Here is a gif tutorial because an anon asked. You can download the KMPlayer for free by clicking that link.
I’m going to explain changing KMPlayers settings, screencapturing with KMPlayer, and making, editing, and saving the gif. I also go over a few common Tumblr gif techniques.
Basically, this is a long tutorial where I attempt to explain practically everything when making a gif. Hopefully its helpful.
We’re going to use the KMPlayer first and take screencaptures of the video we want to make a gif out of. It’s a little tedious at first because you have to change around the settings and stuff, but it’s seriously pretty easy and simple. I’ve made gifs a ton of different ways and I like this way the best.
Changing KMPlayer’s settings
You have to change the settings of the KMPlayer first or you’ll get an error and it won’t take the screencaptures, so this is how you do that.
Open the KMPlayer and right click > Options > Preferences
Then go to Video Processing on the left side menu and underneath KMP Video Transform Filter where it says Condition, you need to change that to Always Use (Strongly Recommended)
Click DVD Settings from the left side menu and go to the Navigator tab. Under DVD Navigator there is a check box with that says Disable KMP Video Transform Filter. You need to check that box.
That’s all the changes to these specific settings you have to do. You might have to exit out of the KMPlayer for the settings to change.
Changing the capturing settings
Right click > Open and select whatever video you want to gif. (The KMPlayer plays almost any format.)
Right click > Options > Advanced Menu, make sure its checked.
Right click > Capture > Frame: Extract
This is where you change the settings of your captures, which can basically be whatever you want.
Also: all of your captures will go to a designated folder, so you can make a new folder if you want. My captures just go directly to the Capture folder within my KMPlayer folder.
For the Image Format, I make mine PNG because they are high quality, but they do have a higher file size. If you don’t want to use PNG, then use JPG, which is decent quality and a smaller file size.
In the Numbers to Extract section, make sure Continuously is selected since you will be taking multiple captures.
In the Frames to Extract, you can choose how often a capture is taken. I personally like just selecting Every Frame. There will be a lot of captures, but you can always delete excess frames in Photoshop later.
In Size to Extract, I just stick with Original Size, but you can preset the size if you want.
With all the settings now ready, you can start capturing.
Right click > Capture > Frame: Extract.
Press start and play the part of the video you want to capture.
Press stop when you want it to stop capturing and close out of the Frame Extraction window.
You can exit out of the KMPlayer.
File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack
Browse > go to the folder your captures are in and select them. Click ok.
As you can see, the captures are now layers, but not frames. You have to select this little button on the top right of the animation bar and click Make Frames From Layers
Now you have frames, but they are backwards. You reverse them by clicking that little button again and clicking Reverse Frames.
At the very left side of the bottom of the animation bar, Forever should be checked so your gif repeats forever and not once.
Now you can edit your gif. (resizing, coloring, etc.)
GIFs look best on Tumblr at a width of 500 pixels.
Make sure Constrain Proportions is checked.
Change the width to 500 pixels.
If you want to sharpen your gif, you have to do it frame by frame. You need to select the frame on the animation bar and the corresponding layer on the layer tab, like this:
Then Filter > Sharpen, and continue on through the frames, just make sure when you have, like, layer 5 selected on the animation bar, you have layer 5 selected (the little eye thing) on the layer tab.
You can either use PSDs (I get most of mine from psds and drunkandcoloring and other psd blogs on Tumblr.) or do your own coloring. It essentially entails curves, selective coloring, gradients, etc. This is a good gif coloring tutorial.
Put your mouse on top of your gif’s tab and pull it down so your gif is in a separate window.
Select the tab of your PSD.
PSDs usually download with their layers grouped, so all you have to do is drag the grouped layers on top of your gif.
*Not every PSD is meant to work on every type of photo!* You can play around with the settings of the PSD layers on your gif to make it look better, or try different PSDs.
When you captured your frames, it may have captured too many frames. Or, since my settings are set to capture every frame, sometimes I delete every other frame.
Simply click on the frame you want to delete and then on the little trash can button at the bottom of the animation bar.
Click that little button on the animation bar again and click Select All Frames
Click on the small down arrow next to the speed on any of the frames and select a speed that suits your gif. I usually use 0.1 or something around there, it all depends on how you want it to be and what looks best.
I use about… two common techniques I see on Tumblr so I will go over those quickly
“Frozen” background of a gif
“Freezing” part of a gif can be helpful in the sense that it will lower the file size of it. The only problem is trying to not make it look awkward. You should only use this technique when it seems appropriate.
Right click > Duplicate layer
Click the eraser tool on the tool bar
Erase the entire part of the gif you WANT to be in motion.
Gradients are helpful too because they can cover up parts of the gif that are distracting or unnecessary, and also help out with the 500K limit.
Layer > New > Layer (Make sure this new layer is at the top of your other layers)
Drag it over the part you want to cover
That’s about all I can think of editing wise so now on to saving.
File > Save for Web and Devices
GIFs will not work on Tumblr if they are over 500K. Which can be annoying. If your gif is over 500K you can try reducing the number of colors. The more colors the gif has, the nicer it looks. A gif can still look alright and not have the max of 256 colors though.
You see where Colors is, try reducing it some. If it ends up needing a low number of colors and looks bad then you should try:
cropping the height some (crop tool is on the tool bar)
using the “freezing” or gradient techniques
making it black and white (layer > new adjustment layer > black & white. i usually use the green filter.)
(Photosets are nifty here because you can make your gif a lot smaller therefore they can have more frames and colors.)
Whenever you are content with your gif, click Save
I didn’t use a gradient on this, but I did “freeze” parts of it.
If you don’t understand something or are having problems you can ask me, I tried to cover basically everything I do when I make a gif so… yeah
