love is love

PHASE 1: THE ASSETS

1.1 – Download fonts. These are the fonts used for all assets I've included in my template: – SF Pro or SF Pro Display (Regular, Medium, Bold): Either version works, they look nearly identical. You can download directly from https://developer.apple.com/fonts/ or easily find it via Google – Bebas Neue: Free on Google Fonts, Adobe Fonts, and dafont – Times New Roman (Bold): Should be a default font in Photoshop

Make sure to download and install any of the fonts you don't already have before opening my template. That way, once you open the template file, all the settings (font size, weight, spacing, color, opacity, etc.) are as intended.

1.2 – Download my template. Before you use my template, all I ask is that you don't claim or redistribute it as your own and that you give me proper credit in the caption of your post. Making these iPhone gifsets takes me a longgg time and turning this layout into a template took several hours too.

DOWNLOAD TEMPLATE VIA KO-FI ← This template is completely free to download (just enter $0), but if you feel inclined to tip me, I appreciate you! 💖

BTW this template also includes some of my frequently used icons!

NOTE: If, for some reason, you open the template and see the pop-up shown below, click "NO" — otherwise, the fonts will be all messed up:

And if you see this triangle with an exclamation point by a text layer, don't double-click it — it'll mess up the font as well:

PHASE 2: THE GIFS

I'm just going to briefly go over gif sizes and my recommendations. Also, keep in mind when grabbing your scenes, you'll want all of these gifs to be the same amount of frames.

2.1 – Background Gif: 540 x 540 px. I recommend this size so you have a good amount of visibility for the gif behind the iPhone wallpaper. I also recommend making this black and white (or in my case, black and white with a slight blue tint — idk I just like the way it looks) so the wallpaper coloring can stand out.

2.2 – Wallpaper Gif: 230 (w) x 500 (h) px. Keep in mind the very narrow dimensions of the wallpaper! And also keep in mind that you'll have a bunch of apps and widgets covering the image. I try to use wide shots (or layer my clips into looking like wide shots). Also, keep in mind your color scheme for your set and your character's aesthetic! I tend to focus on one or two colors for the wallpaper.

I usually position the wallpaper to the side with 20px bumpers, so there's lots of space to see the background:

2.3 – Large Photo Widget Gif: 201 (w) x 96 (h) px.

2.4 – Small Photo Widget Gif: 94 x 94 px.

PHASE 3: THE TEMPLATE – "IPHONE" FOLDER

In this section, I'll try to quickly walk you through how to use this template and some bits that may require extra instructions. I'll be going through each folder from top to bottom.

3.1 – Status Bar. Time, Service, and WiFi are pretty self-explanatory. In the Battery folder, you can use the shape tool to adjust the shape layers labeled "Fill (Adjustable Shape!)" to customize the battery level.

3.2 – Message Notification. Again, these are pretty self-explanatory. I've already masked the circle for the contact photo, so you can simply import any photo and use the transform tool to shrink it down. The circle is 24x24 px. If you don't want to use a photo, there's another folder called Default Initials.

If your message text can't fit the text box, the message should end with ellipses which is how iOS caps off long texts.

3.3 – Blurred Banner (IMPORTANT) This folder is easy to miss because there's only one placeholder layer in there. On iPhones, the area behind a banner notification and the dock get blurred (including the wallpaper and any apps).

What to do: Make a duplicate of the apps in Row 1 and/or widgets that intersect the message banner, convert them all into one smart object, apply a Gaussian Blur filter (Radius: 3.0 pixels) on the smart object, and move the smart object into this masked folder!

(There's another masked folder in the Wallpaper folder for the dock which I'll go over in that section.)

3.4 – Apps Turn off the yellow guide if you don't need it to keep things aligned and turn off layers you don't need by clicking the eye icon. Replace the "App" placeholder text with your app name, change the color or gradient of the square to compliment your color scheme, and add your custom app icon overlay!

If you can't find an app icon you need from the ones I provided, flaticon.com is a great resource. Also, if you can only find the filled version of an icon, check out this tutorial for how to make any text or shape into an outline.

Also, each app folder has 4 notification bubble options (1-4 digits). Again, you can toggle these on and off as you need!

3.5 – Big Widgets I like using these when my wallpaper has A LOT of negative space to fill. I included the Photos and Books widgets in my template, but there are lots of widgets available on iPhones. You can check some of the other ones I've done here, or if you have an iPhone, simply try adding some widgets to your phone!

There are also widgets bigger than these, but they would take up half of the phone screen which is why I don't use them for these edits.

3.6 – Small Widgets The only thing I'll say about these — because they're pretty straight forward — is there are a lot more weather themes than I included in my template. Also, if you set your character's phone to evening, the weather widget will show a dark background (sometimes with stars), so keep that in mind.

Speaking of, I've included Light Modes and Dark Modes for, I think, every applicable widget.

3.7 – Page Dots These barely perceptible dots indicate that your character has more pages of apps than shown in your gifset (so if an anon tries to come at you, you can just say "it's on the next page of apps" /j /lh)

3.8 – Dock Again, the dock has notification bubble options and I've included the default app designs, custom filled designs, and custom outlined designs for iMessage, Phone, Email, and Safari (there's also a FaceTime alternative if that's how your character rolls). These are usually the apps people keep in their Dock, but this is fully customizable too. So, if your character is, like, super obsessed with Candy Crush or something and needs it in thumb's reach — you can put it in the dock.

3.9 – Wallpaper This whole folder is masked already to a 230x500 px rounded rectangle.

Inside, you'll find another "Blurred Portion" folder for the area behind the message banner notification and the dock.

What to do: Duplicate your gif layer and place it in this folder, remove any sharpening filters, and apply a Gaussian Blur filter (Radius: 3.0 px). Be sure to add any coloring/adjustment layers ABOVE this folder and your original sharpened gif layer.

PHASE 4: EXPORT

We made it!

I hope this template makes it super easy for you to recreate this layout! If you decide to try it out, feel free to tag me with #usernik.

I'm just going to mention each adjustment layer and try to describe why I used them:

1. Brightness/Contrast — No adjustments, just set this layer to screen and it helps create an even brightness across the gif

(I'll keep that masked circle there so we can keep track of the original)

2. Color Balance — I just toggled the sliders and I honestly can't explain any rhyme or reason so I'll just include screenshots of my settings ldkjflsd

3. Levels 1 — I increased the highlights (the right-most slider) A LOT

4. Selective Color 1 — After doing stuff to get rid of yellow, I... added yellow lmao. But you can see the difference from the masked section. It feels more like a natural-looking yellow now imo

5. Selective Color 2 — This time, I used the red, yellow, neutral, and black channels. For red and yellow, I mainly focused on neutralizing the yellow by adding more cyan

6. Hue/Saturation 1 — This was just a baby hue/sat layer where I reduced the saturation of red by -7, pulled the hue slider down for red by -2 and for yellow by -4, and then I fully desaturated greens, cyans, blues, and magentas

7. Hue/Saturation 2 — In this layer, I fully desaturated the yellows and masked Anakin's face! Working towards making the background monochromatic

8. Hue/Saturation 3 — This time I fully desaturated the reds and fully darkened them, using my brush to apply these settings only to select parts of the background and Anakin's robes where I saw red peaking through

9. Levels 2 — In addition to using the RGB channel to brighten and add shadows, I also used the Red channel to make the shadows more cyan. You can see below how it made the background a bit more blue. Later, when I come back in with another hue/sat layer, I’ll be able to desaturate the cyan again and further neutralize the background.

10. Hue/Saturation 4 — Fully desaturated cyans and blues like I said I would! Now the background is neutral again

11. Hue/Saturation 5 — This time fully desaturating the yellows and masking out Anakin’s face. If you look at the difference between the image above and the one below, you can see the one above just had a tinge of yellow still in the background. And now that’s gone!

12. Selective Color 3 — I mainly added blacks to the red and yellow channels to deepen the shadows of Anakin’s face!

13. Levels 3 — Just making things a bit brighter again

14. Hue/Saturation 6 — His skin was looking a little too yellow, so I neutralized it a bit using the red and yellow channels

15. Levels 4 — Uh, brightening again sdlkfjsld

16. Hue/Saturation 7 — His skin was still looking a bit too saturated imo, so I desaturated the reds by -6 and desaturated the yellows by -28

17. Levels 5 — Lastly, there was some heavy grain in the upper corners from brightening the gif, and the dots were moving so violently that it was distracting, so I decided to darken it a bit only on those corners!

And that’s it! :jerrycry: 

Edit: Maybe I shouldn't have used such a dark gif as an example hahahaha oops

I use the timeline method in Photoshop to make my gifs. Here is a tutorial that's a bit similar to how I make gifs. For Arcane, the frame speed I use is either 0.04 or 0.05.

I've based my sharpening process on a tumblr tutorial years ago by another blogger but I can't seem to find their blog post :(((( if anyone knows it, please let me know!

My sharpening process are as follows:

First, I duplicate the base gif in photoshop

So now, I have 2 copies of the gif. Then, I'll be sharpening the duplicate layer, so go to Filter -> Sharpen -> Smart Sharpen

Here are the settings I use to sharpen gifs:

Click okay, then you will see this under your layers

Some people stop there and then color their gifs, but I prefer to add another layer of Gaussian Blur to make the gif less noisy.

Here are my gaussian blue settings:

Click okay, then your duplicated layer will look like this:

Next, make your layer opacity to 80%.

Then, double click the right adjust icon on the gaussian blur settings

Set the opacity to 20%, but you can adjust as needed.

And you're done sharpening the gif! You can color and add PSDs to it right after. As always, dark scenes are going to be difficult to sharpen and color, so try to experiment and tinker around.