#but tysm for gifing this part | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kitconnor · 9 months

Note

Hi! Happy 4k celebration 🥰 Can you share how you make your gifs or make a gif tutorial?

hi !! tysm <3 i'm more than happy to give you a little tutorial on how i make my gifs ! of course, my process is not the same to other gifmakers and may not always work for everyone but i hope it helps !

for this tutorial, i'm using the most recent edition of photoshop (2023) on my mac. full explanation under the cut.

full disclaimer: most of what i've learnt about photoshop and the giffing process is through pure trial and error. this won't work for everyone and others may think it's a little weird, but this is just how i make my gifs !!

1.find your scenes.

finding your scenes is sometimes very time consuming but you want to get it right the first time !! for this tutorial, i'm using a music video in mp4 format.

2. loading your scenes.

to load your scenes, you want to go: 'file' > 'import' > 'video frames to layers'. i know that this step varies on the user because some people like to go to timeline first, but i'd advise starting in frames first !

after that, a screen like i've depicted below will pop up. i've also annotated everything for you as well.

so, select your desired range, press 'ok' and then it will all load into ps !

3. setting up your gif.

i'm grouping this all into one step, but it's broken down into a few things.

the first part of this is: cropping. the recommended dimensions i follow are on this guideline here, but for the sake of this tutorial i'm just going to crop my gif 540x540 (as a w x h setting). the crop tool is on the left hand tool bar.

now, my gif looks like this. from here, i'm going to click on the timeline (the space along the bottom that has every frame). from there, click on the three lines to get this menu (i've circled where to go + what you'll click):

from there, go 'select all frames' and then click on any of the frames NUMBERS (where it says 0.04 with an arrow besides it, or whatever yours says) then change the frame rate. with most youtube videos i will use 0.08 as my desired frame rate, but when i'm gifing a show or something, it loads in as 0.02, so i change it to 0.05. 0.05-6 on any normal screen cap should be fine, but obviously you can change it depending on if it looks right or not.

from there, you've basically done the first half of the basics. now, you'll want to click on this button:

and now you'll be taken to the video timeline ! from here, select command + option + a (this is for mac, i think it would be control if you're on another device) then, right click on your layers and go 'convert to smart object'.

from here, i'll sharpen my gif before i colour. for this step i have two alternative sharpening settings first one by anyataylorjoy (rb to download !) and the other by maygrant (please ask !). the first one is tuser maygrant's and the second one is tuser anyataylorjoy's. i typically use morgan's for all my basic gifs but anyataylorjoy's for creative sets. every user has a different preference but just find what's good for you !

4. colouring your gif.

definitely the most tedious, this can be a little bit of a hassle depending on the scene. if the colouring isn't riddled with heavy yellows or cyans, colouring is usually a breeze but if it is, it can be hard.

CURVES

the circle with the arrow dropdown and that's half grey-white is the circle you want to click on to find curves. it'll open a menu and curves will be at the top.

you'll see a little menu like above appear. now, select the dropper i've indicated as being the "light point" and then, using the zoom tool, we're going to zoom in and find the brightest point on the gif. this is typically where the light source is.

in this section here, i can see a couple of bright points. using the dropper, i'll click on the closest to white (note: i find that white rarely changes the colouring of the gif, so if there's like, a really really light yellow, for example, click on that) and then i'll do a similar process with the "dark point" dropper, finding the darkest spot, which is usually in shadows or in the corners. unlike with the light dropper, you want the closest to black, whether that's a dark dark brown or dark dark blue.

now, we can see how the colouring has changed:

optional: you can change the white line on the curves menu, which can make it lighter, or darker in different points of the gif.

LEVELS

levels is an optional step, but i recommend it on very light gifs, or if you want to add a little more depth. probably don't do it on an already very dark gif.

the levels menu looks like this:

the far left slider adds shadows and the far right slider makes it lighter. on this particular gif, i only need a little bit of depth to her face and i only need to contrast that a little bit. by just dragging the slider a little bit:

this is the result:

with levels, it can very quickly alter skin tone/make your gif look bad !! with levels, i don't think you need to go above 1-12 in adding depth.

OPTIONAL: BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST

brightness/contrast is optional !! only add it if it's necessary :)

COLOUR BALANCE

a colour balance layer is great for fixing the tones for the gif !!

this one's pretty self explanatory. if you want it to be more yellow, slide it towards yellow. if you want it to be more red, slide it more towards red, etc etc. i've attached some gifs showing how i change tone:

but just play with it until it looks right. be very careful with skin tone !! colour balance can very easily whitewash/colour wash and that is not something encouraged, in the slightest.

SELECTIVE COLOUR

a selective colour layer is basically a "final touch" to colouring. where colour balance just kind of does an overall change of the gif, selective colour allows you to alter your specific tones, ie. reds, magentas, blues, etc. for me, i'll do the bulk of getting my desired colouring with colour balance, but if it overcorrects reds, for example, i'll add some cyan to red tones in selective colour, to diffuse that.

currently, in my gif, it's very red/yellow heavy. to balance that out, i want to add cyans. so, on the drop down list of the selective colour menu, i'll select 'red' and then i'll ADD cyans (so move the slider to the right, not the left to decrease) and then repeat that on other tones that i want to correct, with different colours.

with each of the sliders, just add or decrease how much of that colour is in that tone. once again, be mindful of skin tone and whether it is appropriate or not.

with selective colour, if there are any standout colours (eg. in my gif, there's a big patch of cyan) that don't interrupt their face (eg. reds and yellows are always in faces) and change the way the subjects look, you can change those colours to make it more vibrant. so, in this gif, i'll enhance the cyans and blues and magentas to make the colours pop more.

5. saving your gif

once your happy with the colouring of your gif and done what you need to do with it, save it as a smart object with all your colouring layers, then go to 'file' > 'export' > 'save for web (legacy)...' . play back your gif, and it should be all good !! congrats on making your gifs !

i've included a playback of each layer, which is staggered to show each layer come into effect.

in order: nothing -> curves -> levels-> brightness/contrast -> colour balance -> selective colour.

hope this helped !!

#*tutorial #gif tutorial #ps help #ps tutorial #userriel #userautie #userraffa #usernorah #userrsun #usercats #thingschanged #**l.myeditss

88 notes · View notes