Transparent GIF with Media Encoder

Question

I made a small animation in After Effects with a transparent background. I've exported it to Media Encoder and I want to render this as a GIF with a transparent background but I can't seem to find an option for that. It has a black background and that's it. It seems unbelievable to me that this option is not available.

I already tried exporting this animation to Photoshop and making a GIF from there but the quality is not that good (white text is GIF):

So I'm hoping that it is possible to achieve that in Media Encoder with a better quality. Is it?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Media Encoder only supports exporting animated GIFs on Windows^[1], but it wouldn't help anyway...

GIF only supports indexed transparency (so every pixel is either completely transparent or not), which is why the edges look pixelated. If you know the background color you'll be placing the GIF on you can export your GIF with that color as a background matte.

In Photoshop's Save for Web:

This is the same image without then with a matte:

If you're placing it on a number of backgrounds that are relatively similar in color then a vaguely similar color may help a bit, you'll have to experiment and see what works, but this is just an inherent limitation of the format.

Answer 2

SO this is bit annoying and I'm few years late at the answer but for anyone looking for help in the future—this is going to help.

Media Encoder does not let you export GIFs w/ transparency. What you need to do is export out as QuickTime Animation w/ RGB + Alpha channels. Then you can bring in the movie file to Photoshop and export that out as a transparent GIF. Otherwise, you can purchase GIF GUN and that allows you to export GIFs within After Effects.