#gif caption tutorial

There will be A LOT of words so if you're only interested in seeing it in practice you should skip to where the screenshots are  (≧∇≦)/

Some tips for the basic giffing:

photoset sizes are 500px (single gif), 245px (2 columns) and 160 (3 columns)

when you extract frames from the video, limiting to 2 frames is the best for 245px gifs, anything more than that will make it choppy and jerky

at least 28-30 frames will be good for 245px gifs. If less than that will make the gif look 'jumpy' too. Ofc if you can afford to include more than 30 frames that would be lovely!

My usual timing is 1.0s! (when I see gifs that go too fast I get a headache) but yea it's personal preference so this is up to you!

If you get an error uploading message, it is not about the size. It is most probably the coloring. You will have to desaturate your gifs, or decrease yellow/magenta/cyan.

Gif coloring:

Coloring is the most fun part of giffing! At least to me. I think it's nice to see that different editors have their own coloring styles! If you have a particular coloring style you like, you should go to yeahps and other coloring blogs and search for it. Download the psd and STOP- don't just slap it over your gif!- Slapping a psd over a gif will not work 70% of the time...unless you are lucky.

You should open it up and see how the editor tweaked the settings. E.g. if you like orangey hues you should see how the editor made it more orangey. Unclick and reclick the little eyes next to the adjustment layers and see which of them made a drastic effect and learn from those! 

Let's startttttt!!!!

First you need to know how to use adjustment layers

see that black/white tab? those are adjustment layers and they are great because if you place them on top of all your layers, the effect will apply to all your frames. To redo/undo you just have to click or unclick the eye, so you don't have to worry about screwing up.

For brightness/darkness

You can use curves, levels, and brightness/contrast. I prefer using curves and levels. There is quite a big difference between the three, let's see:

Do you find the colors a little washed out after brightening using brightness/contrast? Curves are better because if you 'pull' the line up it lightens, but if you depress the line, it will darken and give contrast. The S line is a basic whenever I use curves. Levels are simple to use too, drag to the left to lighten, drag to the right to darken. The three arrowheads for the lightest > darkest parts respectively. Btw, these are just for reference, it will not work for every scene so you don't have to stick to the same settings.

I personally think curves looked the best! Levels didn't work so well here, but it is actually very useful, especially for darkening scenes that are overly bright! Appropriate amounts of brightness/darkness help to remove noise and improve quality!

  So after curves... Now colorssss:

You can use selective color, color balance, vibrance, photo filters, gradient maps, color fills. Personally I use the first three a lot, and the last three are a little complex to explain, so I'll just talk about the first three more.

Selective color: 

Adjust the colors one by one, i.e. red first, then followed by the rest, making one separate adjustment layer for each! 

red: I usually drag cyan to the left to make the red more vibrant and pop out 

e.g.:

yellow: I usually decrease yellow/black (drag left) bc I wanna give oppars fair skin and decrease cyan to make it more orangey

e.g.:

black: I increase black>black a little. More black in the gif sometimes increases quality (less noise) and decreases file size. 

For the other colors, e.g. since minho has a cyan jacket I'll increase cyan>cyan and cyan>black to make it more vibrant. Don't just use vibrance/saturation bc it acts on the whole picture and you might make oppars' faces really red/orange. Let me show you what I mean. 

Looking at just Minho's jacket alone, even at max level, vibrance isn't as effective as selective coloring! And in return his face looked...'cooked'. Not really attractive. 

Now that the cyan is fixed, you can go ahead and make Key look better (like he did in the first picture with vibrance). I do this by adjusting selective yellow and green. 

  Color balance and vibrance/hue&saturation are easy to use so I'll skip these XD

Photo filters

It's like how you use filters on instagram haha. But just know that other than setting the mode as "normal" you can change the setting to lighten/darken/soft light, etc, and also decrease the opacity or fill to make it suit your gif.

Gradient map

I use the third one (black/white) most often. You can use this to make your gif black and white. A lot of times I use this and set it to soft light to reduce unnecessary colors and increase color contrast (result:more whites and blacks). It is also good if you like 'vintage' coloring.

  Color fills:

I usually use color fills on screen mode (to reduce harshness and noise) or divide mode (to remove a certain color I don't want). I experimented with these by myself so idk how to explain them TAT but maybe if you look it up you can learn more about it. 

  After I'm done with coloring, I sharpen it with smart filter> smart sharpen, 500%, 0.3px (you can find sharpen actions/tutorials on sharpening frames at one go on ps sites such as yeahps!)

SAVE IT & DONE! :D

Last but not least, if you wanna add captions:

1. Make a text layer on top of your psd. NOT below because the colors will be affected, and also it will look horrid. 

2. Type in whatever you want, change the font the size, blah blah. 

3. Now the part where i guess most of you will be interested in: "how to get the outline on the text?" Honestly if you google the right keywords you will get lots of tutorials on it but well, I didn't when I was learning so I took a long time to figure out how to do it, but the answer is layer styles > STROKE. 

See the fx tab? Click on that, use stroke, either 1 or 2px usually, and colors are up to you! Then now you should get this

To undo the effect just unclick the eye! You can also add drop shadow if you want! 

  Finished gif: 

TADA!!!!!! You can copy and duplicate this layer on all of your gifs if you are making a gifset so that the alignment of the textbox and font size are consistent. Make another text layer for a watermark if you want. 

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Omo this took way too long to make TAT TAT TAT but anws I hope this post will be helpful in some way to everyone who just started out making gifs! If it did help you, a like or reblog will be appreciated ;u; 

Just remember that experimenting by yourself is the most important and effective way to achieve your ideal coloring! Have fun!!!