Love ♡ Live

Use video sources with higher resolution

In all honesty, I am not doing that much to make my edits look smooth and HD. I just always make sure to download videos that are not less than 720p. I typically download 1080p but 720p would suffice since the suggested width for images here on Tumblr is 540p.

Use good editing apps

I use Photoshop which is a good app but if you're not using this, you may use Photopea (this is like an online version of PS). There was a time when I didn't have a PC and I tried making GIFs on my mobile phone but even when I'm using high-resolution videos, the output was not as good when making it on PS. I also used Photoscape before. This was my first app when I was still starting making GIFs and oh boy, the quality is just... XD Anyway, PS is good with the compression of images when you're saving the frames as GIFs even when resizing the file to a smaller scale.

Maintain the original size until the export

I've seen tutorials where they are already adjusting the size at the beginning of their edit. I personally don't do this because this contributes to the reduction of the quality of your GIFs. And if I want to crop (because I want a different width and height compared to the original), I will see to it that the height is the same with the original (only the width will change).

Take a look at this example:

This is a 1920p x 1080p image but I wanted to crop it to a 400 x 540 aspect ratio. What I would do is after cropping the image, I would resize the image to make the height 1080p again.

After cropping, this is now the dimensions of the image:

Then I will revert the height back to 1080p (the value of the width doesn't matter):

Of course, 1080p is just my preferred resolution. You can select a lower resolution but not lower than the original image or the final size of your GIF.

As you can see, even without further editing, the image already looks good and does not appear to be pixilated. Then after cropping, I will apply my coloring. If I save this as it is using 540p width, this is how the GIF's gonna look like.

As you can see, there is almost no difference between the 540p (width) gif and the 1080p (height) image. That's because I only resized the image during export and not in the middle of editing.

Use sharpening tools to make your GIFs look HD

The key to fooling the eyes is to make them look in a different direction. XD So what do I mean by this? Like I said, I'm not doing that much to remove pixelations from my edits. I just make it so people will focus on other stuff. If you don't want them to focus on the pixels, let them focus on the line art.

Just a reminder that this last tip is only applicable to anime GIFs.

In my case, I always start with frame animations, then later on convert to a video timeline. And then I will convert the frames to a single smart object so I can apply filters to all the frames at the same time.

These are the steps I do when I sharpen my GIFs.

Apply SMART SHARPEN. (Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen)

These are my preferred settings but you can also explore your own.

[Comparison of GIF without sharpening filter and with sharpening filter]

2. Apply POSTER EDGES filter. (Filter > Filter Gallery > Artistic > Poster Edges)

These are my settings. You can adjust the Edge Thickness if you want to have thicker art lines. As for Edge Intensity, it's better to set it to zero to avoid adding unnecessary details to the shadows of your image.

[Comparison of GIF without sharpening filter and with sharpening filter]

3. Apply POSTER EDGES again.

This is an optional step. I typically use this whenever I want the art lines to be thicker. I use the same settings in the second step.

[Comparison of GIF without sharpening filter and with sharpening filter]