#gif making tutorial

what you will need:

y2meta: youtube download site.

mkvdrama: for dramas.

obs studio: if you need to screenrecord.

potplayer: video player.

gif making action by me: it will help you save a lot of time.

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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟭.𝟬: configuration stuff (the boring step)

after downloading potplayer, you will open your video of choice and hold ctrl+g, it will open something like this.

make sure the format is jpeg (you can choose png too, but it will take more time to capture the frames)

for the frames, you can choose how many frames you want to capture. i let it capture until i manually stop, so it's 99.999. but you can put 60, 80, etc.

for the image size, let it be the original size.

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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟭.𝟭: the capture folder.

for this next step, you click the configure folder option:

create a new folder and select it. the images you capture will apear on that folder.

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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟭.𝟮: photoshop !

after dowloading my gif making action, open your photoshop and open the action. it will look like this:

you can download any free sharpening action and put it on the step two option!

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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟮.𝟬: capturing the frames!

after doing all of that, let's get to work! first, open your video of choice. mine is an interview of jennie, as you can see. after that, select the part of the video you want to capture and hold ctrl+g. once you're ready to capture the frames, click start.

i clicked start, let the video play and clicked stop when i wanted to stop. usually i do this basing on whos on the screen: for this example, i click start when jennie is talking and stopping once the interviewer appear.

after that, open you capture folder, it will look like this:

as you can see, it starts with the interviewer and ends with the interviewer so i don't miss any frames! jennie's frames are inside the red rectangle!

now you just delete the interviewer frames, select all of jennie's frames and move to another folder inside our capture folder, like this:

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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟯.𝟬: photoshop timeeeee.

open your photoshop and click the step one of my action,

this will pop on your screen:

now you will open your capture folder, mine looks like this:

now you click OK and let photoshop do his work. once it's done, this is what you're going to work with:

now, for the fun part! adjust your gif to your liking and press play to check if everything's ok. make sure you click that chain thingy up there so your image doesn't get weird angles.

this is how my gif is looking like until now:

pretty, right? NO! lets sharpen and edit!!!!!!!

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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟰.𝟬: THE OTHER FUN PART!!! COLORING!!!

first, choose your gif action of liking and apply it to the gif. i'll be using mine! this is what it looks like with sharpening only:

it's getting better... BUT LET'S COLOR IT!

usually i do curves > vibrancy > color balance if needed. it looks like this:

i normally like more natural and vibrant colors to my gifs, so this is perfect for me! all done :]

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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟱.𝟬: saving for web.

after that sharpening and editing, follow these steps:

set your configs like mine (if you want to, this is up to you!) and set the loop to always. after that, just save to your gif folder and its done!

this is how my gif looks:

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤthat's it! a tutorial that nobody asked but i wanted to make! feel free to ask me any questions you have!

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤmeus brs, as fotos estão todas em português e o google tradutor pode ajudar vocês, mas se mesmo assim vocês tiverem alguma dúvida, me chamem!

1. RENAME CAPS:

First things first. Rename all of your caps that you will be using for a gif to have the prefix _a_ on your computer. Select all and right-click on the FIRST file and select Rename (windows) and type _a_. Windows will add the numbers.

For most gifs, try not to have more than 60 frames as it will make the gif too large to upload to Tumblr. I usually aim for 45-50 frames max for most of my gifs.

2. IMPORT FRAME #1:

Drag and Drop _a_ (1).png into Photopea. Rename the layer from Background to _a_ (1)

3. IMPORT IMAGES:

Select all the rest of your images from the folder on your computer, and drag and drop ON TOP OF the image (not the layers section). Make sure the file you grab to drag/drop is the next one in the sequence (so _a_ (2).png in this case. Otherwise they will be out of order. If you do it right, you will see the layers section on the right get populated with your caps in reverse order, with 1 at the bottom and the last one at the top.

4. RASTERIZE:

Next, select all of the layers (on the right, by holding CTRL and clicking on each layer), go to Layer > Rasterize. They are currently Smart Layers, and if you keep them this way the sharpening will not apply (for some reason, I have no idea why that is)

5. CROP:

Next, crop your gif. This tool is on the left menu. You do not have to have all the layers selected for this, it will crop all layers together. Move the blue lines at the edges until the frame is cropped how you like. Be mindful of the character moving in other frames; you may want to check your other layers to make sure nothing important gets cropped off in another frame. Once the blue lines are where you want them, click the checkmark at the top right to finish the crop.

6. RESIZE:

Resize your gif so that it is 540 pixels wide. Go to Image > Image Size in the top menu. Make sure you choose "Bicubic Sharper" as the resample mode. Once this is done, you will see your image is tiny, so go to the Zoom tool (on the left menu, the magnifying glass near the bottom) and select Fit the Area at the top of the screen so you can see what you are doing.

7. SHARPEN:

Next is sharpen. Select all your layers again (on the right), then go to the top menu: Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. The default settings here are for 150%, and that is good for most things.

8. ADJUSTMENTS

This is the tricky part. You now need to adjust the brightness, contrast, exposure, color balance, and saturation. This will vary from gif to gif how much to adjust these values. I will show how I adjusted this one and you can apply that to whatever gif you are making.

For starters, since this show is SO DARK, you will need to brighten it. There are many ways to do this, but I found the method that works best for me is adjusting the Levels.

First off, in order to make adjustments, make sure you scroll all the way to the top of your Layers panel and make sure only the TOP LAYER is selected. Otherwise the adjustments will only be applied to whatever is BELOW the selected layer. You want all of them.

8a. ADJUST LEVELS

Next, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer to pull up all your adjustments. For this first example we will use Levels, which is the second from the top.

You will see a histogram like this one:

This is a lot of information about the image, but pay attention to where the curve starts and stops. On the left, you see a "0". That is your dark point. This image is slightly washed out so I need to move that adjustment to the right so that the little square is just below where the curve starts. The third number is "255" and this is your bright point. The images are very dark so most of the graph is shifted to the left (dark) so in order to brighten, move the third square (the white one) so that the second square (grey one) is just at the edge of where the curve drops off on the right.

You can now see the numbers changed. Moving the first dark square will enhance your contrast, and moving the THIRD square will enhance your brightness. It is usually not necessary to move the second square, but you can experiment with this by moving things around and seeing how it affects your image. After this, it may be necessary to also increase the Exposure and Brightness if it is still not bright enough, but most of that can be done here.

8b. ADJUST COLOR BALANCE

Again go to your Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance to get this tool. This is a neat one with A LOT of variables, so play around with it to get the colors to look how you want. A lot of the raw video tends to have a bluish or greenish cast to it, so you just move the sliders to get rid of the cast and make the colors look how they are SUPPOSED to.

In this case there is a very slight greenish cast to the pictures so I will adjust that slider to compensate. The Range (at the top) you can select Shadows, Midtones, or Highlights, depending on where the color cast is located. Usually I stick to Shadows but sometimes will use Midtones if the color cast is really bad. Make sure Preserve Luminosity is checked.

8c: ADJUST SATURATION

Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation. This will brighten up your colors. This tool is VERY COOL in that you can select color families to selectively increase or decrease the saturation of. Under Range you can choose Master, which is all colors, or choose only Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue or Magenta. The slider at the very bottom (when a single color is selected) allows you to set the range of colors to. I chose Master and increased the saturation of all colors, but be careful as this can make skintones look VERY orange. So select other colors in the Range to adjust single colors only.

With this tool you can also change the HUE (which is changing the overall colors to a different color, like shifting all the reds to orange) and Lightness (which may or may not be necessary if you did the Levels correctly)

If you need to go back and change something in your adjustment layers, you can do so by clicking on the white box in the Layers section next to whatever you need to adjust.

There are many other Adjustment Layers you can play with, so have fun and experiment!

9. ADD YOUR WATERMARK AND TEXT

Next, you can add a watermark if you have a premade file, by dragging and dropping it on the image. Then move it around to where you want it, resize it if needed, and change the opacity if it is too bright. Make sure this layer is the TOP layer.

To add text (for subtitles or effects) simply click on the Text icon in the left menu (the T) and click anywhere on the image and start typing. You can change the font, color, size, and style in the menu on the top. Move the text around by using the Select tool (arrow on the left) Again make sure this is the TOP LAYER so that it will be present over the entire gif.

10: EXPORT YOUR GIF

File > Export as > GIF

A pop up dialog will appear and you can change some settings here if you want. I usually don't. Pay close attention to the filesize (at the bottom) and make sure it is under 10mb. Keep the quality at 100%. And most importantly MAKE SURE DITHER is checked! This will prevent compression artifacts from ruining your gif.

Save the file to your computer and VIOLA! Gif!

First, you need to get your screencaps. I would suggest using a high quality recording of whatever movie/TV show/video you want to make gifs of. My recording of Fellowship is in 1080p, and the quality looks incredible!

I use PotPlayer to get my screencaps. To do this, open the video file in the program and find the moment you want to gif. It's probably best to go back to just before that particular moment, and then press Ctrl + G. This will bring up the consecutive image capturer window. Below are the settings I use to get my screencaps:

Then, press start and wait for your moment to be captured! Once you've got everything you need, press stop and navigate to the folder that you indicated under storage. Here you will find all of your screencaps! You probably ended up with way more than you need (I know I certainly did 😅). Now, delete all of the screencaps that you don't want in your gif.

For the actual gif making, I use a cracked version of Photoshop. I don't exactly remember where I found it unfortunately, but I'm sure that there's people out there who might have some links handy if you look around! Once you've got PS open, navigate to File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack... and click on it! That will open the Load Layers window.

Now, change Use to Folder. Then, click browse and navigate to the folder that contains your screencaps. Click select folder, and after a few moments of loading your window should look more like this.

Then, press OK, and wait for your layers to load. Depending on how many caps you have, it could take longer. Once it's finished loading, you need to decide on your gif dimensions! For this, I decided on 268px x 225px. Once you've chosen your size, use the crop tool to get your gif to that size. Now, you should have a smaller image, like this:

The next step I do is to use this Photoshop action by @maziekeen. They have a little tutorial on how to use this action there, so I'll just say that once you've loaded it into your program, use part 1 / load into stack. Press the play button, and then the OK button on the two windows that pop up. Now, your gif will be nice and sharpened, and you'll be able to see it move for the first time! Here's what mine currently looks like, without any other edits:

Now, it's time to start on colouring. Every gif (or scene, sometimes you can reuse the same colouring if you're giffing an entire scene) is different, so it will have different needs. However, I tend to always use the same layers in the same order for all of my gifs — it's just the settings that change. I think the colouring of this particular scene is lovely, so I don't want to change it drastically, I just want to enhance it.

First, I create a Curves layer. At this point, I also like to make a group to hold all of my adjustment layers. This makes it easier for you to switch your adjustment layers on and off if you want to compare with the original colouring!

Going back to your curves layer, pick the little white eyedropper tool in the Properties tab. You want to find and click on the whitest area in the gif and make it a bit brighter! I picked the white in one of Boromir's eyes.

This is what my gif looks like now with the Curves layer:

Next, I use Levels. It's a very subtle change, but you can notice a slight darkening of the blacks in the image. Here's my settings for this layer:

And here's the gif with this step applied. Like I said, it's a very subtle change:

Up next is Brightness & Contrast. This layer is just a case of messing around with the settings until it looks right for you. You don't want to make it look too bright or too contrasted, though, because it will make the colouring look weird.

A bit more of a change this time! We're getting there:

Next, I like to do Colour Balance. Sometimes I wait and do the Selective Colour layer first (it'll still be above Colour Balance though), but with this gif, I decided to do it first. I want Boromir in the foreground to contrast more with the watery background, so I upped the Red in the Midtones. I think Midtones is the most important part of Colour Balance, so the Highlights and Shadows are more minor adjustments here.

Here's the gif with the Colour Balance layer!

Now, we have Selective Colour. Like I said before, I sometimes like to do this layer and then go back to the Colour Balance to make minor adjustments. For this gif I mainly focused on slightly reducing the cyan in the reds and yellows to add a little more colour to Boromir's tunic and hair.

I'm a big fan of bright, vibrant gifs, so I like to use the Vibrance layer copiously.

I upped the vibrance to max, but it's left Boromir's face looking a bit too red and his neck is a little pink, so I went back and did some minor adjustments to the Colour Balance and Selective Colour layers to fix that. Then, voila!

Now that we're done with colouring, go back to the beginning of the timeline at the bottom the screen. Then, go back to Actions and scroll down to the bottom, and look for the action called part 2 / finishing. Just like with the first action, press the Play button and it will work its magic!

Press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + C, and try playing your gif from there. Sometimes, the gif will be too fast and you'll need to slow it down, and you can't always tell until you play it in the 'Save for Web' window. I ended up slowing mine down from 0.05 to 0.07.

Once your gif is looking just right, press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + C again. These are the settings I use to save my gifs, and I think it makes them look really nice! Then click Save, and save your gif wherever you want.

Now, once you've saved your gif, you can post it to Tumblr (if that's what you're wanting to do) or simply keep it to yourself! But I'm sure that others would love to see your creations :D

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A little extra info - this gif doesn't have text because there's no dialogue, but these are the settings I use for gifs with text (the text size depends on the dimensions of the gif):

Sometimes I use white text, sometimes I use yellow. And if there's more than one person talking I use both!

first you're gonna want to use any gif making platform to actually turn your video clip into a gif. I personally use giphy but I know there's a bunch of other platforms for this. then you're just going to open the gif in photo pea either by clicking "open from computer" on the home page or dragging it in from finder (Mac) or files.

IF YOU'RE MAKING A GIFSET: the first thing I do is make sure all of my gifs are the same number of frames. its important to do this if you want all of your gifs to restart at the same time! to do this I just go to the side where all the frames are listed - this one has 29 frames (note: it says 28 on the top frame, but the very first frame is listed as 0, so always add 1 to the top number to know now many frames there are). what I do is find the gif with the least amount of frames and then make all the gifs the same number - depending on what part of the gif I want to keep/delete I'll delete frames from the beginning, end, or both which usually requires some basic math

next, I click on the top frame, press shift, and then press on the bottom frame to select all (unfortunately there's no keyboard shortcut for this I don't think). then I'll click filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen that way I can freely customize the sharpness of each gif depending on it's original quality. usually I do 200% at 0.5 pixels but I'll adjust if necessary.

now comes the actual coloring of the gif! all of these will be adjustment layers (layer -> new adjustment layer).

first I'll select the brightness/contrast layer and play around with those settings until it looks good to me.

next, I'll play around with the levels and curves layers until it looks how I want it.

sometimes I'll stop here if it looks good, sometimes I'll play around with the saturation adjustment layer, or in this case I'll edit the color balance to deepen some of the shades that aren't popping out how I want.

IF YOU'RE MAKING A GIFSET: the easiest thing I've figured out for coloring multiple gifs to save time is duplicating these adjustment layers to each gif in the set (layer -> duplicate layer into; it'll prompt you to select the psd you want to add the layers to). when I do this I turn off the visibility for each one and one by one turn them back on (starting with brightness/contrast) and adjust them if necessary.

if I'm not adding text this is where I'll end, but sometimes I like to add texts to more of my creative gifts. usually I'll follow a tutorial (@usergif resource directory has a bunch of good tutorials that can be adapted to photo pea, or I'll just look them up on Tumblr itself). sometimes I like to do things a little simpler, which is what I'll show here.

you're going to click on the T towards the bottom on the left sidebar, type put your text, change your font (photopea has a ton and I'm not too picky but you can download fonts from the internet and upload them), as well as color and size (don't forget to select all of the text when you do this!!) then click on the cursor icon to move the text to your desired placement.

then click on the layer in the right sidebar and select blending options.

I'm going to add a stroke of 1px in black to my text and position it to the center. I do this on every text I add to gifs (even if the text is black, which I ended up changing this one to) to add some extra size/detail.

you're more than happy to stop here, but I like to play around with some of the other blending options until I'm satisfied. sometimes I'll lower the fill to 0-30%, or in this case, I changed the blending option to overlay to get the desired effect. (both under blending options)

I followed the same steps with my second row of text, except I changed the font and then warped the text a bit after placing it where I wanted by T -> warp -> arch and changing the settings.

and you're done! file -> export as -> gif to save it! I also like to do this periodically throughout the process to make sure the gif is giffing if you know what I mean

the first step to making gifs is importing the raws. you first want to go to file>import>video frames to layer. this will open up your file explorer from where you can choose your desired file. you may want to make sure your file isn't an mkv one but an mp4 before you do this. also if your raws are large, perhaps a whole episode or longer than 30 minutes, it might help to trim it down beforehand to make it easier to work with.

once you select your file, this window will open up. here, you can move the sliders to select the exact part of the clip you want for your gifs. (when files are larger, it would be more difficult to capture smaller parts of the clip using the sliders) although optional, selecting the limit to every 'x' frames will help reduce the size of your gifs while not making it look too choppy. i do 'every 2 frames' for regular scenes and leave it unchecked for anything in slow-mo. more than 2 usually makes the entire thing look sped up and choppy so i wouldn't recommend it. although it depends on the raws ideally you want something around 80 frames for one gif.

once you press okay on the above step, your workspace will open up and from here we can start making the gif. the first step would be to set the time delay. this is two ensure that the gif doesn't look sped up. for this you want to first select all the frames as shown above.

next, you can click on the downward arrow on any frame to change the time delay. i usually prefer 0.07s which you can set in other...

once you've set the time delay, you have to convert the frames into timeline as shown above.

now that you have your timeline as seen on the left side, all you have to do is convert everything into a smart object. for that you have to first select all the layers using the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+A and then right-click on the layers followed by convert to smart object

now you can see that the many layers have been converted into one layer making it easier to work with. the next step is to resize the gif. the original dimensions would make the gifs too large to fit tumblr's size limit, this can be done by going to image>canvas size

to ensure that tumblr does unnecessarily crop your gifs you want to make sure width is always 540px if there's going to be only one gif in a row. the height can be anything depending how you want your gif to look.

you can adjust the gif onto the new canvas using Ctrl+T to transform the layer. always ensure the height and width are linked to make sure you don't squeeze the image weirdly.

after resizing the gif, i next sharpen the gif (which is my least favourite part). you can sharpen by going to filter>sharpen>smart sharpen while the noise filter is in filter>noise>add noise

although i don't always stick to the same sharpening, these are the settings i use the most.

once i'm done with the sharpening i like to soften the first smart sharpen filter. for this i change the blending option of the first filter to 80%. this is entirely optional.

once sharpening is done, you can colour and edit however you like using any of the adjustment layers. i mostly prefer curves and selective colour. these are the curves i used for this particular gif to remove the purple/redness it had going on. in RGB mode the white slider adds brightness and the grey one darkness/contrast. then you can individually use the red, green and blue modes to adjust the colours. i only used selective colour here to adjust the skin tones a bit so i haven't added that.

once done with colouring all you have to do is export the gif from file>export>save for web (legacy)

in the last window you have to make sure your looping is forever and that your gif is below 9.5MB. although tumblr says max gif size is 10MB, at least for me nothing over 9.5MB uploads.

and THAT'S IT (i say after a whole one page essay) your gif is ready!!! honestly i don't know if this is the easiest or most convenient method but this is just how i do it. also i use actions for everything other than colouring so it isn't as time consuming as it looks. you can also set shortcuts for importing and exporting to save time. this can be done from edit>keyboard shortcuts

since you made it to the end here is an extra bit on captioning

you want to start with a normal text layer and center it at the bottom of the gif. i use arial bold italic in size 16. next to make it look better we can add an outline and shadow to it through the layer style. and you can open up this window either by clicking the fx option at the bottom right or double-clicking the text layer.

these are the settings i use for the stroke as well as the shadow

For that particular gif, I just recorded that whole scene and made it into one gif. So the shot of Pacey you see is just the camera cutting away from Joey to Pacey!

However, if you want a gif that looks like that but with scenes that aren't connected. All you have to do is make whatever two gifs you want and then duplicate one gif into the other. By right clicking on one of your gifs to open this menu and clicking the duplicate into option and then clicking on your other gif from the dropdown menu.

Once you have both gifs in the same project, you can just save them as a gif and you'll have a gif that looks like that gif!

Downloading the Video: 

So, to download my video, I use one of two programs: 4k Video Downloader and/or Clipgrab for Mac or for Windows. Both are very simple to use and are free to download onto your computer! Definitely try and download the highest quality as possible as well! 

Loading Video Into Photoshop/Making Layers:

Alright, so you have your video downloaded. Now, it’s onto actually making the gif(s) of the particular parts of the video you would like! So, first things first, make sure your timeline is open in Photoshop at the bottom. It’s this bad boy right here: 

If you don’t see that, go to Window > Timeline and it should pop up. Make sure it says “Create Frame Animation” If it says “Create Video Timeline” just hit the little arrow in the center to change it. 

So, to actually load the video into Photoshop, you’re gonna want to go to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers. Your downloads folder will pop up and you just select what video you would like and hit OK. Something like this will show up: 

So, you see the tiny two arrow things at the bottom? Those are what you’re going to move to actually select the part of the video which you would like to gif. The left one is the start and the right one is the end. The play button is also there for you to play your selection and you can adjust accordingly if you don’t like it. So, once your selection is made and you’re happy with it, just hit the OK button. Then you’ll have something like this: 

Cropping Your Gif: 

So, first thing I do once I have that part done is I crop the gif and resize them using the crop tool on the tools panel on the left. It’s this little guy right here: 

So, Tumblr’s post dimensions are 540 pixels wide, so if it’s just one single gif that’s what you’re gonna want to have it as. For two column gifsets, I usually put it at 250 pixels wide. So, to change the width and height, when you select the crop tool, in the top select “ratio” and change the dimensions to what you would like them to be. So, if I want a 540 gif, I usually change it to 540 by 270, and that’s what I would set it as in the aspect ratio box right beside the drop down menu at the top and it will do the ratio for me and you can adjust accordingly. Once you are happy with the selection, either hit the Enter/Return key on your computer or the little checkmark at the top. Congratulations you have a gif and now all you have to do is set the timing, color and sharpen it and you’ll be good to go! 

Gif Timing: 

So, next thing I do, is I set my gif timing so it’s not too fast, but not too slow. So, in your timeline panel at the bottom, firstly, make sure your looping option says “Forever” at the bottom left corner.  Next, select all your frames in the timeline panel by clicking the first frame and while holding down the Shift key hitting the last frame and change your gif timing which is the little numbers on every layer in the timeline panel by clicking the arrow right beside the timing number. The lower the number, the faster your gif will move. So, if you have it set at 0 seconds/No Delay, it will move very fast. If you have it set at 1 second, it’s gonna move pretty slow. I usually have my gifs set at anywhere from 0.5-0.9 seconds depending on how many layers I have in a gif. Totally up to you. 

Coloring Your Gif: 

This is the fun part and the part that everyone loves to do. It’s coloring your gif to make it look better. You can make your own coloring using the adjustments panel on the right above your layers panel right here:

 and messing around with that or you can use what is called a PSD. PSD’s are essentially colorings that are made for you and all you really have to do is drag and drop the folder coloring onto your gif (Make sure all your frames are selected in the timeline!). You can find them on any Photoshop resource blog and they are just super convenient and there for you to use and you can also adjust those accordingly as well by clicking the arrow right beside the folder and turning off and on the different settings by clicking the little eye right beside it. 

Gif Captions (Optional): 

If you want text on your gif/a gif caption, that’s easy too! So, you wanna click the Text Tool (it’s the “T” on the left hand Tools Panel). At the top, select your font from the drop down menu. I personally use Arial for my gif captions, but I know some people use Calibri/Myriad Pro/etc. Totally up to you. Right beside the font selection, you’re gonna want to select your style. I use Bold Italic personally. Adjust your text size to your liking and type what you want  (Again, make sure all your timeline frames are selected.) and then hit the move tool at the top of your Tools panel on the left and adjust the text layer to your liking. If it’s a gif caption, try and keep it centered at the bottom as much as possible. Then, you’re gonna want to add what is called a Layer Style, specifically Stroke and Drop Shadow, to make them look better. So, in the layers panel at the bottom right, double click on your text layer and something like this will pop up: 

Checkmark the Stroke box on the left. Here are my settings for Stroke: 

Also, checkmark the box right besides the Drop Shadow. Here are my settings for that: 

Then, you hit OK in the top corner. Congrats! You have a gif caption! 

Sharpening Your Gif:

Last thing I do before I save my gif(s) is I sharpen them. Sharpening your gifs basically makes them look less “grainy” and just more HD and better in general. The easiest way to go about doing this is what is called Smart Sharpen. So, you’re gonna want to select all your timeline frames and your layers in the layers panel (You don’t have to select your coloring layers and/or your text layers in the layers panel. Just the gif layers.) and you’re gonna want to hit the three lines at the top right of the layers panel and select “Convert to Video Timeline” firstly.  Your timeline should look something like this: 

Next, you’re gonna want to go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters. There will be a popup that basically says that the selected layer will be converted to a smart object, just hit OK. The layers panel should now have your gif layers like this: 

Then, you’re gonna want to go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. These are my settings for it personally: 

Hit OK and then you’re done!

Saving Your Gif: 

Last but not least, you’re gonna have to save your gif, of course. So to save your gif, you’re gonna go to File > Export > Save For Web. Something like this will pop up Personally, this is where I change my gif image size to the 540 by 270 or whatever I want my image size to be by typing it in below where it says “Image Size” at the bottom. Also, near the bottom left, you’re gonna see a number right below where it says GIF like this: 

You’re gonna want to make sure that that MB number is below 8 MB for Tumblr, no more, no less as that is the gif upload limit. If it is above 8 MB, your gif will not move and then you’ll have to delete some frames and nobody wants that. Preview your gif by clicking “Preview...” in the bottom left corner and if you’re satisfied, click Save, name your gif, select the folder you’d like to save it to and you’re all done!