KaKoo

1. LooGix

LooGix lets you make GIFs from a minimum of two frames to a maximum of 10. You can adjust the size and speed to preset levels.

In addition to GIF-making, this service offers "special effects," such as blurring, rotation, fading, etc.

Once you're done, upload your GIF to social services, get the HTML code to embed or send it via email.

Click here to view this gallery.

If a picture tells a thousand words, then an animated GIF must be good for a few more. Whether you want to animate your avatar, get involved in a meme, or amuse your friends with a funny photo sequence, an animated GIF is a great way to do it.

We have found — and tried and tested — five free online services that make creating animated GIFs an absolute cinch. With click-to-upload functionality and simple settings to customize your creation, you’ll be a GIF-engineer in no time at all.

SEE ALSO: How to Animate Your Google+ Profile

Take a look through the gallery for a brief overview of the five free tools we’ve tried and tested. And remember folks, animated GIFs should be used sparingly.

More About: features, GIFs, online, photo editing, software, trending

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1. GifBoom

The free app we're using is "GifBoom: Animated GIF Camera" from TapMojo.

It is available for both the iPhone and Android phones.

Click here to view this gallery.

Did you know you can whip up tasty animated GIFs on your iPhone or Android handset, in seconds, free? We’ve found a superb app that will help you animate photographs and GIF-icize video.

Whether you want to join in with a popular meme, give a social avatar a bit of motion enhancement or just create something that will make your friends laugh, we have a super-simple way to do it.

SEE ALSO: 10 Hilarious Animated GIFs that Took the Web by Storm

Take a look through the gallery for our easy-peasy walkthrough. Just remember to use your newly-found, GIF-making superpowers wisely!

More About: android, Android apps, apple, features, iphone, iphone apps, iphotography, photo editing, photography, trending

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Google has been busy (and a little scary) today. It’s unveiled a host of new Google+ features, including enhanced photo-editing tools, a new What’s Hot area and a viral visualization for posts. Plus, Google is finally making its upstart social network Google+ available to Google Apps users.

Photo editing in Google+ is not new, but the Creative Kit, which adds a wide range of pre-made and fairly powerful photo-editing filters is. Google also used the opportunity to add a special set of Halloween filters.

The search giant snuck out the news this morning by letting some of its execs and a select group of celebrities Halloween-ize their own profile pictures prior to the announcement. These limited edition effects are now available to all Google+ members as part of the Creative Kit. I gave them a test-drive and found them intuitive and fun to use. They do not auto-transform your photos into scary Halloween surprises, but offer enough pre-sets and controls, like Draculan Dermis and Vampire Eyes, to help you apply some pretty entertaining effects to some of the 3.4 billion photos Google+ members have already reportedly posted on the service.

Eagle-eyed users will recognize controls from Picnik, Google’s stand-alone online photo-editing service. My guess is it’s all Picnik’s photo-editing engine underneath.

Check out the gallery to see what I did with Google’s Halloween photo filters.

Google also unveiled “What’s Hot,” a new area that appears just below your new posts in Google+ and a new menu item on the right side of the interface. I had to sign in and out to finally see the “Hot stuff.” The feature’s designed to help Google+ users weed through the “billions” of posts added to the service each day. Google promised that What’s Hot “isn’t just the same old faces, we do our best to provide a variety of posts.” Fair enough, but we did notice posts from Google+ heavyweights and industry notables Mike Elgan, Chris Brogan and Google’s own Natalie Villalobos.

The third item on Google’s list is Ripples, a new post visualization tool that should help Google+ users understand how posts spread among their contacts and beyond. Sadly, this feature may be rolling out slowly because I couldn’t get it working on my Google+ account.

Accessing Creative Kit

You access Google+'s Creative Kit by selecting a photo from your photo albums and then choosing Edit. Creative Kit is a selection under there.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Google, photo editing, picnik

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