ATA Reference Blog

Hi there! That's awesome! Congrats! I hope you have a fun time making gifs :D

Okay so in order to make sure your gifs keep their high quality look you need to follow tumblr's gifset dimensions because otherwise tumblr will automatically resize it to fit and that often affects the quality.

These are the current dimensions:

One gif stacked on another is 540px width

Two gifs side by side are 268px width

Three gifs side by side are 177px width

Height doesn't matter so long as the width fits. I have gifs that are 540 x 290, 540 x 400, 540 x 268, and much more.

It's also imporant that if you are putting two or more gifs next to each other that those gifs be the SAME dimensions. Otherwise tumblr will have the larger gif cropped to match the smaller one unless you click to view it. Not fun.

It's also worth to note that sometimes I'm super lazy and I just make all my gifs 540 regardless of whether they're stacked or side by side. So long as it isn't bigger than 540 it seems to not affect my gifs too much.

The other thing to keep in mind when making gifs is the file size. Tumblr will not allow you to upload any file larger than 10mb. I've found I have a hard time uploading files over 9.5mb so I stick to not going over that. Most of my gifs fall between 7mb and 9mbs. 7mbs is a good one to aim for to keep your gifs high quality. Tumblr sometimes fucks up larger sized documents. Mine have been okay if they're around 9mbs but i know other gifmakers have had trouble.

So in summary: Follow the dimensions above and don't go over 10mbs a gif.

some quick info: ↳ this is specifically for the screencapping method. i use mplayer osx extended to get my caps, but there are a few other programs you can use as well. i’ll specifically be going over mplayer here. ↳ i’m using ps 24.4.1 on a 2020 m1 macbook air

[tysm to @kyubinz for looking this over and adding some things ily]

☆ feel free to send me an ask/message with any questions you have! ☆

WINDOW 

@iniziare

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP 2022 (V23.0.0.36)  ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CC 2018 (VERSION: 19.1.6)    ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CC (V21.0)

@birdysources​​

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CC 2017   ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS6 EXTENDED   /  TWO  ( the one i use. ) ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS5 EXTENDED   ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CC 2018   

@presentablemichael

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS6E V13.0.1.3

@wasirauhlpsds

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS6 PORTABLE    ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS5 EXTENDED ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS5

@samepsd

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS5 EXTENDED  

@chaoticresources

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CC 2019  

@royalscolor

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CC 2018

MAC

@cmarvels

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP WITH MAC OS CATALINA  

@archersandsunsets

 ADOBE PHOTOSHOP WITH MAC OS CATALINA  

@moonchair

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CC 2020 ( post from december 20 )

ALTERNATIVE

Photopea

Pixlr

Tutorial by itsphotoshop.

I use Photoshop CS6.

Like/reblog the post if you find it useful.

This tutorial is for beginners.

duolingo // learn languages for free

rhymezone // type in a word and find words that rhyme

onelook // reverse dictionary

hemingwayapp // check your essay for readability

thesaurus // find synonyms, antonyms and more

planetebook & gutenberg // free ebooks

coursera // free online courses

realtimeboard // a virtual pinboard

pianotte & imslp // free piano sheet music

tunefind // find songs used in movies and tv shows

tothebestof // listen to the top 10 songs of any band or musical artist

omgcatz // download 8tracks playlists

tags.goose // mass tumblr tag replacer

colorpicker // helps you choose #hex colours

wordmark // helps you decide on fonts from your computer

iemoji // copy+paste tool for ios emojis on browsers

simpledesktops & subtlepatterns // simple desktop backgrounds

fount // identify fonts on websites

dafont & googlefonts // places to find lots of fonts

wigflip // pixel speech bubble generator

myfridgefood // check what stuff you have in your fridge and get some recipe ideas

roadtrippers // tool to plan a roadtrip across america

recitethis // turn a quote into a masterpiece

letterboxd // organize the movies you’ve watched, loved and plan on watching

Tutorial by itsphotoshop.

I use Photoshop CS6.

Like/reblog the post if you find it useful.

This tutorial is for beginners.

This tutorial doesn’t follow a specific poster for you to make as the whole idea is to create something unique. I’ll be showing some different techniques and ideas to get you started.

Firstly, you’ll be needing some fonts. Websites to download some great ones are lostype.com, fontsquirrel.com and myfonts.com. Some of my favourite fonts are lobster, sail, carton, crete round, tall films and ranger.

Something to think about is how you want each word to look and which words to accentuate. For example, let’s take this quote from The Hunger Games “I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.”  You might want to pay attention to the following words; ‘pretty’, ’beautiful’, ‘radiant’ and ‘sun’. You could make these words bigger and use a particularly bold or ornate font. As well as accentuating certain words, you can clump a few together in the same font, make the size smaller and use quite a plain and simple font in uppercase. Make sure to play around with the ‘kerning’ which is this tool

This is the changing of how much space is between each letter. The minus numbers make the letters closer together and the positive numbers make them further apart. You can type in any value and make them as you like. You may find that your words fit better when you make the gaps bigger or smaller. 

Try not to use too many different cursive or ornate fonts and try sticking to not mixing sans serif and serif fonts in the same piece of work. You don’t have to stick to this but it’s something to keep in mind.

Something else I do to selected words are to create a letterpress effect like this

You can do this by adding in these settings on the layer style (double click the text layer).  Check the following boxes ‘drop shadow’ and ‘inner shadow’ and add in these settings.

first the drop shadow

now the inner shadow

Play around with the size and distance of the inner shadow, as you don’t want the black shadow to overpower the colour of your text. You want it to be subtle.

Another thing to add detail to your text is to duplicate the text layer and change it’s colour to highlight the text like this by moving it a few pixels to the left (make sure this text layer is below the original by dragging the layer down in the layers pallete.

You can also add other things like shapes and borders. This is a link to some banner shapes that create this sort of look

One last important thing – your colour pallete. It can be difficult trying to combine different colours so try this website – color collective for some inspiration. Just copy and paste the colour palettes into photoshop and use the colour picker tool to get the exact colour. 

(The images in this should be collapsed to begin with because, well, one of them is a plate of raw meat that Steve is presumably eating for breakfast. The last image is a gif. Contains discussion of illness, treatments, ableism and eugenics. I should point out first that I don’t have any of these conditions other than asthma.)

So many fics focus only on skinny Steve’s asthma and portray him as being as minimally disabled as possible. Let’s just remember that according to all the various sources (the Disneyland poster, the form Steve hands in to enlist in the film) that Steve:

Had astigmatism - so he’d’ve had poor eye sight. I’ve also seen sources that say Steve is colour blind although I couldn’t find them again for writing this or to check what kind of colour blind Steve could be - it could be anything from red-green colour blindness to trichromatic colour blindness, but I’m not sure.

Had scoliosis - this is where the spine bends in a way that isn’t part of the typical S-shaped curve, so his spine would’ve bent to the side. It’s not a life threatening condition but it can be quite noticeable and I’ve not seen a single fic that’s taken it into account. 

Was partially deaf. Again, I’ve never read a fic that mentions anyone speaking up for Steve to hear.

Had arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat; he also had heart palpitations, high blood pressure and the more generic heart trouble. I’ve also seen something saying he had angina, chest pain caused by restricted blood supply to the heart muscles.

He also had rheumatic fever at some point which causes red ring-like rashes on the limbs and can affect the brain, joints and heart - which given Steve already had heart problems is not a good thing. It affects older children up to the mid teens. It is treated with aspirin - which is hard on the stomach and unfortunately for little Steve, he also has:

Stomach ulcers. These are extremely painful and can be caused or made worse by drugs like aspirin. Stomach ulcers can be very dangerous if complications arise.

Another stomach complication Steve had was pernicious anaemia, which until the 20s was basically a death sentence. It’s a condition where an enzyme necessary to absorb vitamin B12 is not produced and the patient becomes progressively more anaemic until they suffer complications such as neurological damage or simply die (hence the word “pernicious”). Until 1928 the only treatment was to drink copious quantities of the juice from raw liver (more than a pint a day) or eat half a pound of raw liver a day, which contains the enzyme (cooking would destroy the enzyme). From ‘28, Steve was presumably relieved to hear, a liver extract was produced so that the quantity of liver juice one had to drink was 50x less and was also cheaper. The other symptoms were pretty much the same as other kinds of anaemia. What do you mean you aren’t hungry?

Steve also had flat feet (less serious but with everything else this kid isn’t running anywhere)

He had scarlet fever as a child, which causes a sore throat, bright red rash, and can kill - especially as it can cause heart complications.

Steve’s mother was diabetic- his admission form states that he has a parent or sibling with diabetes, and since it’s automatic disqualification from the army and he has no siblings, that means it must be his mother (unless you don’t think Steve’s dad served in the army at all and he’s just lying to serve with Bucky.) Steve has a higher risk for diabetes. This in itself isn’t going to limit him at this stage in the proceedings, but it doesn’t make him popular with eugenicists either.

Generally his respiratory system is struggling - he gets sinusitis and frequent colds to go along with his…

Asthma. Asthma can be pretty dangerous especially for someone with a heart condition, since symptoms of a severe attack can include arrhythmia. In the 1930s, inhalers were difficult for one person to use (especially if that one person was having an asthma attack), but asthma cigarettes were easily available, considerably cheaper, and hallucinogenic. They did work to a degree, but were nothing compared to today’s relievers. There were also dry powder inhalers, and if you could get hold of one, atomizers and electronic nebulizers for delivering medication.  Beyond this, in the 30s, 40s and 50s, asthma was considered a psychosomatic condition - an imagined product of mental illness due to the child crying inside the sufferer during an attack - so talking therapy was used as treatment as well. Steve would’ve been considered both physically frail and mentally ill because of his asthma.

Really, it isn’t a surprise that to go with this he has “nervous trouble" and suffers from fatigue - hell, it’s tiring just to be Steve. It’s also no wonder that he’s so small, given that his body was under so much stress whilst he was growing.

So what does this all mean for little Steve? Pre-serum Steve is chronically ill from birth or childhood, probably due to complications in birth or his earlier illnesses (there seem to be a lot of things happening in his respiratory system and stomach), and some of which is evidence of what at the time would be considered poor genetics.

People often associate eugenics with the Nazis, but its real home is rooted in the 20th century USA, and it was in full swing in the 20s and 30s. Many German eugenics research programs received their finding from the US before the war. Although as a white man living in New York Steve would’ve been safe from forcible sterilisation or euthanasia, public sentiment was overwhelmingly supportive of casting anyone framed as a dependent on the state or a fault in the gene pool cast out.

Eugenics was legal and mandated, and whilst Steve was growing up, thousands of impoverished women and state dependent children, especially women of colour and mentally ill women were forcibly sterilised by the state, and many people living in mental institutions or care homes were allowed to die of neglect.

His mother’s death due to TB would also have made him a target for this kind of thinking - in fact, tuberculosis was used as a method for targeting those with “inferior” genetics (whilst “superior” individuals would supposedly be immune) for euthanasia for eugenics purposes - in one mental institution, new patients were given infected milk to kill off those susceptible. 

Ironically, Captain America and the superserum are essentially an experiment in eugenics, which really reflects just how widespread this attitude was in the 40s. I’m analysing Steve for purposes of fic writing and not any genuine critical analysis here, but there’s no getting away from it: they put a chronically ill, disabled man in, and they get a genetically engineered super-soldier out.

Steve actually surviving both rheumatic and scarlet fever with asthma, heart problems and no antibiotics is pretty much a miracle in itself at this stage, and I guess we should all be grateful that Sarah Rogers was a nurse, because things like half decent atomizers to treat asthma were expensive and hard to obtain.

When Bucky is talking about Steve having nothing to prove, he’s not just talking about a small guy who is too sickly to join the army - he’s talking about someone who would’ve been considered an invalid and unworthy among his peers and made to feel like a dependent all of his life. Steve has to prove everything to everyone except Bucky, the only person who values Steve for himself and not against criteria of fitness or health, and most of all he needs to prove to himself that the things he’s internalised about himself aren’t true.

So, pretty frequently writers screw up when they write about injuries. People are clonked over the head, pass out for hours, and wake up with just a headache… Eragon breaks his wrist and it’s just fine within days… Wounds heal with nary a scar, ever…

Bucky fell from the train during the first week of May, 1945.  Less than a day later, Steve crashed into the ocean off the coast of Greenland and slept for 66 years.  He wasn’t aware of that time as it was passing.  He wasn’t growing as a person.  He was 26 years old when he crashed, and when he woke up, he was still 26 years old and his best friend had just died.  Do you think when he found out that it was 2011 that he went, “Oh, Bucky’s been gone for almost 70 years, now, I’m over it,” or do you think that wound was still fresh?

The Battle of New York happened during the first week of May, 2011.  Steve had been awake for about ten days.  Do you think he went into that fight feeling like he had 93 years worth of life experience?  Or do you think he went into it feeling like the war had never ended, he was 26 years old, and he’d watched his best friend fall to his death just ten days before?

I’ve read a good number of stories where Steve has a startling amount of distance when it comes to Bucky’s death because, “it was so long ago.”  That rings false to me.  We have distance.  The other characters have distance.  Steve hasn’t had enough time to develop distance.

I’ve also heard people ask, “How could Steve recognize Bucky so easily?  He hadn’t seen him in 70 years!”

Well, because to Steve, he hadn’t seen Bucky in three years.  Sure, he knows that chronologically it’s been 70 years, but for him it’s still only been three.

SORRY FOR CLOGGING UP YOUR DASH

a few people has asked me how i did the shifting thing in this but i don’t think i was clear enough aaHHH but i hope this helps !! _(:з ゝ∠)_

I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

So here are a bunch of resources i’ve gathered. I thought that I’d share them because they’re really helpful. Hope they’ll make your life easier! I’ve never made one of these before, so let me know if any of the links aren’t working. 

writing 

200 words that describe light

how to keep a journal

read some slam poetry

huge writing masterpost 

how to reveal character

help with writer’s block

find out which author you write like

write interactive books  (kind of like choose your own adventure)

good brainstorming/ organizing tool

zen writing tool

makeup and hair 

filling in eyebrows

twin buns

how to contour

everyday makeup routine

how to make any color of lipstick… from crayons

natural beauty remedies

the trick to liquid eyeliner (this is how i wear mine, it’s quite easy to master)

cool makeup tips

stylish eye makeup (from Lauren Conrad)

gradient lip makeup

different ways to braid your hair

messy buns tutorial

how to make your own temporary tattoo

apply eyeliner, mascara, and curl lashes with a spoon

school

how to survive college 

various yoga poses for stress relief

HUGE studying masterpost (I mean huge)

solve any math problem

how to effectively pull an all-nighter

teaches everything

tumblr-related things

find out who an anon is (not sure if still working)

mass tag replacer

huge theme-related download pack

post a bunch of things from a blog’s archive 

good pixel blog and theme references

really good redux edits

my favorite falling snow effect (it’s interactive on your blog!)

backgrounds

tumblr theme generator

random image script

tumblr savior for mobile

feeling down?

cute yahoo answers (the cutest thing ever)

emergency compliment

draw a stickman

coping skills and distractions

for some reason these videos always cheer me up

calming gif

givesmehope (this will cheer you up it is so cute)

bored?

answer trivia questions and give people rice !!

Cool websites for wasting time (1, 2, 3 )

make sand art online (you could spend hours on this site tbh)

make a a giant squid pillow! (because why not?)

how to do special effects makeup (tw: gore?)

create your own nebula

read creepy wikipedia articles

read more creepy wikipedia articles  (warning, I haven’t read these articles, so I do not know what they contain. read at your own risk.)

random colour each time

disney lies/ urban legends

make your own acapella band

watch a real-time streaming of the ocean

just click this. trust me.

make your own pokemon secret base

this will take you to a cool place

games

color matching game

downloadable indie games / in-browser indie games

games you played back in the day

really cute online games

cards against humanity pdf

sushi cat (really cute, calming game)

takes you to a random location and you have to guess where you are

color matching game

akinator, the web genie (kind of like 20 questions, but with famous people)

 food to make

panera mac n cheese recipe

different salad recipes

fricking recipes

harry potter recipes

healthy recipes

brownie/cookie

s’mores pie (keep in the fridge and heat up for 15 seconds when you want a piece so its warm and it just tastes really good please make this)

nutella hot chocolate

peanut butter nutella swirl cookies

cookie in a mug

starbucks holiday drinks

fruit leathers (like fruit roll-ups, only much better)

photo editing things

punk edit tutorial

remove backgrounds without photoshop

topaz-like action

glitch tutorial

double exposure effect

photoshop brushes masterpost

this blog has a lot of ps resources

so does this one

art references

how to draw ears

how to make an animated film

learn how to draw anything

turn your paper art into digital

skeleton practice drawing tool thingy

how to draw semi- realistic eyes

how to make pixel art

good reference for drawing water

free digital sculpting tool

sounds n music

masterpost of sounds of nature

more sounds of nature

find more artists to listen to (basically you pick an artist, and it shows more artists, and you click those. it’s a never ending lists of music in your taste!)

listen to playlists (here’s mine)

get the best sound from your iTunes

coffee shop sounds for productivity

rain sounds

white noise generator

some more cool sounds

how to make an 8-bit/chiptune

learn to do things

make a flower crown

make dip-dyed shoes

make glitter out of salt

make a blanket nest

how to make origami

how to embroider 

learn to read korean in 15 minutes

newspaper nails (i’ve done these before… super easy and look really cool!!)

tie-dye denim

make a font from your handwriting

learn to play guitar

quizzes

personality quizzes

the ‘eye’ test

find out which disney princess you are

online color challenge

trivia quizzes

other useful things

is a website actually down?

hobbies masterpost

best, most comfy onesies ever

clothing life hacks

when to pee during a movie

how to remove pilling from clothing

100 tips for life

sleep calculator

kawaii emoticons

run windows programs on a mac

plant studio (like microsoft paint, but with plants!)

find out which font something is

    1. Tutorials:

Principles for Combining Typefaces

How to Create a Retro Style Poster

How to Create a Spectrum Poster Design

How to Design a Classic Serif Poster

How to Design a Simple Textured Typography Poster

How to Create a Broken Plate Typography Effect

How to Create a Retro Folded Typography

How to Create a Water Typography Effect

How to Create a Milk Typography Effect

    2. Fonts:

Fontfabric

Dafont

FontSquirrel

Losttype

+ fonts i use

+ text effects

    3. Textures / Backgrounds:

Abduzeedo

GraphicBurger

The Pattern Library

Webdesigner Depot

Lostandtaken

Subtle Patterns

    4. Color Palettes:

Pictaculous

0 to 255

ColourLovers 

+ Looking for inspiration?

Behance

Dribbble

Typography Served

and also, Google Images

wanna make your experience on this site just a teeny bit easier? here u go friend (n˘v˘•)¬  

a LOT more stuff under the cut!!

general tips:

various tips & tricks

check your post limit

reaction gif blog

get xkit

get tumblr saviour

get unfollow hater

tag cloud generator (2) (3)

more shortcuts

recover old themes 

html symbols & entities (2)

big tutorial masterpost 

post formatting 

how to make a gif 

mobile tumblr saviour

random image script

mass tag replacer

get snow falling on your blog 

rainbow headers 

how to have a gif icon 

block users 

beginner gifmaking tutorials

lots more useful stuff

themes and html guides:

html-tutorials 

codesecrets

iamaguide

buildthemes

w3schools

tumblr’s custom theme guide

lmthemes guide

fyeahcodes

html symbols guide 

cherrybam

updates tabs:

basic dotted border tab

slide out from the side

bubble tab (2)

the key (hover)

super simple & clean tab

scrollable tab

music players:

how to use (2)

billy’s music player

simple bubble player

small rectangular player

akemi & chiyo

really really simple player 

icon hide, music slide

music gifs

theme maker/resource blogs:

doc-tahh-themes

lmthemes 

themelogy

theme-hunter

ninpen

alphathemes

themesrec

massive theme maker masterpost

photoshop/resource blogs:

addictedtophotoshop

itsphotoshop

yeahps

chaoticresources

rresources

photoshopbabe

popsources

pscs5

completeresources

free photoshop downloads:

photoshop portable

adobe lightroom

photoshop cc (2)

photoshop cs5, cs6, and cc

all kinds!!!

images (for updates tabs):

massive masterpost

fandom-related images

black and white

celebrity icon/header blogs:

 warrioricons

callicons

iconsforbitches

fonts/typography:

dafont

google fonts 

fontsource 

fontspace

free fonts collection

typography masterpost

free font resources 

what the font

roleplay/writing/general help blogs:

kgillsrpc

clevergirlhelps

thatfrenchhelper

legithelper

referenceforwriters

celebrity/movie/tv show pics and screencaps:

hqdiesel

hqcelebrity

cap-that

movie-screencaps

screencapped

homeofthenutty

nevillles

colors/color palettes:

how to use

colourlovers

prettycolors

colorpicker

color-blend

gradient maker

kazza’s colors 

palette-time 

colorhunter

make your own

backgrounds:

nature

patterned images

colorful gradients

cute repeating backgrounds 

backgrounds-baby

pixels:

pixelpaw

pixeliette

pixel-diary

just-pixels

pixelsgalore

engrampixel