Any to GIF is a simple tool for creating animated GIFs from images or - in theory, at least - video frames.

The process starts by selecting your source files. Click "Add image files" and choose you preferred pictures, then drag and drop them into the order you need.

Next, set your animation size, delay (the time between each frame, in milliseconds) and stretch method (do you want to fill the frame, preserve the image aspect ratio, and so on).

Click "Play animation" to see a preview of your work; tweak any settings, if necessary; and click "Save as GIF" to export the finished file. (Image viewers generally don't play animated GIFs, so if you want to see the file in action, right-click it, select "Open With" and choose Internet Explorer or another one of your browsers.)

This all worked just fine for us, but we did have problems with another Any To GIF feature: its ability to import video frames. When we first tried this with a test MPEG file, the program couldn't find any frames. And when we used an AVI file, instead, Any To GIF loaded the frames but couldn't convert them to an animated GIF. Maybe we were unlucky, but it does seem as though plain image import is much more reliable than using video.

Please note, the Any to GIF setup program will by default add a toolbar to your system. Pay attention during setup and make sure you only install what you really want.