Creating animated GIFs
Graphics quality
Subscribe and enable Dynamic Resolution mod
Set internal resolution to 250% (if your GPU can handle it; keep an eye on temperature!)
Ideally do the recording during in-game golden hour (that hour when the sun is in just the right spot to make everything look super nice)
Screen recording
Use bandicam or similar screen recording app
Set capture area to be 637x358 pixels (Steam specifies 636x358, but 637x358 seems to work better)
Clips should be no longer than 5-7 seconds
Header and footer images
These will be overlaid on top of the video
Header: 637x50 pixels - should contain title and optionally an icon
Footer: 637x30 pixels - should contain brief interaction guide (e.g. info about which mouse button or keyboard shortcut to use)
Conversion to GIF
Uploading:
Upload the image to Video to GIF
Size: Original (up to 800px)
Frame rate: 5 (max 60 seconds)
Method: FFMPEG
Do not select the 'Optimize for static background' checkbox
Add header:
Use Overlay tool
Upload header image
Left: 0, Top: 0
Add footer:
Use Overlay tool
Upload footer image
Left: 0, Top: 328 (or just drag the image to the bottom of the gif)
Optimise #1:
Use Optimize tool
Method: Remove duplicate frames
Fuzz: ~30% (higher if it doesn't degrade quality)
Frames:
Use Frames tool
Set delay of first and last frames to 60
Loop count: Leave blank (unlimited)
Optimise #2:
Use Optimize tool
Method: Optimize transparency
Fuzz: ~15% (higher if it doesn't degrade quality)
Optimise #3:
Use Optimize tool
Method: Use single colour table for all frames
Save:
You should now have a nice small GIF that can be uploaded to workshop page or wiki :)