dream colouring

And I know that technically this isn’t what you’re asking from me, but I think that in order to make 480p gifs as “high quality” as they can be, you might have to use the “unsharpen mask” filter. In order to do this, while you are in the video timeline, ready to sharpen your gif, I advise that you “unsharpen” your smart object…

A pop-up window will show up that looks something like this:

Basically how this USM (UnSharpen Mask) tool works is that it controls the contrast between light and dark on the edges of your image. Like so:

(I am really bad at explaining so I’ll show instead ><) Adjusting the radius slider in the dialog would control how much is covered in the contrasting process. A very low radius of 0 would not really show an effect(?) or make your image seem blurred:

A middle-ish radius would produce something like this:

And an outrageous maximum radius would cause it to be really light:

So I advise to use a radius of 0.3~0.5 ideally.

The amount slider is pretty much straightforward. It controls how much of the contrasting you want to do. A very low amount would not show an effect or would make your image look blurred:

A very high amount would result in an over-sharpened image:

That’s why you should tinker about this slider to find how much “sharpened” you want your gif to appear.

The last slider is the threshold and I believe that it has to do with the details and noise of the image(?). So having it at 0 would have a lot of details popping out while having it at maximum would make your image appear blurred or unsharpened.

I urge you to read THIS PAGE to find out more about the USM as they explain it better than I do.

Bottom line is, every video is different so there really isn’t any specific numbers that I could give you for each slider to get the same sharpened effect for each video you want to gif. Always be careful of over-sharpening your gifs because you wouldn’t want your gif to be looking hideous ><

Now, as for your question... Since the quality of 480p is quite low, I think that it is best to desaturate your gifs (lowering the saturation levels using “Hue and Saturation”) or at least avoid making it very colourful (avoiding maxing out the colour sliders) and bright (lowering the brightness level in “Brightness and Contrast”). If worse comes to worst, make your gif black and white.

ORIGINAL (no colour + no sharpen):

COLOURED (unsharpen mask used + colouring):

BLACK AND WHITE:

Sometimes, the gif would appear to have a lot of noise no matter how much you control the colours so I would advise to add a blur filter on your gif or use Topaz Denoise (on top of sharpening your gif). But essentially, that’s like going back a step, isn’t? D: Wouldn’t that make the gif less sharpened again? Anyway, it’s up to your standards how you want your final gif to look like so I’ll leave you with these available options...

DISCLAIMER: The late 1990s and early 2000 music videos tend to blur out the background (Blur? Vignette? thingy) so I found them quite difficult to gif... The thing is, you might want to sharpen the background as well but in doing so, you could affect the subject and make the subject over-sharpened... (I guess you can edit the mask layer to avoid affecting the subject but that’s just long, isn’t? Especially if the subject is moving LOL)

1) First things first, make your gif as normal: click on “Convert to Video Timeline,” convert all the layers into a smart object, and apply your sharpen filter (and/or Topaz Denoise & Topaz Clean if you do use them).

2) Now instead of immediately saving it, you should click on the button with 4 horizontal lines on the timeline:

And choose “Convert Frames” and then “Flatten Frames into Clips”

3) If you have applied Topaz Denoise and/or Topaz Clean, the conversion would take a lot longer and you’ll see this pop-up:

But if you’ve only applied a smart sharpen filter, the conversion shouldn’t take very long.

4) Once that is finished converting, click on the button with 4 lines again and choose “Convert Frames” and then “Convert to Frame Animation”

OR you could simply click on the button with 3 squares below the timeline window.

5) Click on the button with 4 lines and choose “Make Frames From Layers”

Then you’ll notice that the first frame has a weird speed number. You have to delete that first frame.

6) After that, click on the button with 4 lines again and choose “Select All Frames” and then you’d be able to adjust the speed of your gif!

7) Finally, after adjusting the speed of your gif and applying your colouring, you can go and save your gif as you normally would~ Simple, right?