Miss Rowena

First and foremost, I apologize ahead of time because this is not going to be an action. At the end of the tutorial, I'm going to include a link to a PSD with the smart filters plugged in. So you don't have to go through the trouble of loading an action and then playing it. Before we get started, this will only be compatible with photoshop. Also, you must have a basic knowledge of giffing and photoshop and how to convert all your layers for smart filters. If you cannot do that, this tutorial might not be for you.

Go to Filter > Smart Sharpen. Amount should be set to 500%, then your radius amount must be set to 0.4px. Make sure you remove the Gaussian Blur, and don't touch any of the other settings.

Go to Filter > Smart Sharpen. Amount should be set to 20% - 40% (play around with it, see what looks good). Radius should be set to 20px (again, play around with it, see what looks good).

Go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter. Find the Effects tab. Texture should be anywhere from +25 to +45 (sometimes, depending on the movie, I have it in the high 60s or 80s). Then set Clarity anywhere from 10 to 25 (again, it all depends on the movie, play around with the sliders). Find the Detail Tab next. Set the Sharpening anywhere from 5 - 15. Set Noise Reduction anywhere from 10 - 20.

Go to Filter > Other > High Pass. The radius should be .4px, then go to the blending options and set it to soft light, or screen. I usually set mine to soft light.

First, you'll want to complete any base sharpening/coloring for the gif ahead of time. Then we can get into the extra coloring!

The way I approached coloring for this gifset depended on the specific scene I was coloring. The first and easiest method to get the background color you want is to use Hue/Saturation.

Method 1: Hue/Saturation Layer

When to use Hue/Saturation: - If your background is all the same/similar colors (and if those colors differ from the character colors) - If your character doesn't move much

Example:

Here is a screenshot of one of my base gifs from the same set. You'll notice that the majority of the background is blue aside from a few parts which are kind of a tanish-orange. This was an ideal gif to use hue/saturation because the background was mostly one color that differed from my character. I also happened to want an orange background, so those orange colors worked in my favor.

Step 1 - I added the hue/saturation layer and adjusted both the cyan and blue colors. This will of course differ for every gif but here is what I did.

After this adjustment, my gif looked like this:

As you can see, it's already looking much better for the colors I want. You'll notice that the walls are kind of grayish which was fine for me because next I was adding in the gradients!

Step 2 - Add Gradients

I added gradients to every gif in this set, although they were all slightly different. For this gif, I added many more gradients than the other gifs.

First I added two darker colored gradients at the bottom using the gradient tool. They are linear gradients fading to transparent. This is important because it prevents the color from going over your character.

Set the first gradient to Hard Light and adjust the opacity as wanted. The next layer is set to Screen and again adjust the opacity until it's what you want. In this case, my Hard Light layer was set to 27% and my Screen layer was set to 33%.

The top part still needed to be more yellow/orange, so I then added more gradients.

These gradients followed the same Hard Light/Screen pattern as I did above. There are four here because I have two on each side of the gif.

And that was it! Here is the completed gif:

Now unfortunately, many scenes can't be colored using only this tool because the backgrounds are more complex. Which brings us to the second method I used in this gifset.

Method 2: Frame-by-Frame Coloring using Timeline

This method is far more tedious and frustrating than the other one. It takes some extreme patience sometimes. That being said, this method works the best/is much easier when you use a gif with a subject that doesn't move very much!

Step 1 - Fill a new layer with the color your want your background to be and set that layer to Color. You can use another setting but I've found Color usually works the best for me.

Next, you want to add a layer map (square button with circle in middle).

Your layer will now look like this:

Now this step is important. Make sure to unlink the layers (click the little chain link button). This allows the layer mask to move freely later on.

Then, you'll simply use the black paint on the layer mask and paint over your subject (or anything else you don't want to be colored). Another important tip: Make sure you are on your first frame when you do this!

Next, make sure you're still at the very beginning of your gif in the Timeline. You're going to want select your color layer, then press the little timer button next to where it says Layer Mask Position.

You can see that it should put a little diamond that's half filled at the start of the gif. This is the beginning position of your layer mask. Why do we do this you may ask? This is used when the character is moving so the color doesn't cover them when they move.

So how do we adjust it? Well, I'll show you!

So this is the very first frame of my gif with the coloring. I painted over David's face with the black on the layer mask but everything else is colored. But on one of the next frames, he tilts his head up:

Here, I had to adjust the layer mask by nudging it with the arrow keys upward. Make sure you are on the frame in Timeline that you want adjusted, and that you have the layer mask selected. You'll notice this change will add another diamond in the position you chose, signaling that your layer mask has been moved.

You can keep doing that with the same layer throughout the gif, and sometimes that works great, especially when there isn't much movement/variation of movement.

However, for this gif, because of the way his head was moving, I couldn't just use one layer. While you can easily use the Layer Mask Position to move the layer mask up and down or side to side, sometimes the area that needs masking can change shape (i.e., when they turn significantly) or size (when the camera zooms in/out).

When that happens, you'll need to make another layer right after the last one left off. So go through the same steps as previous (new layer -> color fill -> move to the frame you want to color -> add layer mask

You can theoretically do this for every individual layer (which is sometimes necessary), but when I can I always try to use the same layer and just move the layer mask as explained above. Still, I usually end up with at least a few different color layers/layer masks.

Here is an example of how this looked for this gif of mine (this isn't the whole thing, but it's similar throughout the rest):

Each new layer is the same color/setting, and it leaves off right where the last one ended. I move some of them a lot more than others (such as copy 8 of layer 60). Then sometimes, I don't move it at all such as in copy 5 and instead make a new layer.

Here is an example from the stretch of frames in Layer 60 copy 8. This is the coloring at the start of the gif:

If I didn't move it at all with using the Layer Mask Position, it then looks like this a few frames later:

But after using Layer Mask Position, it looks like this:

So this is really important to help color your gifs! Again, I just find that it can take less time to use this and move it instead of making a new layer for every frame, but if you prefer that/if it's needed for your gif, you can also do that.

Step 2 - Gradients!

Once I have every frame colored, I can now add on my gradients on top. I think they give an added layer of color/depth to the gifset.

For this gif, I only added two gradients: One in the upper right corner, and another in the bottom left corner. Both of these gradients fade to transparent like all of the others, and they were both set to Screen with 100% opacity because I really wanted to get some lighter colors in there

Again, I usually play around with the settings. Sometimes if I want it darker/less harsh I add a Hard Light layer as well and adjust the opacity more. It just depends on the effect you want.

And here is my completed gif!