#*photoshop

1. The base

The process is very similar for each of the 3 gifs. First, you need to pick which scene will the base of your gif. You can crop your gif the way you want but keep in mind that you need space somewhere to put a second scene! Try not to pick busy shots because those will be harder to work with. Negative space and plain background are your best friends! The tricky part is that the other scene you will add on top of the base gif will only be nicely blended if it's put on a very dark or a very light area. Below are the shots I've chosen to be my base and, as you will notice, there is negative space around the main subject. Those dark areas will be where I'll add my new layers later.

Vincenzo's shoulder on the first gif makes a perfect area for blending layers because it is not only black but also is very plain! Chayoung's face adds a lot of contrast against this dark space

On the 2nd gif, there isn't a lot of space around her but there's enough on the right for what I have in mind so it's fine

Same with the 3rd gif. I cropped it so her face would be on the left, which leaves a bit of space on the right to add my new layers later

Our base gifs aren't done yet, we have to make the background cleaner so our blending results will look better. I will pick black because the background colors of the scenes I've selected are closer to black than white. However, if you're doing this with brighter shots, you should use white or any bright color! Add a new layer, select the brush tool (make sure it's set as a soft brush) and paint on top of the area you'll add your blended layers later.

This isn't a mandatory step but, in most cases, it is very useful! As an exemple, my 2nd gif needed it. As you can see on the previous picture, Chayoung is standing outside and the street lights are visible behind her on the right. Because this is where I will insert Vincenzo later, I need to clean up this area to end up with a plain and dark background. Here's the result after I added soft brush layers:

You can color your base gif now if you want to or do it later, it's up to you!

2. Blending

You're done with your base layer, which means it's now time to work on the gif you'll be blending! Finding the right scenes to blend is the hardest part of the process and you'll probably need to try this several times before you feel satisfied with your result. Don't feel bad about it, I'm also struggling and it's ok! It takes some practice to understand how blending works so be patient!

Put your gifs on the same file

Before blending our gifs together, we need to have them both on the same file. First, just open the gif you've selected to be blended and make sure you're working with timeline and not layers for all of your gifs (here's where to convert to timeline if you need help). Select all the layers from your future blended gif and put them all in one folder. Now, they are ready to join the base gif! Just select the folder and drag it to your base gif. Place it roughly where you want it to be and resize it if it needs to be.

Now that you have both gifs on the same file, you may need to adjust the length of your gif. Indeed, it is very likely that your base gif and your blended gif don't have the same number of frames, which means that one of your gif may run longer than the other. This is what happened with the first gif of my gifset. As you can see on the timeline below, the gif I wanted to blend was shorter than my base gif.

To fix this, just clic on the right handle on top of the timeline and slide it where your shorter gif ends. Your final gif will now end when the shortest gif ends!

Blending mode

It's now time to change the folder's blending mode! Since I'm making dark gifs, I will be selecting the folder and setting its blending mode to lighten. Below is the before and after of my middle gif. You can try using different blending modes as the result will be really different from one gif to another. Sometimes, screen gives a nice result as well. However, if you're working with light backgrounds, lighten will not work at all and you'll have to set it as darken instead. I really suggest you to experiment with different modes and colors to understand how it works!

Here, changing the blending mode helps making a smooth transition between Chayoung and Vincenzo but it's not enough for the rest of the gif because the edges of Vincenzo's gif are still visible, as well as the lights in the background. It's fine, let's just apply a layer mask!

Layer mask

To use a layer mask, make sure you've selected the folder you've set the blending mode to lighten and click on this icon. The layer mask will help us hide what we don't want to show! Select the eraser and make it as soft as possible. Now, erase the parts you want to hide. Don't worry, it won't actually erase your layers, it will simply hide those parts! If you erased too much, just pick the brush tool and paint on top of the areas you want to be visible.

Here's my result. Looks better, right?

I'm almost done with the blending process of this gif but I feel like Vincenzo's part needs more contrasts... When you're blending gifs, contrasts are important because they can drastically change your result. I haven't applied any coloring layer to Vincenzo's gif yet so I will increase the blacks and whites using a levels layer. But... if I create a new layer, it will also apply to Chayoung, right? So how do we do? It's actually simple: we will be creating a clipping mask!

Clipping mask

I need to add a levels layer so this is what I will be clipping but the clipping mask technique can be used with any kind of layer! I create a levels layer and make sure this layer is placed right above the blended folder. Then, we right-click on it and select "create clipping mask". It's done! Now, the layer will only apply for what is inside the folder (it doesn't have to be a folder, you can also clip a layer to another layer).

You're done with blending!

You're now free to color your gif the way you want! Remember you can create clipping masks if you need to color the scenes separately. Here's my final result:

I've used to same blending process for the other gifs as well. You can blend as many scenes as you want. For instance, I've used 3 different scenes for the last gif but the process was the same!

My final step was to add the quote on each gif. The main font I've used is Blastrick (which isn't a free font but I was able to get it for free a while ago when it was part of Creative Market's weekly free goods). I've used Algerian for the word "mine" on the last gif and I believe this font was actually pre-installed in Windows so you might have it too on your computer!

I just wanna start off with recommending to follow the correct tumblr dimensions for best quality. This tutorial is focusing on 540px gifs. And this tutorial does require some basic photoshop knowledge.

1. After having converted all the video frames for Smart Filters (so all the frames are compacted into one layer), select Smart Sharpen (Filters → Sharpen → Smart Sharpen). These are my settings (remember to enable Use Legacy and More Accurate):

2. Then dublicate that layer. I can do that by pressing ctrl + J. But I’m not sure if that’s universal for everyone. Otherwise just right click and choose dublicate layer:

3. Add Gaussian Blur (Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur), 1px, to the dublicated layer:

4. And then I usually keep the opacity for the dublicated layer around 40-60% depending on what looks better for that specific gif. I usually start at 50% and then either go higher or lower; once in a blue moon I do go as low as 25% and as high as 70%. I know I’m not being very specific here, but you just have to test the waters to see what feels/looks best. It really depends a lot on the lightening of the scene, the overall quality of the gif, the size of the gif (px) and how I you have coloured the gif (...take a shot everytime I say gif):

5. After that I dublicate the layer once more (the layer that has the Gaussian Blur added to it) - but this time, instead of having the Gaussian Blur be at 1px, I change it to 3px. I also keep the opacity a bit lower, usually around 20% to 25%. This step isn’t really necessary, it just softens up the gif a bit and I personally like the look of it:

Here's Seongyeom's shot before I colored it. As you can see, the background is quite plain around his face so it will make my process easier. As I said before, having a solid and static background help a lot so keep that in mind!

First step: base layers

My first step is to make the background more even so I pick a color from the background and paint over it with a soft brush. You can see on the right that there are different columns of colors in the background: since I knew I wouldn't be able to make the very fine rusty brown line disappear completely (at one point, his face goes over the line, which means I would have to paint over his face/hair and it would ruin the smooth background, right?), I decided to pick a color between that brown line and the lighter one on its right. Here's the result:

Second step: color

Now that we're done with our base layers, it's time to color! I initially meant the background to be cyan so it would be harmonious with Seongyeom's jacket, that's why you'll see me using cyan at first. Once again, I add a new layer on which I paint the background blue with a soft brush. I don't have any fixed settings as it varies with my gifs but I'll tell you what you can use for a big gif such as mine here! Obviously, you need to set your brush's hardness to 0% but also keep in mind that the bigger your brush is, the smoother your result will be! I don't remember what exact size I used when I was making the gifset so I made some tests while making this ~tutorial and I used a 374px brush. This might seem to be very big and weird because Seongyeom's face will end up blue but don't worry!!

Here are some tips about this step:

Don't forget about the eraser tool! It's fine if you paint over your character because you can erase it. It's usually easier to paint the background and then clean up your character with the eraser tool later. Also, you can lower your eraser's opacity (it is quite useful!)

If your character is moving and it's hard to get a smooth background, you can use multiple layers of soft brush painting! You don't need to paint over the whole background to have a smooth background, you just have to color it gradually. Sometimes, playing with the layer's blending modes can help (we'll get to that later)

I actually usually like to use a soft brush with a 100% opacity on the sides of the gif and then a brush with a lower opacity when I get near the character's face

Basically: play with opacity!

Back to my gif: I'm done with the first soft brush layer! I like using gradients instead of only one color so I actually painted a bit of green on the bottom left (left image below). When I've done my painting, I can play with blending modes. Usually, I like setting it to overlay, soft light or vivid light but I actually really loved the result saturation gave me here so I ended up setting the blending mode to saturation.

Blending mode set to normal (left), blending mode set to saturation (right)

So... cyan is gone. Let’s make the background green! I pick a light green and a darker one and I will add more soft brush layers with those colors! Here, I used 3 additional layers. I will detail their settings but I can't explain in details why I've used those because that's just how I go: I improvise and experiment until I feel satisfied with my result. Keep in mind that I like using gradients so that's why I picked two colors but it's not necessary! The darker green will be on the bottom left corner and the light one on the opposite side.

First green layer: blending mode set to overlay (result shown on the right)

Second green layer: blending mode set to soft light (result shown on the right). I've only painted on the left side because I wanted to make it slightly darker and more saturated

Third layer: blending mode set to linear dodge and opacity to 42%. I wanted to make the right side of my gif more vibrant so I mostly painted the top right corner! Here's what it looks like now:

I feel quite satisfied with how the background looks so I apply regular coloring layers and we're done!

Here's the final result:

Delete frames

This one is super obvious BUT it’s important to remember that deleting frames is the best way to reduce your gif size. However, there are times when deleting frames at the beginning or at the end of the gif makes the gif look weird (because the action/movement is unfinished). In that case, you can delete a frame every 2 or 3 frames (the selected frames in blue are the ones I’m going to delete). I have to say that I use the screencapping giffing technique so I hope it works for the other giffing technique. At least, it works for my screencapping settings!

[Exemple: the first gif of that gifset]

Reducing the height of the gif

This is a very simple tip, but we can forget it easily. Gifs have a fixed width to follow (540px, 268px or 177/178px), but you can vary their height! For 540px gifs, I like to set the height to 250px. For 268px gifs, I mostly put it at 160px

Overlay layers

That tip can’t be used for any gif, it mostly works if there are space around the object of the gif and if there isn’t too much movement. I started using overlay layers for coloring purpose, but I’ve figured out that it was a nice way to reduce my gifs’ size. It just consist on adding a layer on top of your gif and “paint” it with the background’s color, using the brush tool

Here’s what my gif looks like initially:

Here’s what it looks like after I’ve added an overlay layer:

Here are my layers:

[Exemple: I use that technique on every gifset I make so I can link you to any of my gifsets]

Overlay layer v2: static background

This one tip will probably surprise some people because it’s kinda weird but if you’ve been on Tumblr when the size limit was 1mb, you have probably noticed that it’s a technique lots of gifmakers were using at the time: static background. To use that tip, you have to make sure that the background of your gif isn’t moving.

Pick the lasso tool and select the background. Then, right click and click on “Layer via Copy” :

A new layer was added on top of the others! Now, run your gif and make sure that the new layer isn’t hiding some parts (just use the eraser tool to erase those parts)