” answer entirely depends on where your photos are and how often you need to do this.
Method 1: Burst2GIF — if your photos are burst sequences in Lightroom
Full disclosure: I built this one. I made it because the other methods were costing me 90 minutes per wedding, and the reactions from clients made it clear GIFs were worth doing properly.
Burst2GIF is a Lightroom Classic plugin. You select a burst sequence in your Library grid, run the plugin, set your frame rate — it reads the real capture timing from EXIF data, so 1/6th-second between shots becomes 6fps automatically — and export. GIF or MP4, your choice. The whole thing takes about 10 seconds per animation. More importantly, every Lightroom develop adjustment you’ve made carries through to the output: exposure, white balance, crop, presets. You’re not exporting flat JPEGs and losing your edit.
This method is specifically for photographers with burst sequences in Lightroom Classic. If you have photos in a folder on your desktop, or if you use Lightroom CC instead of Classic, it’s not for you — and I’d rather say that plainly here.
- Requires: macOS, Lightroom Classic 10.0+
- Not for: Lightroom CC users, people working with arbitrary image sequences
- Price: free (10 exports), $29 lifetime for unlimited
For a detailed walkthrough, see my complete Lightroom GIF guide or the broader burst photos to GIF guide.
Method 2: Photoshop — for any photo sequence, any kind
Photoshop is the longest-established way to make a GIF from photos on Mac, and it’s the most flexible. You can use it with burst sequences, product shots, a series of travel stills, anything. The Timeline panel gives you frame-level control: per-frame delay, looping options, all of it.
The process goes roughly like this: export your photos from Lightroom (or wherever they live), open Photoshop, load all the frames into a stack via File → Scripts → Load Files into Stack, open the Timeline panel, create a frame animation, set your delays, and export via Save for Web. Twelve steps, 5–8 minutes per GIF once you’ve memorized it.
I made 15–20 GIFs per wedding this way before I built Burst2GIF. The output quality is excellent. The experience is like painting a wall with a toothbrush — technically it works, but nobody would call it pleasant.
- Best for: any photo type, composited or edited GIFs, designers already in Photoshop
- Watch out for: you have to export from Lightroom first, which means your edits are baked in before the GIF step — re-editing means re-exporting, re-importing, redoing everything
- Price: part of Adobe Creative Cloud
The detailed Photoshop GIF export walkthrough has every step with screenshots if you want to go this route.
Method 3: Gifski — for exported images when quality matters most
Gifski is a free Mac App Store app by Sindre Sorhus. It’s primarily built for video-to-GIF conversion, but the quality of its output is noticeably better than most converters — it uses a per-frame color palette approach rather than a single global 256-color palette, which makes a real visual difference on detailed images.
If you’ve already exported a folder of JPEGs (say, from Photoshop’s batch export, or from Lightroom’s normal export dialog), you can assemble them into a video first and run that through Gifski. It won’t work if you hand it a folder of stills directly in the GUI — it expects video input — but for technical users, the command-line version (gifski --fps 10 frame*.jpg -o output.gif) handles image sequences natively.
Gifski doesn’t do any editing — it’s a converter, not an editor. You’re working on whatever quality your source images have. But if your JPEGs are clean and you need the GIF to look as good as possible, Gifski consistently beats the alternatives for pure GIF output quality.
- Best for: technical users, GIFs from video, situations where quality is the whole point
- Not ideal for: non-technical users, photographers who want to stay inside Lightroom
- Price: free, Mac App Store
Method 4: ezgif.com — when you need one GIF and want nothing installed
ezgif is a web tool. You go to the site, upload your images, set a frame delay, click “Make a GIF,” and download the result. No install, no learning curve, no cost.
I’ve used it in a pinch. It does the job for one-off situations. But there are two things worth knowing before you reach for it regularly.
The first is the upload limit — you’re typically capped at 20–30 images or a combined file size that fills up fast with full-resolution photos. You’ll probably need to resize before uploading.
The second is privacy. Your photos are going to ezgif’s servers. For personal photos that’s fine. For client work — especially weddings — it’s a real consideration. Clients don’t sign model releases for their venue, their family, their intimate moments to land on a third-party server for processing. I stopped using web-based photo tools for client work once I thought about it seriously.
If you’re comparing ezgif to the Lightroom plugin route, I wrote up an honest breakdown of Burst2GIF vs ezgif that’s worth reading before deciding.
- Best for: one-off GIFs from personal photos, when you don’t want to install anything
- Not for: regular client workflow, privacy-sensitive photo work
- Price: free
How to actually choose
The answer comes down to two questions: where do your photos live, and how often are you doing this?
If your photos are in Lightroom and they’re burst sequences — camera bursts, rapid fire sequences, anything with multiple frames of the same moment — use Burst2GIF. The time savings over a wedding season are not trivial. At 15 GIFs per wedding and two hours via Photoshop, you’re burning 30 hours a year on something that can take 45 minutes total.
If your photos aren’t in Lightroom, or you’re working with arbitrary image sequences that weren’t shot as bursts, Photoshop is the most reliable option on Mac and you probably already have it.
If you need one GIF from personal photos and want to be done in three minutes, ezgif works — just know what you’re trading.
One note on format: GIF’s 256-color limit and large file sizes make it a poor delivery format for client galleries. If you’re sending animations to clients via Pic-Time, Pixieset, or any gallery platform, MP4 is better on every dimension — smaller files, millions of colors, supported everywhere. Most tools including Burst2GIF and Photoshop (with extra steps) can output MP4. Gifski outputs GIF specifically. Plan accordingly.
If you’re not sure which to pick, start with the free version of Burst2GIF if you use Lightroom, or read the GIF Brewery alternatives roundup for a broader comparison of Mac GIF tools.
Ready to Turn Your Burst Photos Into GIFs?
Burst2GIF works directly inside Lightroom Classic. Select your burst photos, click export, and get a smooth GIF or MP4 in seconds.
