editing resources

Load Files Fast action opens up a folder where you put your own screencaps in and loads the caps in PS and makes it into a smart object. You will need to configure this yourself since it uses my own folder. Click on Load Files Fast, select "Record" button and then choose File > Open, navigate to the folder that you use to store your screencaps, select the first cap, click on the "Image Sequence" option on the bottom right of the dialog box and then click "Open". It will then ask you to specify the frame rate, I use 25, then click OK. Then you click on the "Stop" button and your action is saved. [video on how here]

After it is put into a Smart Object, I use one of my crop presets I've made. To load them into Photoshop, click on the down arrow next to the crop bottom, click Load Tool Preset and select my preset.

Then I choose a sharpening I want to use. I'm either use 'high pass' or the 'sharper w/o grain' one.

OPTIONAL - Brighten action, brightens the scene using 'Screen' mode. I use these for really dark scenes.

After that I color the gif and add text if needed.

If I want to change the frame delay, I use the 'frame delay' action and set my delay to 0.04 and then save the gif!

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!

if you’re having trouble seeing, click on the pictures to see the full image!

i. make your individual gifs

Make and color your individual gifs. After you've done that, make sure to group your gifs (explanation on creating groups in this tutorial). As you'll see, I group mine and use the episode number as a name, but use whatever makes sense to you. IMPORTANT: Make sure each gif has the same number of frames (for this gif I had 54 each).

ii. layer gifs

Gif 1: Mulder Gif 2: Scully I put gif 1 over gif 2 by selecting all the frames of gif 1, copying them, moving to gif 2, selecting all the frames of gif 2, then selecting paste over selection. Gif 2 (Scully) will then be hidden by gif 1 (Mulder) until the next step.

Immediately after pasting the frames from gif 1 over gif 2, change the blending mode from pass through to screen. The reason I say to do this immediately is because then all your frames will already be selected and you won't have to worry about the blending mode changing for only one frame, but you can also just make sure you select all the frames yourself and then change the blending mode.

Here is what we have now:

Gif 1 (Mulder) over gif 2 (Scully), blending mode set to screen, no masking.

iii. add layer masks and blend

LEFT: First I add a black solid color layer and move it to the bottom (underneath all other layers). RIGHT: Add a mask to each gif by selecting the gif's folder and pressing the mask button.

TOP: Make sure you have the mask layer selected. I am first masking gif 1 (Mulder). MIDDLE: These are the brush settings I use for my initial masking. The size varies, but basically it's the soft round brush with 0% hardness set to a fairly large size. BOTTOM: Using black, I paint over the parts of gif 1 (Mulder) that I want to hide.

Here is what we have now:

I mainly focused on making Scully more visible.

Although I always start with black (completely masking the gif), I usually end up adding grey and white back into the mask so that it's a smoother layered effect.

I turned off the other layers so you can see what the mask looks like. As you can see, it's pretty transparent in most places, and I added back in some white where Mulder's face is because I want him to be visible as well.

Here is what the gif looks like now:

Now I move to gif 2 (Scully) and repeat the process.

As you can see, I mainly masked the part of the gif that overlaps with Mulder so that his face is more visible. I started with black but then used a dark grey to mask so that it was almost completely erased, but you can still faintly see Scully.

I decided I was happy with how the blending looked, so here is the gif before I start adding in layers of color:

iv. add coloring

For this gif in particular, I added a gradient. It's much more typical, though, for me to add color with a brush (as I show here). That said, I'm using the gradient for this tutorial since I'm showing you how I made this specific gif.

I created a gradient fill layer on top of the gif. You can see my settings on the right. The reason I used a gradient is because this was a text-heavy gifset, so the coloring I added was more opaque than what I usually do.

And here you have the finished gif before I added the text! For the text tutorial, you can go here.

We're going to start with our cropped and sharpened gif.

We definitely need to brighten the image first. You can do this in a number of ways, but I usually start with the exact same steps for every single gif I make.

First, I add an exposure layer. There are 3 sliders, and for this layer, we are just going to focus on the top slider, "exposure." If you move the slider to the right, the image gets brighter. Left makes it darker. If you pull it too far to the right, the highlights start to get blown out.

Here are my settings:

Next, I do a curves layer. This layer will both brighten, and also color correct. Using the white point and black point on a curves layer can really do a lot of heavy lifting when color correcting.

Add a new curves layer and click on the the white point dropper (the bottom one). Now you want to click on a part of your gif that is supposed to be white. I usually zoom in on the brightest part of the gif and click on one of the lightest pixels. For this gif, since it's very red/yellow, i zoomed in on Ilya's thumb and chose a light pixel that was more red/yellow. This will add more cyan/blue. (Usually, I will do the same with the black point dropper, clicking on one of the darkest pixels, but that wasn't necessary with this particular gif.)

Next, I added a 2nd Exposure layer. On this layer, I focused on the bottom two sliders. I dragged the gamma correction slider to the left to lighten the gif a bit more, and then the offset very very slightly to the left to add back a bit of contrast.

Here are my settings:

This still wasn't quite bright enough for me, so I added a Levels layer. The levels histogram has 3 points that you can manipulate. Dragging the far right point brightens the gif while maintaining the contrast, the middle point brightens or darkens the midtones, depending on which way you move it. (This will affect the contrast). The left point will darken the gif.

Here are my settings:

Now I wanted to brighten some more and add a bit more contrast, so I added a Brightness/Contrast layer. These sliders are a bit self explanatory.

Here are my settings:

I'm happy with the brightness, so now it's time to get working on the color correction.

First, I added a color balance layer. The color balance layer has 3 different tabs: Highlights, Midtones, and Shadows. In each tab, you can manipulate the colors individually.

For gifs that are overly warm and need a bit of coolness added, I start with the Highlights & Shadows tabs. In both of these tabs, I slide the top slider to the left to add more cyan and the bottom slider to the right to add more blue. Then I go to the midtones and do the opposite to add a tiny bit of warmth back in. (For this particular gif, adding too much cyan/blue really made the coloring look unnatural, so I didn't go too far. The difference is very subtle. For some gifs you can manipulate the colors much more.)

Now for the real star of this show, a photo filter layer. Photo filters can be your best friend when color correcting, although they don't always work. Thankfully, it worked really well here.

I chose one of the cooling filters. Sometimes you might have to lower the opacity, but in this case I just left it at 100.

Look at that difference! Next I wanted to tweak their skintones and lighten the gif a tad bit more. For this, I added a selective color layer.

Selective color depends entirely on each individual gif, so I don't think it's very helpful to give my exact settings, but here is the general idea:

In the red channel, I added a tiny bit of cyan, blue, and black. In the yellow channel, I added quite a bit of red, a little bit of yellow, and some white. In the black & neutral channels I added some white to lighten everything.

I'm very happy with the the coloring now, but I wanted to add a little more contrast. For most of my gifs I add a black & white gradient map set to soft light and lower the opacity. For this gif I lowered it to 42%.

And that's it!

GRADIENT FILL

I'll be using this gif which I've already sharpened and coloured:

First of all let's make the background pop so I'm going to add a gradient fill (Layer -> New fill layer -> Gradient) with these settings (I'm using this colour #0099ff):

Now it's the time to play with the blending settings! Depending on your scene some will look better than others but I usually switch between Soft Light, Overlay, Color or Hue. 90% of the time I use soft light but this scene looked much better using overlay:

As you can see the background looks more blue and vibrant but it's not too much you know.

GRADIENT TOOL

Now it's time to use the gradient tool to give this gif a hazy look. I haven't seen many gifmakers talk about this tool but it's soooo useful and it takes gradients to a whole new level.

Before using this tool we'll need to add a new layer above the gradient fill, like this:

(HELP I just realised I typed “later” instead of “layer” 🤡 but let’s ignore that)

You can choose the gradient tool by pressing 'G' and then clicking here:

Make sure your gradient goes from any colour to a transparent background.

Okay so next to this gradient settings we have five different styles and each one will create a different shape. Depending on the scene I'll use the first, second or fourth one. Here are how they look:

1. Linear gradient

2. Radial gradient + Reverse (if you don't click this you'll end up with a blue circle above your gif)

3. Reflected gradient + Reverse

This time I'm going to use the radial gradient so to draw it start by clicking on the centre of the gif and drag the line (the farther you drag it the less intense the gradient looks):

And this is the gradient:

And here comes the fun part again, playing with the blending setting and the opacity! Before doing anything I duplicate my gradient layer because I always use more than one so this is how your layers should look like:

Let's go to the first gradient tool layer and again try different blending modes: soft light, overlay, hue... Most of the time I'll use 'Soft layer' and I'll leave the opacity at 100%.

For the second layer choose 'Screen' and don't worry if your gif looks too bright because we're going to fix this by decreasing the opacity. Anything between 20-60% should look good but it depends if you want a more vibrant or more natural effect. I ended up using 40% and this is the result:

And we're done!!! As you can see the result looks much different from our first gif and it only takes a couple of layers!

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!

After downloading your video, you need to make your screencaps. I use MPV Player - if you don't know how to screencap, I recommend this tutorial on installing, configuring and using MPV (and this one for installing on a pc). You can also check my gifmaking tag for various other tutorials including different screencapping methods/software.

Once you've made your screencaps, move them to their own folder. You will need an individual folder for each gif/import! I put them in a "screencaps" folder and within that label each sub-folder however works for what I'm making.

Open Photoshop and open (ctrl+o) the way you would any image. Find the folder with the screencaps you want and select the first image (technically I think selecting any of them works, but I always do the first) then tick the Image Sequence button in the bottom corner, then open:

4. You will then get a pop-up to set the frame rate - these are my settings and after setting it once it should save it for future, so then you can just click OK each time:

5. This will instantly open your gif in timeline mode with your gif made! I then just click where it says Video Group 1 in the layers panel and Convert for Smart Filters so that it can be edited easily (I actually have this step saved as part of an action to make it even quicker). It should then look like this:

And that's it! You can go ahead and do all your editing like normal. I find Photoshop runs quicker this way (especially when making several gifs at once) since it's essentially just linking to the file location instead of importing it all into PS!

Full disclaimer - there is no real set method for what I do to colour my gifs, as it changes depending on the gif and my mood. In the case of this gif I used lots of selective colour layers, but I have also used channel mixer in the past to correct similar issues or have done most of the correction in curves (like in my basic gif tut). I will also add in the case of my header gif, I applied the previous colouring from my theolizzy gifset, so I'll try and recreate how I got the curves but it may not be exact.

Step 1: Start with your base gif sharpened and ready to colour

I always start any gif with a Curves layer.

I select the white eyedropper tool and select a white point on the gif to get a base to begin my colouring.

For this gif I selected the bit of confetti in the red box

This is what the result of the curves was there

As it can be seen this added some brightness but the scene is still very yellow

To start with I go into my curves layer and start by manually adjusting the RGB channels.

Normally to get rid of yellow, I would add more blue. But this will not work for this scene. This is what happens when adding more blue:

So instead of just adding more blue I go into each channel and adjust to get a better foundation for what I can colour later.

I started with the green

Then added more red in

then added a bit more blue

After that I went into the main channel and dragged the little black slider down to add some depth/contrast

This is what my final curves layer looked like

My next step is to add a Vibrance layer (which I do for all my gifs)

After that I started working in the selective colour layers. As the tint is quite strong I used a lot of layers and built upon them.

For the first selective colour I adjusted the reds and yellows

These adjustments resulted in this, which is already looking more natural but needs some more adjustment still

I went back in the reds and yellows again and adjusted further

leading to this which is a pretty good result:

The gif now is mostly colour corrected but I still want to do some minor adjustments (cos I'm a perfectionist) so I make another selective colour layer.

This time I just add some more cyan to the reds, which is a small change but neutralises a bit of the shadows which were too bright for me

Next I take out some more yellow as the tint is still there a bit

The above is pretty good, but I decided I wanted to do another curves layer on top to do a final bit of colour correction.

I manually went into each colour channel and adjusted as so:

I started by adding more blue as now I can use this to get rid of the remaining tint without it looking weird

the gif was now slightly magenta/pink so I added a bit of green to balance it out and slid the bottom slider a bit to add some depth back into the shadows

Then I added some red. I also dragged the black bar at the bottom to add a bit more depth/cyan to the shadows.

This is the final result of the basic colouring for the scene I did.