#finesources

okay so when it comes to adding text to a gif it varies slightly whether you’re using frames or the timeline. i heavily recommend using the timeline function over frames just in general bc it allows for a lot more flexibility, ease, and precision with each effect that you add.

how to convert your gif from frames to timeline

when you add caption text to a gif, you wanna make sure you’ve resized the gif first. here’s a quick guide to gif dimensions. additionally, always make sure that your text layer is above all of your editing/coloring layers.

after resizing and editing, go ahead and click the lil text icon in the tools panel on the left.

your cursor will change shape, and and then you can draw a text box on your gif. it will fill with placeholder text at first:

press ctrl+a to select all the text in the box and backspace to delete it. type in your caption text:

select all the text again and press the center icon (1) at the top of the screen to center it within the box. once you’ve done that, click the check mark (2) to tell photoshop you’re done editing the text:

now that your text is centered within the box, it’s time to center it horizontally on the gif. switch to the move tool:

and make sure your text layer is selected in the layers panel:

press ctrl+a. your entire gif should have a dashed line around it. press the center icon at the top:

(pro tip: this will work for any type of layer you want to center, not just text.)

from there, use the arrow keys to scoot your text up or down to whatever distance from the bottom you prefer:

now, let’s get into specifics like fonts, sizes, and shadows that will help make your text more clear and readable.

click the text tool icon again, click your text box, and press ctrl+a to select all your text. these are my preferred caption text settings:

i use arial rounded MT bold font, 17pt for full size (540px width) gifs and 14pt for smaller gifs. i use the “faux italic” setting to add a slight slant. 

next, let’s talk about blending. drop shadows and strokes are essential for helping your caption text show up clearly on any gif. right click on your text layer in the layers panel and click “blending options...” OR just double click your text layer.

these are my preferred blending settings for caption text:

click “ok” in the top right of the panel to save the settings onto your text layer.

all right! you’re almost there! the last thing to do (if you’re editing in timeline) is to make sure that the length of your text layer matches the length of your gif layer.

if your timeline looks like this:

or this:

then you’ll need to adjust the length of the text layer. to do this, click and hold the right end of the purple bar representing the text, and drag it horizontally until it matches the length of your gif layer.

and you’re done! the finished product:

From this:

To this:

I want to start off by saying that there are several ways to do this, everyone has their style. This is just the way I gif and colour to fit my “minimalist” aesthetic. There are several tutorials on how to colour BIPOC, this is simply the way that I do it and this is the way I coloured my Chidi Anagonye gifset.

To begin, I chose a scene with a solid background around the the character I’m giffing. For this example I have chosen this scene from season 1 episode 2.

Start the way you usually do, I usually start off my changing the speed of the gif, crop it, and sharpen it. Once that is done that Ie start to colour the gif.

I have a base .psd that I always start off with, and edit from there. In my base I have used colour balance, curves, selective colour, hue/saturation and brightness/contrast to make it lighter. I added these steps a few times to achieve my starting point. With the base .psd it looks like this.

As you can see, the colour of Chidi’s skin is washed out and a bit ashy. Now I’m going to go in and add selective colour under/before the steps we’ve taken. I add the selective colour here, under my base .psd

Here, I darken the red and the yellow, I play around a bit so it won’t look grainy and will be true to the colour of Chidi’s skin. Once I’ve done it a few times, I darken the last selective colour with some black so that his hair is the right colour. Now the steps look like this (this differs depending on the scene where you might need to add more selective colour or less)

Now that we have taken these steps, the gif looks something like this.

Now you can keep it like this. But I want the background to be lighter, almost white, and for only Chidi to be visible in the gif. So in order to do this I once again add selective colour, but this time over/after my base .psd. Like this:

Here I start by making the white selective colour brighter, I usually do it a little every time so that it won’t get too grainy or change Chidi’s appearance. You can do this as many times as you want to reach the brightness of white that you want. Once I’ve added the white selective colour a few times, I check to see if the colour of Chidi’s skin isn’t washed out, if it is just go back to the selective colour under/before the base .psd in this image and darken the red and yellow more. Now the adjustments look something like this

I know it might look a bit much selective colour, but this is just the way that I do it. Now the gif will look something like this.

The last step (for me) is to remove the door and Eleanor from the gif and make the entire background solid. To do that I add a new layer, I click on this icon at the bottom of the adjustments bar

Now that I have a new layer over/after all my other layers here

Now that the new layer is added, I click the eyedropper tool in the sidebar (this icon)

With the eyedropper I click on the solid background around Chidi so that when I go in to colour the gif, the colours will match so that the background looks like one colour. Then I go in with the brush tool (this icon)

And now I start to colour all the areas that I want to cover in order to make the gif have a solid background. Just make sure you don’t brush the colour over Chidi. Once I’ve coloured all the parts of the gifs that I want, I double check so that the colour of Chidi’s skin is accurate and the gif should look something like this.

Voilà! We’re done!