prev. 𝔥𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔠𝔩𝔲𝔟

If you want to actually learn how to make a template like this from scratch, keep reading. Otherwise you can just download the template I created here and skip to step 3, or download this anyway for a visual and follow along.

(STEP 1): HOW DO I GET STARTED?

Create a new blank document with the dimensions of the entire size of the canvas (file > new) and change the highlighted settings to match these (with your own choice of dimensions of course):

Before you do anything else, make sure your timeline is visible (window > timeline) and select “create video timeline” from the drop down.

(STEP 2): MAPPING IT OUT AND CREATING THE TEMPLATE

With your blank canvas is where you have to use a little imagination to create your layout to fill in the space and where you start is up to you.

I started at the top of the canvas in the left corner and decided my first gif was gonna be 268 x 340. Why these dimensions? 268 is tumblr’s standard width for (2) side-by-side gifs and I want the gutter alignment at the top of this canvas to be centered. The height of the block just felt right. As you drag the tool, photoshop will tell you what the dimensions are.

Now I have this:

Our second shape will also have a width of 268px to ensure the transparent space between them is perfectly centered. My second block ended up being 268 x 260.

Make sure there is a gutter of 4px between all of the squares you create. This is important because tumblr’s standard gutter size between gifs is 4px, and this means you need to subtract 4px from your squares on all sides that face each other.

The easiest method to make and align the squares without spending too much time on it is to click off the canvas in the corner and drag the shape inward. Then click on the shape you’ve just created and align it with its designated 90 degree corner of the canvas first. [Edit > free transform] the sides until they align correctly by holding shift + control while dragging. Zoom in to a microscopic level to make sure the gutter is right if you have to 📐🔬🔎👀

If you’re not using weird shapes in your template, do the same thing with all the blocks until you get your desired outcome.

Otherwise, you’ll have to deal with this:

(STEP 2.1): THE ANGLE

In order to create a template like this, you will need to delete the corner of your shape. Create your rectangle like normal as you did with the others, but this one is going to overlay the layer on the top left.

To make sure everything will be even, I used the rectangle tool again to measure and with a new square (in yellow for visibility), I determined that this corner overlay is 75x75, so I fixed the alignment of the red rectangle to make it even.

(STEP 2.2): DELETING THE CORNER OUT OF THE SHAPE

Using the yellow square as your new guide, extend its edges to cover the gutter on the two sides while maintaining its 1x1 proportion.

Keyboard command + click on your yellow square layer and once the “ants” dance around the square, hide the layer so it’s invisible on the canvas.

Right click on the red rectangle layer and select “rasterize” from the drop down menu, then you can hit “delete” or “backspace” on your keyboard which will remove the selected portion only to reveal the gutter. command + D will make the 🐜s go away. Then the yellow square layer can be deleted.

Once this is complete, you can finish up your template by adding your small rectangle in the left bottom corner in the space that remains and VOILA! You have a template!

3. REPLACING THE SHAPES WITH GIFS USING LAYER MASKS ETC

When you make your gifs, remember that they will need to be in timeline form in order to drag them onto the template. You can resize them to match the dimensions of the shapes, or you could just drag your gif—whatever be the size—directly onto the canvas, and “free transform” them to fit inside each space.

Create a group for each shape and create a layer mask for each group, containing it’s designated shape. I’ve colorized this visual to make it make sense.

Now you can finally drag your gifs onto the template. The coloring can be added before or after, it doesn’t matter as long as you place your gifs and the colorings inside the groups with the layer masks to contain the effects of the color adjustments.

And the best thing about putting gifs in a template in timeline is you can move the groups containing the gifs from left to right to get your desired part of the clip.

Once you’re finished with this, hide the original shape layers, as they were just guides and we no longer need them, but also if you don’t do this, you may be able to see them on the sides rather than transparency once you upload to tumblr. And AT LAST you can convert everything into frames as you normally would and save.

Save workspaces.  You can have multiple workspaces for different needs. For example, i’m making gifs more often, but sometimes i make edits as well, so having to switch the timeline panel off when it gets in a way, then go back to the view menu, then bringing it back again... idk, call me lazy, but it seems like a few extra clicks for me 💀 What you can do instead is save your current workspace and easily switch between them any time you want. To do that, align all your tools and menus as you want, then find this icon at the top right corner

Scroll down to New Workspace, and this window will pop up

Name your workspace however you want, and chose what you want to save. You can save keyboard shortcuts, menus and tools. When you click save and change your layout, nothing will happen. That is because you need to reset your Essentials workspace first (the one that’s usually the default). Now when you switch between your workspaces (if you saved multiple) everything should work as expected

How to change the speed of gif without converting to frame animation (PS 2021 and above). THANK GOD Adobe fixed the glitch where the frame rate gets all messed up when you switch to video timeline, so i would suggest upgrading whatever version of PS you currently have if you can, working with timeline is MUCH easier in my opinion. To change the speed, after you imported the video (photoshop reads only .mp4’s btw, so be sure to check if you have the correct format), click the little play button 

and type in whatever number you want: 25% — the lowest value, but you can also speed the gif up by  entering a number higher than 100%. Remember to do that BEFORE you convert your gif to a smart object (& before resizing it, bc after applying the changes video automatically converts into a smart object), because once you convert it, the speed can’t be changed without going back a few steps). When you slow a gif down, photoshop “eats” some parts of it (usually towards the end), so you need to extend the gif by dragging it to the right until you reach the end of your scene to fix that Normal speed

Slowed down to 60%. Sometimes slowed down gifs may look choppy, i explained the trick on how to fix it in pt. 1 (click the first link in the post).

Use plugins. There are so many great ones! For example, i found this plugin called Better Grids: it creates grids and converts them into shapes or frames AUTOMATICALLY based on the numbers you set within the plugin. It’s a lifesaver for me when it comes to photosets! DL (Google drive. M1 Mac users: for the plugin to work, you need to run Photoshop under Rosetta mode first. To do that, right-click the app, go to get Info and check Open using Rosetta if you have that option available)

If your disk space allows, do not convert media. It’s time consuming, messes up the original quality, and usually extremely hard on processors, especially not very powerful ones. Instead, just change the container to open your file in photoshop, It’s faster & less power consuming. I use Subler (mac) and Avidemux (mac & windows) to change the container to mp4, bc for me it’s the simplest ones to use

Handy thansform tool trick. When you try to fit your image into a certain sized canvas, this is probably what you’ll caught yourself doing

there's actually a much faster and easier way to resize stuff. when you activate transform tool, you'll see these boxes with numbers in the top panel

watch what happens when i change one of the numbers

isn't that neat? (make sure that little chain button is checked to mantain proportions. x and y values are for stretching the image horizontally or vertically)

Save document presets. In new document window, type in your desired dimmensions, then click "Save Preset", choose which options you want to save, name it however you want, click ok and you're done — congrats, now you have a saved canvas preset for further use!