The friction
I love photography and telling stories through photos and video. I often shoot in bursts and turn those sequences into GIFs. Photoshop can do it, but I have been moving some tools to alternatives such as Affinity and looking for ways out of a world where everything seems to require a subscription. Online tools brought other limits: uploads, image counts and file sizes.
A tool for my workflow
I built FotoLoop with Codex as a macOS app using Swift and FFmpeg. It lets me import a photo sequence, adjust the animation and export a GIF directly on my computer, without making a simple task depend on an online tool.
Why make it open source
FotoLoop is free and open source. I put the project on GitHub so people can try it, use it or contribute improvements. It is still early, but it already solved the problem that made me build it.
What it made me think about
Building FotoLoop reminded me how accessible it is becoming to make our own tools. A solution does not have to be broad to be useful: sometimes a small, specific app can make a real difference in everyday work.
Free and open source. Explore the code, try the app or contribute.
Explore FotoLoop on GitHub