hello! i just wanted to ask how you get your gifs so freaking HD and clear and vibrant! i just started making gifs like a week ago and nothing i do makes my gifs sharp like yours :( any help is appreciated, thank you!
First of all, thank you so much! ;___; I really appreciate it!
First off, I should probably should start off with some general points:
Learning how to photoshop and make GIFs generally takes a lot of practice. Photoshop itself is a program with endless functions (or so it seems to me), meaning mastering takes time, but thatâs okay! Donât ever let that discourage you! Iâve seen people that have only used Photoshop for a short period of time, and yet their GIFs look really good.
There will be hundreds upon hundreds of tutorials out there. For many, that can be really helpful, but as I donât have the patience to follow a tutorial, I prefer figuring it out on my own, meaning there are plenty of ways of doing it.
Sometimes the source material youâre working with is shit and that sucks.
Photoshop can be a major pain in the ass at times.
Okay, so now that Iâve got that out of my system, letâs general sharpening:
Use HD videos: The general consensus is that the better your source material is, the better will the GIFs end up looking. That is why I always try to use HD videos when making GIFs; 720p is good, but 1080p is even better.Â
Donât shy away from 480p (or 360p) videos if there is no other alternative: However, that is not to say 480p videos will automatically end up looking bad. Theyâre just going to require a bit more work, and if done right, the GIFs, can end up looking almost as good as a 1080p GIF.Â
Consider the quality of your video when deciding the size of your GIF: I find that videos that are 480p or lower donât look unless they are 268px in width (or lower). I only use 1080p (and 720p videos when I donât have a choice) when making GIFs that are 540px in width.
Sharpening:
When youâve picked a HD video and have your source material, the best way to get your GIFs to look sharp and HD is to use a good sharpening technique. I have no idea how many different sharpenings there are out there, but probably hundreds, meaning you may want to try out different things and see what you like the most. (Youâll find a lot of stuff if you search for âsharpening actionsâ). That said, I tend to stick with the same sharpening action pretty much every single time.Â
So this is how my GIF looks without the sharpening:
While this is how it looks when sharpened:Â
However, I do not have to original link to the sharpening action as Iâve had it on my computer for many, many years, but you can download it here:Â DOWNLOADÂ (Unfortunately I intend to remove the download link in a short while.)
That said, though you may be happy with the opacity of the of the top layer at 52%, I tend to edit it depending of the GIF, going from 20% to 52%. Again, this is something youâll just have to test out, but I find that going to 42% tends to work well for me, meaning it looks like this:
A good tip tough: If the video you use is 1080p, 52% opacity work well, but if youâre working with a 360p or 480p video, something between 25% and 40% opacity looks better. Â
Unfortunately I donât have the opportunity right now write a colouring tutorial, but I promise Iâll post one as soon as I possibly can, hopefully within a couple of days. Until then, I hope this helps! :)
