#coloring tutorials

so first thing’s first, we need to get our gif loaded into photopea for us to start with. here’s a screenshot of my gif after i loaded in all the frames and cropped it to the size i wanted (540x400):

from here, we can start coloring! for those of you who haven’t read my coloring tutorial from a couple years ago, my method is more or less very similar to how it was back then. i still do the layer > adjustment layer > brightening/contrast step (though for this gif, i changed the opacity of the layer to 30%) and the layer > adjustment layer > levels, which i have set to these numbers in the pop up:

and doing all of that leaves us with our gif looking like this:

(i know the difference is very minimal but this tutorial is an entire process, give it a minute lol)

but now we get to the fun part: getting rid of that damn green filter.

in my original coloring tutorial, i used a channel mixer layer because i was following a method similar to this tutorial. while that tutorial is great for yellow-tinted scenes (i still use that method to this day), over the years, i realized that it wasn’t as great for green-tinted gifs. this is how i started to play around with another adjustment layer known as color balance.

color balance does exactly what it sounds like it does: it balances the colors of your gif. since we’re trying to balance out all the green that’s happening in this gif, it makes sense to use this adjustment layer. go to layer > adjustment layer > color balance (visual below):

and you’ll get a pop up similar to the channel mixer adjustment layer, but just a bit different. this part of the tutorial requires for you to play around with this adjustment layer—the settings that you are going to use for any gif you make are gonna be different no matter what you’re giffing, so play around with the different settings to see how they mess with the colors of your gif until you get something that neutralizes the green for the gif you’re working with. for my gif here, these are the settings i used for the shadows, midtones, and highlights:

and in doing so, now my gif looks like this (with a before/after):

we’re only three adjustment layers in and it’s already MUCH better than what we had. color balance tends to do most of the work for us in getting the green filter out, so now we can do the rest of our coloring process (whatever that looks like for you) to finish the gif. here is the fully colored + sharpened gif:

and that’s it! a simple tutorial, but it’s immensely useful when giffing with weird green-toned scenes.

a couple things before i stop this tutorial: in some cases, sometimes you’ll need to combine a color balance layer with a channel mixer layer, but (at least in my gif experience) that’s few and far between. color balance is more or less the only layer i really need to use when trying to get rid of green tones, but sometimes scenes need a little extra touches with the channel mixer layer to help neutralize the gif a bit more so it’s easier to color later on in your coloring process. but, again, those are few and far between.

I'll be using the gif in the header of this post, and this is how it looks with no filter/coloring (only sharpening):

I used the coloring for this on all the gifs I have made of season two of the The Empress, with some small adjustments when needed.

CURVES

I like to start of my coloring base with a few curves layers and build from there. One for light colors, one for mid/greys (??) and one for dark/shadows. I use the pipette tool to select what colors to balance in each layer.

Light:

Mid/grey:

Dark/shadows:

NOTE: There is no "one size fits all" kind of thing with curves. You have to adjust it a little to every single show or movie, or sometimes every single gif you make to make it look as good as possible. And the way to do that is to activate the pipette in the curves layer and click on different areas on your gif until you get the contrast/balance you like.

You can also do it all (light/mid/dark) in one layer, but i prefer to do them seperately. In case i fuck up.

Now our gif looks like this:

2. LEVELS

We could of course stop there.... but we won't. We need some finishing touches. The devil's in the details, or whatever they say.

Therefore, on to levels!

These were the settings I used. They can of course be adjusted if they're to heavy or light or whatever, depending on the gif at hand.

Now it looks like this:

Not the biggest difference, but trust the process, mkay?

3. COLOR BALANCE

Settings:

Gif:

4. PHOTO FILTER

Settings:

Gif:

5. GLOW

Setting:

Gif:

And now for the final step.

6. BLACK-WHITE

Settings:

NOTE: The opcity of this layer is set to 36%.

Gif:

Et voilà, as they say. I hope this was helpful 🥰

I am going to try to make this short and sweet, but sometimes changing the color of gifs can be v difficult it just depends on the gif and how much work you are willing to do.

Step One: make your gif, I am using one with a steady background that the color can easily be changed on

Step Two: Selective color your layer first. The main background color in this is magenta so I open the magenta selective color and I tweak it so it is purple.

Step Three: Selective color, new layer, neutrals and blacks. So I take a new selective color layer and fix the skin a blacks a bit with neutrals and blacks.

Basically what I have done is completely separated the skin from the color magenta so that when I tweak magenta it only tweaks the background.

Step Four: Curves layer. A curves layer basically just adds light and shadow to the picture.

Step Five: After the curves layer I always do a color balance layer. What this does is help add color back into the skin and the image after brightening it. A lot of the time it also makes things more clear. I usually like to make the shadows and midtones warmer and then make the highlights blue and cyan to help make up for computer screens and how they translate gifs.

Step Six: Another selective color layer for magentas. This is where we make the magenta more purple than pink. As long as you understand how colors work this is pretty simple. Adding more cyan to magenta gets you purple, tweaking this to whatever shade of purple you want is the more complex part.

Step Seven: Levels and another selective color layer. Just because I really like for my gifs to be brighter and I also like for the colors to really stand out, I’ll start alternating a lot between using selective colors and levels to make sure everything stands out.

Step Eight: Vibrance layer. I always do a vibrance layer toward the last part of this to make sure the colors stand out better and to make sure the skin still has color and isnt washed out.

Last Step: Lastly, I ALWAYS add an exposure layer last. The reason for this is because of how gifs save and how it translate onto Tumblr. The settings I use are the same ones I always use no matter what.

Part one: Cropping and Sharpening

Step One: Find the screencap(s) you want to edit

I recommend using these sites...

screencapped.net 

homeofthenutty.com 

kissthemgoodbye.net 

Or you can just google "[name of show] screencaps gallery"

I’m using this screencap:

Step Two: Cropping If you're doing one screencap per row you'll want the width to be 540px, and if you have more two screencaps in a row in your post you'll want the width to be 268px. If you want to use the old Tumblr dimensions, it's 500px and 245px. The height can be whatever you want. If it’s a lot of screencaps in the set and in rows of two, I usually do something like 150px by 268px, and if it’s one in each row I usually do 300px by 540px. But that’s just me!

Step Three: Sharpening Go to the filter tab at the top, and under sharpening you'll see "smart sharpen" which you should click. The settings I use are: Amount: 123 Radius: 1.0 Reduce noise: 10

Part Two: Coloring

Step Four: Adjustment Layers 

Next, you'll add adjustment layers. I use these settings, in order of bottom to top:

Curves: Input: 74 Output: 126  

Brightness/Contrast: Brightness: 15 Contrast: 20

Exposure: Exposure: 0.00 Offset: -0.0250 Gamma correction: 1.00

Levels: 10 1.00 245

Selective Color: Reds cyan: -25 magenta: 0 yellow: +15 black: 0

Yellows cyan: -25 magenta: 0 yellow: +15 black: 0

Color balance: Shadows Cyan/Red: +15 Magenta/Green: -5 Yellow/Blue: -5  

Midtones Cyan/Red: -15 Magenta/Green: 0 Yellow/Blue: 0  

Highlights Cyan/Red: -15 Magenta/Green: 0 Yellow/Blue: +5

Hue/Saturation: Hue: 0 Saturation: +25 Lightness: 0

Part Three: Coloring With Brush Tool

Step Five: Color Hair

This step shows how to make hair more colorful.

Make a new layer 

Set that layer to "soft light" 

Select the brush tool 

Choose a color you want to use. I'm using #ffc322 

Color over the hair with the brush

Step Six: Color Eyes

Make a new layer 

Set that layer to "soft light" 

Choose a color you want to use. I'm using #b66c0e 

Color over the pupils with the brush.

Step Seven: Color Lips

Make a new layer 

Set that layer to "soft light" 

Choose a color you want to use. I'm using #ff577b 

Color over the lips with the paint brush.

Part Four: Saving

Step Eight: Save As Now all you have to do is go to File > save as > and save it wherever you want! 😃 I like to save images as PNGs because it preserves the quality more than a JPEG does.

Here is the PSD for the coloring

We’ll use this gif I did of Prodigal Son because that show is a nightmare to color and will provide a good example. I’m going to go from this:

To this:

So I’m starting after you have all your layers and sharpness and stuff done and now I want to brighten up and color the gif. 

First I start with the curves layer. I establish the darkest part of the image using the little eye drop/color selection too and then do the same thing for the lightest part. Zooming in on your image will help you locate the right color/pixels to select. This will help brighten up and smooth out the darker parts.

(click to make bigger)

After that I use the brightness layer. I don’t always need this layer for brightness but I do add it for the contrast. I always add contrast. So you can use this layer to add a little more brightness if necessary and then some contrast to smooth things out.

(click to make bigger)

Then I add a lot of vibrance. Make those colors pop.

(click to make bigger)

Sometimes that's all it needs. I really like to keep as close to the original colors as much as possible. I’m really just trying to make things brighter and clearer. 

Sometimes the brightening will make the colors gross. This is when I use the selective color and photo filter layers. Just play with the various colors and slides until you get something I like. In this case I’m gonna tone down that blue a bit.

I added the photo filter first to make it a little warmer. Choose your filter and slide the tile down until you hit something you like.

(click to make bigger)

A layer of color selection tweaks. In this case I only messed with the green and toned it down cause I hated how much the green was standing out. Slid the dials back and forth until you find something you like.

(click to make bigger)

And in this case I added a layer of color balance as well but I don’t use this often. It’s very helpful when the other filters aren’t hitting the parts that are bothering you. In this case that damn green.

(click to make bigger)