gifmaker resource

i recommend viewing on my desktop blog, as the formatting of the post is better there. if you’re having trouble seeing, click on the pictures to see the full image!

i. Other Tutorials

there are a couple of things I won't go over because I've already addressed them in different tutorials, so I recommend starting with these:

basic blending tutorial — how I make and layer multiple gifs in one frame

basic coloring tutorial — this is the process I use to color all of my gifsets. when I do more creative gifsets like this, I do add additional layers, but I still go through this process first.

ii. Second Gif

above you'll see the finished product as well as all of my layers: a base black layer, the pilot episode, a scene from 1x07 (Jane's silhouette from the back), coloring, and text.

Here is what the base gif looks like with just my usual coloring applied. The key for this gif is that I added additional hue/saturation layers so that just the smiley face area was in color.

I then added a new Hue/Saturation layer to start manipulating the colors. Top Right: The top right shows that I increased the saturation of the reds. Bottom Right: The bottom right shows that I moved both saturation and lightness to -100 for yellows. I also removed saturation/lightness for greens, blues, and magentas.

I then added a third Hue/Saturation layer to make the gif black and white. Top Right: the only color I edited was reds. Now Jane is black and white. Middle and Lower Right: After editing the reds, I added a layer mask to the side of the gif where I wanted the red to show through (the mask is hidden on the left where the smiley face is).

moving on to the second gif, here is what it looks like on its own. I primarily increased the saturation for the blues because that's the color I wanted to emphasize in the gifset.

now that I've colored both gifs individually, I set the blending mode for my second gif to screen.

I decided that I wanted more blue, so I added a layer and just randomly applied some blue with the brush tool. I play around with blending modes for every gif and just decide on which one I like, so for this one, it happens to be set to screen. and that's it for the second gif!

iii. Fourth Gif

here is the final version of the fourth gif. this one has multiple layers of color and utilizes three different gifs to create the final gif.

this is the base gif I used (from the pilot). the main thing I did here was darken the blacks in the image.

here is how I colored the second gif. I decided to make it black and white by adding a vibrance layer and setting it to vibrance +100 and saturation -100. you'll notice I also moved the gif over a bit to the left, which I did when I was layering the gifs.

for my final gif, I mainly played around with the red/orange/yellow colors by increasing their saturation.

Here are all three gifs with no masks. The second and third gifs are both set to a blending mode of screen.

Left: I applied masks to each of the gifs based on what I wanted the end result to look like. Right: All three gifs with masks applied.

The last thing I did was add color layers, which I will go through individually below. The pictures show each separate layer and the different blend modes I ended up using. It's largely trial and error, so I just keep experimenting with opacity, blend mode, etc. until I get the effect I want.

I started by adding more blue to the part of the gif that had very little color. Blending mode is set to linear dodge (add).

I then added some to the bottom right corner. I use lots of layers when I add color because I will sometimes apply a gaussian blur to the layer in order to soften the edges (top bar: filter > blur > gaussian blur). I used the same blending mode as the other blue layer - linear dodge (add).

the other main colors I used were orange and red, which I wanted to add as well. my next layer was a bright reddish orange color that I ended up setting to hard light for the blending style.

I didn't really like the color of the walls in the gif where they are hugging, so I added some blue to the top left and set it to screen.

I then felt like there was too much blue, so I added in some orange to the lower left using lighter color as the blending mode.

then I added the text and that's it!

PART ONE: orange and blue gifs

step one: after you've prepared your gif, it's time to add some adjustments.

optional: before adjustments, i added a noise filter on most of them, just to give it more of a cohesive look throughout the set

and here mostly comes to preference, but these are basically all the adjustment layers i use:

first i use levels layer to adjust the brightness. these are examples of the levels i used on the background gif in my first and third gifs here

first orange gif ----------------------- first blue gif

then i use the exposure layer, i use it to make the gifs brighter. sometimes i would use the offset slider if the original gif is brighter than i would like it to be so it would match the rest of the gifs better.

first orange gif ----------------------- first blue gif

after that i use a brightness & contrast layer where i mostly use the brightness slider, and in this case i used it to make the gif darker.

sometimes, when needed for more contrast i would use a gradient map layer with b&w gradient with blending mode soft light set to 10-30% (depending on what your gif needs).

then, as a final step before adding the color layer to it, i make the gif b&w so the color looks better and more even on the gif.

i do this by adding another gradient map layer with a b&w gradient but this time i set it to color and leave opacity on 100%

that is basically all i do to adjust the brightness of the gif, it's really simple and i just go by the feel of it 🤣

step two: adding color

so after you've got your gif adjusted how you like, you're going to go ahead and add the color.

to do this, go to your top bar: Layer -> New Fill Layer -> Solid Color

you will get this pop-up window

where you will set mode from normal to multiply.

then you will choose your color. you can either have it in presets in your toolbar color choices and then use the color hex codes to choose your color, or you can choose from the color picker pop up window

and then you are going to press okay, and ta-da you have colored your gif hehe

if you want to change the color, you can just double click on this part of your color fill layer and the color picker window will open again

and that is all you need to do. like i said this is really simple coloring method, you only need a bit of feel on how you want to adjust your gifs (mostly how bright you want them)

additionally, sometimes you might have to play with the color picker to match the color of one gif to another, that is especially the case if one gif has bright scenery. you mostly do this by choosing a darker color. but again you need to try it out and see what matches best.

PART TWO: b&w gifs

okay so for the b&w gifs, the process is almost the same, with the last layer being the gradient map b&w layer set to color blending mode.

here i might do a bit more adjusting re: brightness, as i don't have the color layer to make it more cohesive.

so in example of the first b&w gif in my set, these are the adjustments i used:

i just want to note that this is just my example of how i did the adjustments. of course, these won't work on every gif. i mean, i had to adjust all of these in between my gifs. i don't think any gif in my set has the exact same numbers across the adjustments.

for the little gifs in the film tape, i have done the same thing as in part one where i went over how i color big orange and blue gifs.

additionally, i have added the film grain overlay on top (blending mode set to screen). i downloaded mine from here.

and that is basically it. i am really not great at explaining, but this is very basic coloring that i just went on by the feel of it.

step 1. i made a base reference for the layout. here's what i started with. you can download the psd here to make it easier. i used the lemon/milk font.

step 2. make your gifs. i made the base gif first, edited it and put it in black and white. i then made the invidual six gifs and repeated that. save them all to one folder for easy access. make sure they all have the same amount of number of frames. (i'm using the same scene for this example just bc i'm lazy rn lol.)

step 3. time to arrange the gifs. i opened my base gif and put all the layers in one group.

i then opened each other gif and also put them in group layers labeled 1-6.

i then copied all the frames from gif 1.

and pasted them over the base gif.

this will put your first gif over the base gif. i then repeat the process for gifs 2-6.

step 4. arrange the gifs!

convert to an animation timeline.

arrange your circles on a layer above the groups of gifs.

set it to screen to make the gifs underneath easier to see with the red + blue as a guideline. i turn the base gif off temporarily to make it easier to see. drag and arrange the 1-6 folders to underneath the circles.

step 5. select all the 1-6 folders and convert it to a smart object / smart files or whatever your version of ps says.

this will turn the 1-6 gifs into one gif.

go to the circles layer and right click and select pixels.

click back on your gif layer, then right click + select inverse.

go to layer > layer mask > reveal all

this has now selected the empty space around the circles. grab a black brush and fill in the selection.

this has removed the excess from the gifs, making them circular.

step 6. choose your colours! i like to use pinterest for my colours, but in this example, i will just use blue + red for the circle gifs and green for the base gif. change the circle layer to multiply. select your base gif layer again. i applied a solid colour above the base gif and chose green for this example. also select that layer to multiply.

step 7. add your text above all these layers and arrange where you want them.

step 8. stroke around circles + text. make a new layer. right click select the circle layer, select pixels.

go to your newly created layer, right click and select stroke.

i used 2px thickness. repeat this for the text layers.

place these stroke layers underneath the circle gifs, but above the base gif. i then tap this layer down and to the left, so it's slightly ajar from the text and circles.

if it blends too much into the base gif, i will lower the transparencyof this stroke layer to around 60%. sometimes it looks fine, though.

step 8. you are now done! you can select all the layers and convert it to a smart object / smart file again.

you now have one gif. i usually save it as a gif and then re-open it to change the speed of the animation, because i am lazy and cannot be bothered to convert it back to a normal animation timeline. i set my gifs usually to 0.06 speed. re-save the gif, and you will end up with something like this, hopefully:

i hope this tutorial was helpful and explained properly. i use a pretty old version of photoshop, so it might look different if you use a more updated version. i use photoshop cs5.

BRIGHTNESS & CURVES

the most obvious and probably the most widespread (i think) thing is that when you originally screencap a show/import a video into photoshop, it's kinda dark. it just looks nicer to most gifmakers when we make it a little brighter. the issue with that can come when we do too much with our curve or brightness layers.

(the little circles show shades that i picked with the color picker tool at hopefully pretty much the same spot for all four gifs)

so you can see that i'm a bit of a hypocrite - i made her lighter with my standard psd! that's why i say that i personally think this is a matter of degrees. as far as i'm aware the difference between the unedited and second gif that shows how i usually color is within the margins. it's still fairly vibrant and brown whereas with the two lower gifs i'm firmly in pink/light beige territory (which is not sepideh moafi's skin color).

this one's pretty easy to avoid, in my opinion: just don't go too far with curves or brightness. i try to keep it in that margin that still approximates the color of the unedited version.

THE BLUES & GREENS

i feel like this is the most complex one. like i said, the pitt is a show with a lot of blue in the background and what can happen is that in trying to make those colors pop or reducing reds & yellows, we distort skin tones maybe a little too much.

layers this can become an issue in: selective color, color balance, levels, channel mixer, hue/saturation.

how i try to avoid this:

selective color: the red & yellow tabs of selective colors are crucial to me here. in those, i try not to increase the cyan or decrease the magenta or yellow too much -> of course it depends on the scene! if it's a very yellow scene, i can probably decrease the yellows of red or yellow without running the risk of actual whitewashing

levels: i usually keep my hands off the individual color levels for this - that's just a personal preference, though. if used, i'd apply the rules of color balance and channel mixer

color balance: i pretty much only use "shadows" and "lights" for color balance and here i try to take care with the cyan/red slider (and in some rare instances the yellow/blue slider) -> too much cyan and i create that pink-ish hue in the spots where the light hits the character, and that doesn't really belong there; with other characters too much cyan almost bleaches them out

channel mixer: no increasing reds in the green or the blue channel, basically

i made another example for this in combination with increased curves/brightness:

VIBRANCE

i don't see this one as often anymore because the pale gif trend was years and years ago (and personally, i'll never participate in it again bc i didn't like it), but for completion's sake i wanted to include it because pale gifs had a HUGE whitewashing problem.

as you can see, victoria looks sort of grey and ashy in the bottom two gifs. if you add more brightness/curves on top of that it becomes very, very pale which was sort of the trend for a while.

again, easy to avoid because i have to add a hue/saturation or vibrance layer and drag the dials into the negatives.

PALE COLOR GRADED/LIGHTING SCENES

sometimes the show does the deed itself, although i'm not super sure if that can still be qualified as whitewashing. in any case, sometimes i'll load screencaps into photoshop and go, "why does she look so pale??? i've giffed her before and she didn't remotely look like this."

at that point, i come to kind of a crossroad - do i try to color correct in addition to my usual coloring or do i just proceed as normal and go off of the skin tone presented to me in the scene?

i skew towards the latter... the top two look bad To Me but i don't know if there's an actual right answer to this conundrum, to be honest.