How to Use GIFs as Cover Photos in Rise

Adding a cover photo to a Rise 360 course is an easy way to make your course look beautiful, inviting, and customized. And you’re not limited to still photos! You can add GIF files to your Rise projects to make them really come to life.

That’s why we’re giving away a bundle of six summer-themed GIFs for you to use in your Rise 360 courses. Grab the download, then check out this simple tutorial to see how easy it is to update your cover photo with one of these gorgeous GIFs:

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33 Comments

Mallory Kudrna

over 4 years ago06/27/18 at 8:21 pm (UTC)

Thanks for the GIF-away!! So fun! These are great! Thank you for sharing. I would love to see a someone riding a bicycle, maybe cheers with some beers, typing on a computer, something safety related with PPE, and some sort of collaboration. Just a couple ideas for you :-) Thanks again!

over 4 years ago06/27/18 at 9:52 pm (UTC)

Thanks for the ideas Julie! I will most definitely keep that in mind for more downloads in the future.

Tanya Victor

over 4 years ago06/27/18 at 8:33 pm (UTC)

Would love to see a GIF of two people "cheersing" each other with glasses of craft beer. I work at a brewery. ;)

over 4 years ago06/27/18 at 9:53 pm (UTC)

Hi Tanya, Julie above ^ had the same suggestion! I will definitely keep this one in mind! Thanks!

Clive Hands

over 4 years ago06/27/18 at 9:20 pm (UTC)

what is the Aspect Ratio used is the Rise title block for standard devices?

over 4 years ago06/27/18 at 9:51 pm (UTC)

Hi Clive, We don't make recommendations on cover photo sizes since they scale and crop to fit each screen size and orientation, though you probably want to use images that are wider than they are tall. Adam discusses this a bit in his feature video, starting at the 2:37 mark: https://youtu.be/0wyNzjmldgI?t=2m37s Hope this helps!

over 4 years ago06/27/18 at 11:05 pm (UTC)

Cool thanks - want to play around with creating our own title GIFs...

Danny Hall

over 4 years ago06/28/18 at 3:18 pm (UTC)

Nice - great way to highlight and draw the eye to a course.

Pradeep vijay

over 4 years ago07/03/18 at 6:26 am (UTC)

Is it possible to play/pause the GIF image when the user clicked/mouse hover on the GIF image?

over 4 years ago07/03/18 at 7:57 pm (UTC)

No not at this time. But if you make your own gifs you can build in a pause that the gif will hit during each time it cycles. This can be useful if you have something you really want to show and let the eyes rest on.

Ronny Salmeron

over 4 years ago07/10/18 at 5:19 pm (UTC)

Industry themed GIFS would be great!

Mike DiFonzo

over 4 years ago07/10/18 at 5:33 pm (UTC)

Nice feature to draw the user in. Love the comment about debating the pronunciation of it being GIF or gif. Made me laugh.

over 4 years ago07/20/18 at 4:18 pm (UTC)

Haha Michael! Yes the debate continues!

Julie Sullivan

over 4 years ago07/10/18 at 6:14 pm (UTC)

Business focused, checklist/checkmark, keyboarding, financial (calculator/addition), etc... Thank you for sharing these!

Tiffani Todd

over 4 years ago07/10/18 at 6:27 pm (UTC)

Thanks for the freebies, they look lovely! In addition to the above requests, I'd love to see taxi/take-off of an aircraft, windsock or flag waving in the wind, weathervane turning, revolving door (harbingers/symbols of change).

Laura McNeill

over 4 years ago07/10/18 at 8:37 pm (UTC)

I like them! Thank you.

Keith Shull

over 4 years ago07/10/18 at 8:45 pm (UTC)

I probably know the answer to this, but does Storyline 3 support the use of gifs (pronounced w/ a hard "g," since it's short for Graphics Interchange Format)? :~)

over 4 years ago07/11/18 at 12:08 pm (UTC)

I just inserted one of these gifs as a picture in SL3 and it worked fine. It did take a long time to preview though. I heard the creators pronounce it with a soft g but it can be pronounced either way (I'm on the soft g side).

Cindy von Hagel

over 4 years ago07/11/18 at 5:56 pm (UTC)

I used a lightening gif over another picture and put it at 95% transparency. It looked great.

Donna Coppock

over 4 years ago07/11/18 at 9:20 pm (UTC)

Love this! For the future. . .anything eLearning related--someone taking a course on a laptop, iPad or phone for example, or business related i.e. recognition & reward, financial literacy, communication, leadership, etc.

John Toh

over 4 years ago07/16/18 at 4:40 am (UTC)

This is great!! it works for my course in google chrome, but not IE 11. Anyone else having this issue?

over 4 years ago07/16/18 at 12:47 pm (UTC)

Plays on my IE 11. Check to see if there's something blocked on the address bar that you might have to click to allow it. Can't remember what it may be.

Marco Baldan

over 4 years ago07/17/18 at 2:47 pm (UTC)

It is a useful feed, this one. Still, It would be very useful to know what you do advice for reasonable sizes for GIFs, even if the fine tuning is up to each user.

over 4 years ago07/17/18 at 3:23 pm (UTC)

Well I will say this, the height matters a little less than the width. I'd say for a banner image to look decent on a 1920x1080 desktop monitor I wouldn't go much smaller than 1280x720. But that aspect ratio is very flexible. It's the 1280 (width) number to watch. Once you're forcing something to go twice its size it's going to be kinda blurry. In a perfect world you could have it be actually 1920x1080 buuuut at that resolution gifs tend to get really heavy in their file size like 20 mb. That makes them take too long to load and sometimes won't upload at all as the Cover Image for a course. The width res on these downloads is 1750p. So kind of meeting in the middle. Hope this helps!

Marco Baldan

over 4 years ago07/20/18 at 12:54 pm (UTC)

Thank you Laura! That actually helps already quite some. We can already zoom in with our own trials to get the right resolution.

Kirendeep Jagdev

over 4 years ago07/31/18 at 4:08 pm (UTC)

Didn't realise you could put a GIF as the cover photo in RISE, looking forward to trying some out.

Chibuikem Nwani

over 4 years ago08/13/18 at 1:04 pm (UTC)

Awesome, i would love to see character gifs for feedback, those would be awesome.

Ng Li Shan

over 4 years ago10/08/18 at 6:06 pm (UTC)

I am unable to put a GIF in Rise though I followed the steps, is there any reasons? Thanks!

over 4 years ago10/08/18 at 6:18 pm (UTC)

Hi Ng Li Shan, Sometimes if it takes too long to upload on your internet connection it times out. Are you using the Gifs we've provided in the download? If the Gif is too large a file it can time it out as well. I tested them all and they upload but if my internet was being slow sometimes it caused an issue. You could try the same one again or try one that is a smaller file size. Let me know how it goes, Laura

over 4 years ago10/09/18 at 12:34 am (UTC)

Dear Laura, Thank you for the prompt reply. Yes, I used the Gifs provided in the download. I've tried with my workplace LAN network, however it still display the error: Please verify the file type is an image and try again. I've unzip the file too. Thank you!