#*ps tutorial

IMPORTING A VIDEO

1. go to file > import > video frames to layers.

2. once you select your video, this dialogue box will pop up. use the left and right arrows to select the scene you wish to gif.

some people use the “limit to every x frames” but I personally don’t. if you do, I’ve seen people recommend using either 2 or 3.

make sure that “make frame animation” is checked.

3. this is what your workspace will look like afterwards.

4. down the bottom in the animation window, in the top right corner will be an icon. click it and select “select all frames”.

5. now all your frames are selected which means whatever you do to one frame will apply to the others. click on the number below the frame thumbnail. (e.g. 0.04) and select “other”. this is where you will change your frame delay which impacts the overall speed of your gif.

I generally use 0.05-0.07 seconds but it depends on your gif and how many frames it has. just play around with different delays til you find something to your liking.

6. there’s a small icon in the bottom left corner of the animation. click it and it will convert your frames to a timeline. 

7. this is what your workspace should look like now. select all your layers in your layers panel and right click. select “convert to smart object”.

8. now that it’s a smart object, go ahead and use a sharpen action on it. I’m using my own sharpen action that I’ve uploaded here.

9. crop and resize your image to your desired dimensions. I’m using 268 x 145.

10. add your psd/colouring. I’m just using a very simple psd consisting of curves, brightness and contrast, levels, and a bit of colour balance and selective colouring.

11. go to file > export > save for web (legacy). make sure the looping option is set to forever and just play around with adapative/selective and pattern/diffusion, see what looks best for your gif.

IMPORTING SCREENCAPS

1. go to file > scripts > load files into stack.

2. Select either file or folder from the drop down menu and click browse. Locate your screencaps and select them all and hit ok.

3. this is what it’ll look like when all your layers are loaded in.

4. in your animation window click “create frame animation”. if you don’t have your animation window open go to window > animation window.

down the bottom in the animation window, in the top right corner will be an icon. click it and select “make frames from layers”.

5. click that same icon again and select “reverse frames”. 

6. click that icon again and select “select all frames”. now all your frames are selected which means whatever you do to one frame will apply to the others. click on the number below the frame thumbnail. (e.g. 0 sec) and select “other”. this is where you will change your frame delay which impacts the overall speed of your gif. I generally use 0.05-0.07 seconds but it depends on your gif and how many frames it has. just play around with different delays til you find something to your liking.

7.  there’s a small icon in the bottom left corner of the animation. click it and it will convert your frames to a timeline. after that select all your layers in your layers panel and right click. select “convert to smart object”.

8. now that it’s a smart object, go ahead and use a sharpen action on it. I’m using my own sharpen action that I’ve uploaded here.

9. crop and resize your image to your desired dimensions. I’m using 268 x 145.

10. add your psd/colouring. I’m just using a very simple psd consisting of curves, brightness and contrast, levels, and a bit of colour balance and selective colouring.

11. go to file > export > save for web (legacy). make sure the looping option is set to forever and just play around with adapative/selective and pattern/diffusion, see what looks best for your gif.

1. get your image and psd ready.

2. click on ‘Create Frame Animation’. if you don’t see this option, go to window > animation.

3. create a new layer and draw whatever you want on it.

4. create another frame and another layer to draw on.

5. repeat steps 2 & 3 for a third time. make sure to go through the frames to make sure that each layer is visible on it’s respective frame. e.g. only layer 1 visible on frame 1. only layer 2 visible on frame 2. only layer 3 visible on frame 3.

6. select the frames and adjust the delay to your preferred time. I chose 0.35.

1. when trying to make a colouring for a moodboard, consider what kind of theme it’s going to have. my example one above is a luna lovegood moodboard so I went with a soft colouring. I could have went with a yellow theme too.  

2. generally speaking, icon psds (particularly aesthetic icon psds) work wonders with moodboards. I used my icon psd for this one and it came out very well.

1. create your canvas, I usually use something like 1500 x 1500. 

go to filter > render > difference clouds

you will have to do it a few times to get something like this, ideally you want something that shows the veins.

2. go to image > adjustments > equalize. 

this is just gonna make our image pop a bit more.

3. go to image > adjustments > levels

drag the middle and right arrows to the left. something like the values below.

and your image should look like something the one below.

4. duplicate your layer.

select the top layer and go to filter > distort > twirl.

use a value around 50.

5.  still having the top layer selected, go to edit > transform > flip horizontal.

set the blending mode to screen and the opacity to between 60% and 70%.

6. select both layers and merge them together. 

right click layers > merge layers

7. go to filter > blur > gaussian blur and set the radius to between 0.2 and 0.5, it all depends on your preference. it just makes the veins softer.

and that’s it!.

however if you want the veins to be lighter, add a solid white layer set to screen and around 40% opacity.

and if you want the marble background to be a different colour, add a solid colour layer of your choice set to multiply and the opacity is up to you!

to use it go to layer > new adjustment layer > gradient map

double click on the gradient bar and it’ll open up the gradient editor menu and you can choose from presets that were previously installed or that you have already downloaded. if you don’t want to use a preset all you have to do is click on the bottom squares below the gradient bar and select the colours you want! you can also move the squares to change the gradient.

before

after (gradient map set to ‘normal’ and 100% opacity

further editing (gradient map set to ‘darker colour’ and 34% opacity 

1. grab a copy of the netflix logo. I used this one and made it white.

2. create a document sized 540 x 700.

3. add your image and your psd. I used this psd.

4. place your netflix logo wherever you like, I went with up top.

5. right above the netflix logo write ‘only on’ in Arial Bold or a similar font.

6. change your font to one that fits the feel of your series. I used Abril Fatface.

7. use the same font used with the netflix logo and type ‘a netflix original’ and place it where it looks best. I placed it at the bottom to balance out the design.

program used: photoshop cc 2017

1. find the picture you want to use (I’m using this one I found on pinterest), sharpen and crop til it’s 100 x 100 (or whatever size you want) until you get something like this.

2. colour it however you wish, I’m going for a very simple dull colouring.

vibrance

vibrance +53

saturation -27

curves

input - 82

output - 78

brightness/contrast

brightness - -3

contrast +16

vibrance

vibrance +69

saturation - -21

gradient map

#8d6d62 to #ffffff

set to pin light 100%

3. if you’re satisfied with how the background looks then skip this step but I prefer solid backgrounds. select the eye dropper tool and use it on the background of your icon.

4. hide your colouring and select the brush tool. make sure the hardness is at 100%.

5. create a new layer above your colouring. this is where we’ll be creating the new background.

6. on the new layer start brushing over the old background. continue til it’s all filled in.

7. turn the psd back on and take a look at your icon so far. if you like it as it is, then go ahead and save as a png! if not, we have a few more things to add.

8. create a gradient layer and use whatever colour you think suits best. change the angle of the gradient based on your personal preference.

9. the last thing I did was add a pattern texture. add a new pattern layer, set it to multiply and adjust the opacity as needed. I set it to 19%.

There's a lot to this tutorial, I've combined about five separate tutorials I used as a beginner into one massive one, so it's organised into chunks to make it easier to keep up. 

- - -

PART 1: MAKING SCREENCAPS.   Source I used to learn: here. Get KMPlayer (free dl): here.

1. Once you've downloaded KMPlayer, you want to open it up to the home screen; and then go to the top left corner of the window, where it says KMPLAYER, click, and 'open file' to then choose your video. 

2. Once your video has started up, go to the point you want to start the capping, and pause the video. 

3. Press ctrl + g (ctrl and g at the same time), to open up the screencap box which looks like this. These are my capping settings, and you want to make sure yours looks exactly the same in the places I've outlined. 

4. It's important to make a separate folder for these caps to go into, for later on in the giffing process. I have mine on my desktop under a folder I made called "Screencaps" - and then in numbered folders since the gif will probably be part of a set. By clicking on the yellow folder icon, you can choose the destination the caps will be saved. 

5. Hit OK, an then Start before playing the video. It will continue capping until you pause the video, or press Stop. It's easier to pause the video after the scene you wanted to make screencaps of has passed, since once it pauses - the cap taking stops. You should now have these screencaps set up in a folder. 

- - -

PART 2: SET UP GIF USING CAPS. Source I used to learn: here.  Photoshop CS5: here. 

1. On the top left of photoshop, click File and then Scripts. Now, for some people, the Load Files Into Stack doesn't work due to the copy of PS being *ahem* borrowed, so I go to Load Multiple DICOM Files which is fundamentally the same thing. 

2. Now, this window should open up, from which you're going to select the folder you saved the screencaps in. Hit OK. 

3. Your caps are going to load up into the PS window, make sure you don't have that many caps (for long scenes break it down) since it could take longer and even freeze your PS. 

4. Now that I've got the caps set up, I want to be able to see it as a gif right? We want the animation box at the bottom to go from one frame to all of them. Click the four lines icon at the top right corner of the long animation box, and then Make Frames From Layers.

5. Now you're gonna have a smoothly running gif, hallelujah! Except it's too fast and not sharpened and quite shite looking but hey, it's a start. Make sure all your frames come up in the animation box like this. 

6. You can play your gif to see how it would look, but I have a few frames I don't want to be included, so I select them all by clicking the frame i want to start with and holding shift and clicking the last frame of the sequence I don't want to be included. Then drag this now highlighted collection to the bin at the bottom of the animation box, and release your cursor to dispose of them. (Another explanation here if I've over-complicated it).

- - - 

PART 3: CROPPING THE GIF.

1. Once you know how many gifs are going to be in your set, you can start cropping the gif to fit that size. We always crop before we sharpen. There's a crop button on the left of PS, and at the top of the screen below File, etc, we can input our Width and Height values. 

2. Make sure the numbers you put in end with px. I've given my rough gif sizes here.

3. Once you've inputted the numbers you want, and have clicked the crop button, drag it across your gif image until you get the scene you want. Hit the tick that will show up, which I have highlighted below. 

- - - 

PART 4: CHANGING TIMING. Source I used for using actions (tells you how to save actions): here. I uploaded the action I made for this (does 62 frames): here. 

1. The gif is going to be way too fast if we leave it like this. The timing of my frames is 0.06 seconds, and to achieve this, we use an Action, which you can see is next to the image by the right above the text box. To get that opened up, go to Window - Actions so a tick appears next to it.

2. Click your first frame, and under the folder name 0.06, 'Action 1'. Then click the little play button I've highlighted, to make it work.

3. Once all your frames have been altered to last 0.06 seconds, we're going to sharpen the gif. 

- - - 

PART 5: SHARPENING.  Action I use to sharpen: here.  How to use this action in an alternate explanation: here. 

1. Trust me, you don't want to skip this part. Sharpening is what makes the gif so clear and HQ and a little grainy. The better the quality of the gif, the better the sharpening. The teen wolf episode I'm using has been downloaded in 1080p. 

2. First, we have to make frames from these animation frames. To do that we're gonna click the first frame again (important!) and then click the four lines icon again, but this time we're gonna hit Flatten Frames Into Layers.

3. Go to the sharpening action you should have opened up (explained how to in the source above) and make sure you have the first animation frame and Frame 1 by the right highlighted, and then start the action - which is going to sharpen every frame you have. 

4. This action sharpens every single frame with these settings:

5. When that's done, you will notice the impact it has (more so when you've coloured it, but still). Here's the before + after look. 

- - - 

PART 6: COLOURING THE GIF.  My detailed colouring tutorial: here.  PSD I made for this scene uploaded: here. 

1. Now we're talking, right? Okay, so this is the area we'll be working around, I've highlighted the parts we're going to use. 

2. Curves: Always start with curves. It brightens up the whole image. 

3. Brightness/Contrast: This brightens it even more, and adds a contrast to the colours you're gonna extract. I tend to like bright gifs a lot, so I use a lot of this. 

4. Vibrance: Now that Tumblr doesn’t have the “error uploading image” problem (if your gif is too bright/colourful), we can go crazy with this right? No sir; it’s really important to be nice and generous, but not high-on-vibrance generous with this, we want our gif to look editted, but keep it’s natural colours. This scene has a lot of colours we can play with, so I use the Saturation part slightly too. I've added two vibrance layers with the same settings. 

5. Levels: To add depth, I'm adding levels, which bring out the blacks in the gif and make it just look better overall. (Not right now, it looks shit rn).

6. Colour Balance: One of my babies, tbh. It gives you the chance to alter the colours in the whole image, and to get a more natural look, we want to move towards the Cyan and the Blue. I've added three colour balances, which I can't quite expand on here, but you can see the values on the uploaded psd. After 3 CBs: 

7. More Brightness/Contrast: To make it even brighter, and just more attractive, but don't go crazy with it since it could make her face very pale. I've added two more, and by decreasing the contrast we can make the effect of the brightness a little more subtle. 

8. Levels + Selective Colour: Yeesh, it's a little bright, eh? Let's add some more levels. Then, we start off Selective Colour to add depth by increasing the obviousness of the blacks in the gif. 

9. Selective Colour: I'm going to use this to bring out the colours I want. I want to brighten the green, the cyan of her shirt, the blue is too dark of her jeans, and the purple could be brighter in a shade of pink. I'm also going to brighten her hair tone a little. To do this, play with the arrows under each colour. Here are my settings:

10. We have actually finished the colouring portion now! There's awesome colouring tutorials everywhere to get you practising, otherwise check out this psd and try and get the hang of the layers (it only takes time). 

- - - 

PART 7: ADDING TEXT AT CERTAIN POINT. My text tutorial: here. 

1. Let's make the text first, by clicking the T on the far left side, and making a box on the gif, where we're gonna type in our subtitle and hit the tick. 

2. We're going to add drop shadow and stroke, to make the text stand out. My settings are:

3. Now, we've got our text all set up. But we want it to only show up on some frames, since she doesn't say the words until later on in the gif??

4. She starts saying it around frame 34, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to make all the frames before that one not have the text visible on it. Select all the frames in the animation box before frame 34, and then click the eye in the box next to the text layer to stop making it visible on those layers. Simple. 

5. Now, I want a gradual appearance of the text, rather than it suddenly appearing like whoa whiplash. On frame 35, we're going to make the opacity of the text 25%, then on frame 36, it'll be 50%, then frame 37 - 75% and from 38th frame, it'll be 100% opacity. 

JESUS CHRIST we are actually done. Quite a monster of a tutorial, but I hope you guys got the gist at least. Congrats for reaching the end.