Abstract The effect of surfactant type, concentration and the way of its incorporation on the properties of target emulsions prepared by gel emulsification and direct mechanical emulsification methods, were studied. Gel emulsification method was found to be more efficient in producing nano-sized drops than direct mechanical emulsification method. Two regions were identified in the dependence of drop size on surfactant concentration for both methods: surfactant poor regime (region 1) which the drop size decreased by increasing surfactant concentration, whereas in surfactant rich regime (region 2) the drop size did not depend on surfactant concentration and non-adsorbed micelles caused depletion flocculation (Peter A. Kralchevsky, Krassimir D. Danov, Svetoslav E. Anachkov. Curr. Opin. 178 (2015) 11–18). Very surprisingly in the case of emulsions, stabilized by SDS, despite the fact that, producing smaller drops needs larger amount of surfactant in comparison with coarse ones, in gel emulsification method (which produced much smaller drops), the amount of surfactant needed to produce minimum drop size was as much as direct mechanical emulsification. In fact, in direct mechanical emulsification this large amount of surfactant was required to ensure the fast enough adsorption time which was much higher than that was needed to create sufficiently strong repulsion. Because the adsorption time is a function of initial surfactant concentration, gel emulsification method in which the whole surfactant was added to the small fraction of water can be considered as an efficient method in this case. The results also indicated that, the location of surfactant has a decisive role in the emulsion morphology, owing to its effect on kinetic aspects.