There are a few good Mac apps for creating animated gifs from movies and images. I don’t need to do this very often, but I happen to really like PicGIF for it.

PicGIF can import hundreds of image formats, including other GIFs, and all common video formats. You can trim down to any section of a movie with easy in/out marker tools, and then add text and image overlays. You can also create slideshows from multiple images easily.

Fine tune your gifs with size/cropping, frame delay, special effects/color settings and more. You can drag frames around to modify the order, too.

PicGIF automatically optimizes the output to reduce the total size of longer GIFs (which can get huge if you don’t). It even includes sharing tools that you can hook into multiple social services.

You can download a limited trial from PearlMountain, but I also have 5 free copies to give away ($19.99 value). Just enter a name and email address below for a chance at a free full license. Winners will be randomly drawn on Saturday, September 20th.

Sorry, this giveaway has ended.