#gifmaking tutorial

After downloading your video, you need to make your screencaps. I use MPV Player - if you don't know how to screencap, I recommend this tutorial on installing, configuring and using MPV (and this one for installing on a pc). You can also check my gifmaking tag for various other tutorials including different screencapping methods/software.

Once you've made your screencaps, move them to their own folder. You will need an individual folder for each gif/import! I put them in a "screencaps" folder and within that label each sub-folder however works for what I'm making.

Open Photoshop and open (ctrl+o) the way you would any image. Find the folder with the screencaps you want and select the first image (technically I think selecting any of them works, but I always do the first) then tick the Image Sequence button in the bottom corner, then open:

4. You will then get a pop-up to set the frame rate - these are my settings and after setting it once it should save it for future, so then you can just click OK each time:

5. This will instantly open your gif in timeline mode with your gif made! I then just click where it says Video Group 1 in the layers panel and Convert for Smart Filters so that it can be edited easily (I actually have this step saved as part of an action to make it even quicker). It should then look like this:

And that's it! You can go ahead and do all your editing like normal. I find Photoshop runs quicker this way (especially when making several gifs at once) since it's essentially just linking to the file location instead of importing it all into PS!

Download your video.

firstly, start by downloading your video with 4k video downloader. (<- this will lead directly to a dl of 4k video downloader if you don't have it already! link is all safe and official <3) i can't really think of any other downloader because i haven't used any apart from this one. it's safe and secure and does a really good job.

you'll want to choose the 1080p option that is the BIGGER file amount. not every video will have that, but i believe that the bigger file size is the youtube premium 1080p. take what you can get with them 😭

2. Load frames, crop, convert to smart object...

just get your normal prep work done! make sure to leave out sharpening. you should essentially just be here:

(if my process looks a bit odd or if, on the other hand, you'd like to know my process, you can check that here.)

3. sharpening.

THIS is the point that changes how your youtube file comes out. often times, you'll find the gif comes out with chunks, squares and overall poor quality. kind of like if i used my regular sharpening:

chunky! gross! trashy! i'm seeing too many pixels and things aren't looking the right way that i'd like. (tbh, it's not the worst i've seen - but you can definitely notice when there's light.) if i went on as it is now and continued to colour it, it would continue to look bad.

so, here's what you'll do.

i use multiple sharpening actions, for different purposes: one for hq downloads, so any movies, tv or downloaded/4k music videos, one making icons and the other for lower quality media and photos. the one that i typically use for youtube quality is @/anyataylorjoy's sharpening action (which many gifmakers use, so i wouldn't be surprised if you do already have it!) which is what you'll use. apply the action, using the 'sharper' lot.

^ that's the settings.

4. sharpening pt 2. (noise)

now, you'll need to add noise to offset how harsh the rest of the gif still comes up.

apply these exact settings onto the gif and ensure that monochromatic is enabled.

sometimes, 2% noise might make it look worse, or not be enough. i personally wouldn't go to anything more than 3%, (i don't think you'll ever want to use 3%) and wouldn't go lower than 1%.

it's grainy looking at the moment, just as is. from here, i'll colour it, and then if i think it's no good, i'll go back and clear the noise filter and toggle it. that's just how the process works, don't stress if it doesn't always go your way 😭 that's just gifmaking!

here's the final product!

and here's another example too, i know this one has a lot going on colour wise, so it can be good to look at it working on something with less bright colours:

as compared to before! before shows the gif was really smooth, as compared to in chappell's, were the lighting was just kind of messing with everything. you're more likely to come across videos that are that weird smooth quality, so i'd say that 7 times out of 10 you'll be applying these settings to something more along the lines of doechii's!

step one: recording

I tend to screen record bc of live giffing and I prefer the control over frame rate so I use OBS. OBS itself is a pretty simple program, all you're gonna have to do is click on the plus in the sources panel

and click on display capture and here'e youre gonna have to select the screen you want to record and click on ok and thats it

then when you click on start recording it will record your screen. there are a few things you have to change when your obs is new in settings. in 'Output' you're gonna make sure your Recording Path is somewhere, you can find it back. all the other settings you can keep as they are they dont change much but these are the settings I use

then you're gonna go to video and you're gonna have a bunch of settings abt resulution, most of these dont need to change this should be auto linked to the settings on your monitor/screen. the only thing that I change and like is changing the fps values to 60.

step two: timeline!

now we've recorded smth and know where it's saved so we're gonna open Photoshop. when you open photoshop you can just drag your MP4 file on your home screen and your workspace is going to look something like this

then, what we're gonna do is look for the part were you want your gif to start and we're going to put our little slider on that part and cut it down to that like this.

next, we're going to click on the lil arrow at the end of our video file and change the speed percentage to 50%, this shows down the gif to a little bit slower then is natural which I prefer.

then, I make my gifs abt 2 seconds, this makes it long enough that it isnt to short but is also small enough for tumblr to be able to process it. the length of your gif you can see at the bottom of your timeline right there

I'm gonna turn this recording into three gifs so we're going to go back to our little arrow and change the duration to 6 and grab the little slider and slide it to our 02:00f marker. these sliders are the selection that you're going to be exporting.

step 3: shape and size

tumblr has a size limit and size preference. you can post gifs upto 10mb and it prefers pictures in 5:7 540 format. so to try and make the highest quality gifs we're gonna try and keep to those.

we're going to do that by clicking on our crop tool in our tool bar

your video should get those little selection lines, we're going to ignore those and go to the top of our workspace and click on the little ratio tab and click on the 5:7

when you do that your file should look like either of these. we're going to be making horizonal gifs so we're going to make sure the crop is like that, if it's not you can right click your crop and click on rotate crop box.

now, this might seem strange but we're just going to accept the crop and click on enter, even if its ugly we're going to fix that later. so your workspace should look something like this now

now we're going to to go image -> image size

when you click on this this space pops up

what we're going to do is stick to that 540 rule,we're working with a horizonal gif so we're going to change the width to 540, make sure that little link on the side is on

(if you're working on a vertical gif you change the height to 540)

now, your crop should've gotten much smaller and your timeline should now be purple. purple means your gif is now a smart object!

(you can manually zoom in or clic Ctrl + 0 for windows or Command + 0 for mac and it will instantly fill out your workspace)

NOW, you can move your crop around and zoom in/out by using Ctrl (command) + t to move it around to a crop you think looks nice.

step 4: sharpening

now we're going to move onto something that very much changes per person so if at any point of this you think my choices are ugly just move it around and change it to how you enjoy it but this is my sharpening!

what we're going to do is select our layer and go to filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen

these are the smart sharpen settings I use for my first filter

then we're gonna go to filter -> blur -> gaussian blur and add these settings

then we're gonna go to filter -> noise -> add noise and use these settings

then we're gonna go to smart sharpen again and use these settings

then one last time we're gonna go to smart filter and use these settings

then your gif is gonna look like this!

step 5: exporting

now that we're done with out basic gif I tend to add a good few layers of colouring but bc of the picture limit I'm gonna skip that for now.

to export a gif we're gonna go to file -> export -> save for web (legacy)

aand these are the settings I tend to use.

and again, play around with these especially the top 3, they change with every selection you make and is very up to preference.

the important part is that the mb at the bottom of your workspace right here is under 10m

and thats it! now you have a basic lil gif!

here's a list of programs/websites I use regularly:

photoshop

obs studio - for screen recording

cobalt tools - helps with downloading social media videos

ezgif file optimizer - keeps larger gifs under the tumblr file size limit

basic steps of my process:

capture a clip from the stream by screen recording with obs window capture setting — the higher quality, the better! this is crucial. it’s like how the taste of tea you brew depends on whether the water is good. you can add all of the cool flavors you want later, but the end result won’t be nice unless you have a good starting point

1b. extra info: usually I have the stream playing on my laptop as the game is happening, so I can just rewind espn+ and clip the relevant moment when I see it happen. I also like to have the game playing on a second screen so I don’t miss anything while I’m going back for the giffable moment

2. import video frames to layers and limit to every 2 frames

3. adjust frame timing — usually I double it (so 0.02 seconds becomes 0.04 seconds)

4 and 5. convert to timeline, then convert to smart object

^ this button converts the frames into a timeline that looks like this:

then you need to select the layers and convert them to a smart object:

this will leave you with a timeline that has one smart object layer:

6. crop and resize; when I crop I usually scroll through the timeline to find the highest and lowest points that need to be included in the gif, so I can make sure these aren’t cut off. so if a player is leaning down on the bench and sits up halfway through the clip, I’ll find the part where he sits up and make sure the cropped area includes his head

^ this step gets rid of extra bits of the window that was captured during screen recording

now I have something that would look like this without any further editing (except I skipped ahead and did step #9 to bring the file size down):

7. smart sharpen - everyone uses different settings for this, and you might adjust it based on the sharpness you already have in your source video

the new gif looks like this:

8. open reference psd with standard adjustments contained in a folder and drag that folder into the new gif’s psd — functionally this is similar to an action or a preset, but it’s just a folder of like twenty adjustment layers in a trench coat

my standard sharks psd looks like this:

I usually just drag the "sharks" folder into the new gif and then make adjustments as necessary. without any other changes, the new gif with the standard adjustment looks like this:

the colors are brighter than I want them to be, because this is an away game in an arena with different lighting. so I'll go in and hide one of my brightness layers (by clicking on the eye symbol, so it goes away):

now the gif looks like this:

I'm still not really happy with the coloring, so I'll use selective color and a little bit of vibrance and brightness to make adjustments on top of the existing layers. during this step, I'm just looking at the gif and making a judgment call about which colors need to be adjusted:

I could probably still make improvements here, but I think this is better than it was! so I'll keep going with this coloring.

9. cut gif so it begins and ends on specific frames. a lot of imported clips that become gifsets end up having multiple cuts to separate the individual gifs. I like to get all of the gifs ready in one psd to start with, because that makes the frame timing and crop/sizing consistent between gifs. once I’m finished, I’ll save copies of the psd for each additional gif with names like “gif 2, gif 3, gif 4,” open the new copies, and delete the parts of the timeline that don’t relate to the specific gif in the file name. I’ve updated this part of my process since I originally made this tutorial! I realized you can make an entire gifset in one psd file and just adjust the work area to export the specific frames for each individual gif.

it’s important to double check the work area of your timeline when you do this step so you don’t end up with blank space at the beginning or end of the exported gif

the button to cut the gif looks like this:

10. when you're ready to save the gif, go to file > export > save for web

the gif needs to be under 10M to be within tumblr's file size limits. if it's bigger, I sometimes try using the ezgif optimizer to bring down the size. I might also go back to step #9 and cut more frames off of the gif

a few notes on coloring:

this is the most fun part, and it’s where you can really develop your own style! I love when I see gifs on my dash and recognize who the gifmaker is before even looking at their username because there’s a distinct coloring style

there are lots of great coloring tutorials out there, and most of them take a slightly different approach. I’ll link a few below for reference so you can choose whichever one works the best for you! it’s really up to personal preference. when I’m coloring a gif from scratch, I usually start with a few basic layers (curves, brightness, vibrance) and then add extra adjustments depending on the colors in that specific gif:

@kitnita's tutorials here and here

1. What Do I Need?

There are three things you need to make gifs. You need a way to download videos, a screencapping software, and Photoshop (or an online program that's similar).

Video Downloader - There are several ways you can download your videos such as torrents, direct downloads from streaming sites, downloading using a computer program, downloading from a website using an browser extension, etc.

Torrenting. I dislike using torrents because my internet connection is unreliable and can't sustain a VPN and I can't afford to pay for a good VPN anyway so I don't use torrents. Torrenting is, however, the most popular way to download videos so that's definitely a good option if you have a quality internet connection and a good VPN

If you're like me and can't torrent, try online direct downloading. Some websites I use have a direct download button that can be pretty reliable but be wary as they can contain malware. Otherwise I use a third party extension/program to download a video directly from a website

I use the chrome browser extension Cococut to download videos off of streaming sites. I don't know if this is available on other browsers or not but I'm sure there are other video downloaders on them you can use too. Cococut downloads in high quality. It can be a bit slow but totally worth it in my opinion. Cococut also has a youtube downloader

Downloads programs are also an option.

4K Video Downloader is a good computer program option to download 4K youtube videos.

DVDs are also a great option

KMPlayer - a video player that will easily allow you to take consecutive screencaps

I love this video player because it plays a variety of formats like mp4, mkv, wmv, avi and more.

Free to download

Very easy to make screencaps with very few steps

Photoshop - I use Photoshop CC 2014 on a Windows laptop to make all my gifs.

You can get it directly from Adobe by paying for it or...

You can be like me and get it through a little 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

There are tons of links to download photoshop throughout tumblr. The one I used is no longer working but if you do a search on tumblr you can find links for a variety of versions like this post here or this blog.

It doesn't really matter what version you download so long as it has video timeline available.)

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2. Getting Your Videos

First of all, to make a good quality gif, you need a good quality video. Nothing less than 720p unless you really really can't find anything in higher quality. I prefer 1080p or higher but 720p is acceptable.

Note: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE AN ADBLOCKER WHEN DOWNLOADING FROM STREAMING SITES!!!

So where do I find videos?

DVDs

Dvds are always good if you already have what you want to gif in dvd. Check your local library if you don't. If you don't have a dvd of the video you need then you've got other options.

2. Torrents

Now I don't torrent so I can't speak to this much and I know the big torrent site is gone now. I'm not sure where the new places are. Torrenting is the easiest way to get super high quality videos to gif from and is the go to way for a lot of gifmakers. But it does require another program to use as well as the need to have a VPN.

To learn more about torrenting click here. or read this guide

3. Screen Recording

Screen recording is my last option to get my videos because it often results in lower quality, choppy, inconsistent videos if your internet isn't that great and that makes giffing harder. But if you can't download in any other way this is an option for you.

You can use VLC to record your screen. See this tutorial for that.

I use a browser extension called REC - high quality screen video Recorder which is super simple and does a pretty good job.

4. Direct Downloading

Your other option is to download from either youtube or a streaming site.

The streaming websites I use changes all the time as they get shut down (rip soap2day i miss you) but the ones I'm currently using (as of november 2023) are sflix.to, fmoviesz.to, goojara.to, bstsrs.one, and 123movies (literally lost the site that I use all the time while i typed this jeezus). Reddit is a good place to look for new sites if these aren't working for you.

Okay so my go to for downloading videos is either direct from the website or Cococut. Let me show how I do that.

Bstsrs.one is a websites that provides links to watch your episode/movie. Mixdrop is my favorite link to use because you can right click and save or use the download link provided safely. I've never had a problem with mixdrop

The other sites are streaming with a few server options to choose from. I tend to go to one of those and cococut to download the video.

So let's do this!

We'll go to sflix.to and I feel like making some Leverage gifs so we'll do a search for Leverage and find the episode I want. We'll go with The Tap Out Job (good ole beaten up Eliot)

Once you've chosen a server (the first one is usually just fine) and clicked the play button, click the cococut downloader extension button. A little window will pop up with options to choose. On the first link click the first button:

This will open the page for the downloader. Now you just have to wait for it to finish downloading. As you download you'll see a progress bar and a pause and resume button. When the download is done those two buttons will change to a green save button. Click that button to download the file to your computer

And tada! You've downloaded your video!

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3. Screencapping

So when using photoshop to make a gif you have two options which is either A) import video frames to layers which is when you upload a video and select the portion of the video which photoshop will then turn into frames for you or B) load files into stacks which is when you load screencap images of the scene you want to gif. In my opinion loading files into stacks/screencapping is so much easier. When you try importing a video and the video is huge it can be really really hard to narrow down the specific scene you want and then it can take forever to upload the frames. Screencapping makes it much easier to narrow your focus on just what you want to gif and doesn't take as long to upload.

So we are going to learn how to screencap our video.This is where KMPlayer comes in.

Open your video in KMPlayer and pause it while we get all of our settings ready.

Right click --> Capture --> Frame Extract (or you can hit Ctrl G for a shortcut)

This box is all your screencapping settings. Feel free to just imitate mine. Select your destination file where the screencaps will be saved, give a name to the individual files, make sure it's set to every frame and original size. I often use the "every # frame" option as well if I domt want every si gle frame giffed which can take up a lot of space. Feel free to do this option too just set the number to 2 and it'll take every other frame instead of every frame. There's really no difference in gif quality but I find it can be better for storage space and for uploading frames to photoshop.

Once all that is set up click outside the box to make that go away (Don't hit the close button cause then you'll have to start over when you open the box again) and find the location of the scene you want to cap keeping the video paused once you've found it. When you've got the video set to where you want to start capping reopen the box using Ctrl G and hit the start button. Then go ahead and start playing your video. Your box will go away when you hit play but it's okay it's taking the screen caps. You can open it at any time using CTRL G to see it. When you've reach the end of the scene you want giffed pause your video, reopen the box again, and hit the stop button.

Double check that it worked by opening up the file location

Congrats! You've just made screencaps!

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4. Making A Gif

There are few different programs you can use to make a gif. I will be going over how to use Photoshop because I think that's the best way to get a quality gif. However if you don't have photoshop and are uncomfortable downloading it I do have a few alternate websites you can take a look at.

Photopea is like a web version of photoshop and you can find a tutorial on how to make gifs on it here

ezgif.com, giphy.com, imgflip.com, and makeagif.com are all super easy to use gifmaking websites that let you use either a video or screencaps. The only thing about these sites are that they are very limited when it comes editing and there will be a watermark of the website somewhere on the gif. It decreases your quality a bit but all are are wonderful, quick, easy ways of getting started in gifmaking. I made my start with ezgifs before I got photoshop.

Now I use Photoshop CC 2014 to make all of my gifs so this guide is gonna focus on using that program.

Loading Screencaps

Open photoshop and select File --> Scripts --> Load files into stacks

2. Click "Browse" and navigate to the location your screencaps are saved in. Select all the frames you need and click open. I try to keep each gif between 30 and 80 frames. 50 would be ideal. Anything more than 80 increases your chances that the gif will be too large to upload to tumblr. Sometimes 80 is even pushing it depending on the coloring and editing layers. This is why I tend to cap every other frame. Helps keep it all in one gif. So shoot for around 50 images.

Click okay when you've got all your screencaps in the box

3. Wait for all the images to load. This can take some time depending on how many you've selected. You can see them all uploading in this box here

Turning Files into Frames

1. Next up we need to make this stack of images into something that will move. So click the button that says Create Frame Animation.

If your version of photoshop started in video timeline you'll need to switch it to frames first and then switch it back to video timeline. Let me show you how to do that just in case. Click the button of the timeline area on the left (circled in red) which will switch it to frame animation.

You could also use the drop down arrow next to the Create Video Timeline button and switch it to Create Frame Animation

Continue to the next step.

2. To get all our frames showing hit the menu button on the upper right corner of the timeline area which is the bottom portion of your screen (it's got a bunch of horizontal lines and is next to your layers box) and then click on Make Frames From Layers.

Now we can see all of our frames!

3. But uh oh! it's backwards! So click the menu button again and then click Reverse Frames to put everything back the right way

Much better

Setting Speed

1. Next up we are gonna set our speed. I always do this early because it's super important and doing it now is much easier than attempting to do it after we've edited the whole gif. Select the first frame then click the menu button and click Select All Frames

2. Next click on the drop down arrow on one of the frames. The one next to the "0 sec".

3. Select the Other option. Here you have a little leeway to do what you like best when it comes to the speed of the gif. I usually go with .1sec if I screencapped every other frame. The norm for a lot of gifmakers, especially if you've capped every frame, is either .05 or .07 secs. You can try all 3 and see how the speed works for you. To change the speed set the delay to either ".05", ".07", or ".1" and hit okay.

To see how the speed works click the play button. If you like your speed great. If not go ahead and repeat the previous step to try another. Try any number between 0.0 and 0.1 to find a speed you like. .05 is the closest to actual normal speed which is why so many of us use it but sometimes it just inst right. So trial and error it until you've found one you like.

Save your File

This is a great place to save your working file. This is important in case Photoshop crashes or something happens and you need to recover your file. Go to File --> Save As

Pick a location, give your file a name, make sure the file type is PSD and click save. Now your file is saved just in case.

Be sure to periodically go in and click File --> Save to keep your progress safe from Photoshop/Computer crashes! It will not auto save. You have to be sure to save it every once and a while.

Cropping and Resizing

Now it's time to resize our gif. Let's start with how to crop. Sometimes you'll have a gif that you want to cut down to reduce the amount of empty space or because there's black bars around it, or because you have a certain style in mind and need just part of the image. That's when we crop.

First thing to do is make sure you're using the select tool. That's the tool on the side that looks like a dotted line square box. Click and drag around the portion of your image you want to keep to mark where you want to crop your gif. Everything inside the dotted lines will be what gets kept. Everything outside is getting cut.

Be sure to check the whole gif to make sure you're not going to crop something important out. Don't hit the play button for this because then you'll lose the crop marks. Just select various individual frames to look.

When you are satisfied go to Image --> Crop and your gif will be cut down to your outline.

Now our gif is still huge and tumblr won't like that. In fact, tumblr has very specific dimensions when it comes to photosets that will maintain the quality of the image. These are the current dimensions to follow.

These numbers are the width of the individual images. The height does not matter. You can have any heigt you'd like. So for one image the width is 540px. For two images next to one another each gif would be 268px wide. Three images are each 177px wide. Of course you can have every single image 540px wide if you'd like. That's what I do. Then each gif is big and can be enlarged if you click on it. Just try not to go over 540px wide.

It is important to note that if you're going to put two or three images next to each other, make sure they are the same dimensions as each other. Otherwise tumblr will crop the larger image in the preview to match the smaller one and we don't want that. So keep the gifs the same size

Okay so to resize your gif to fit tumblr's dimensions click Image --> Image Size and this box will open.

Make sure that little chain link to the left of "width" and "height" is selected. That keeps the proportions of your image. If you only change one size it'll automatically change the other to match the current proportions if that is selected. We want that.

Make sure the box next to the "width" and "length" numbers is on "Pixels" and nothing else. That's important.

Change your width to 540 pixels and click okay.

Turn Frames into Animation

All right our gif has now been resized. This next step will prepare it for editing. We need to turn our frames into a video timeline. Timeline mode allows us to easily sharpen and add adjustment layers to our gif. It also makes it easier to add text and gives a lot more freedom to decide when things like text and certain coloring editing layers show up. Timeline mode gives us a lot of versatility and saves time which I love.

Click the button on the bottom left of the timeline. Just under the first frame. This will turn it into a video timeline for us.

Next up we need to turn all of our layers into a smart object so that our edits will affect every layer. To do this click Select-->All Layers then click Filter-->Convert for Smart Filters. Click okay if another window pops up.

Don't skip this step! It's very important to ensure all the future editing works properly!

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5. Editing the Gif

This is where we can really get creative and which I find to be both the most fun and frustrating part of gifmaking. Editing!

Sharpening

First step is to make our gif a bit more sharp. I know a lot of people use Smart Sharpen here but I have not quite gotten the hang of that myself so I stick with the preset Sharpen. It's not failed me yet and does a good job at sharpening my image for me with no work on my end. So go to Filter-->Sharpen-->Sharpen

Next I like to add a little bit of Surface Blur. To me, this just smooths out the gif a little bit and I like the look. You can skip this one if you like.

Coloring

This is the hardest part of gifmaking in my opinion. But it's also the most creative part. Coloring. For this we are going to utilize the adjustment layers. There's tons of different options here to adjust brightness, colors, and more. The adjustment layers can be found under Layer---> New Adjustment Layer. Or in the quick box on the right hand side of the screen under the Adjustments tab. Hover over each symbol to see which one is which.

The very first thing I do is to brighten up my gif because every scene is always so darn dark and dingy. So let's brighten it up.

Next I use the Curves layer. The curves layer will allow you to isolate the white point and black point (what you want to be the darkest and lightest values).

Start with the Exposure layer. Go under Layer ---> New Adjustment Layer ---> Exposure (repeat for all other adjustment layers). Or you can use the shortcuts in the block to the right under the Adjustments tab. Use the sliders and just a tiny bit up the exposure so it makes everything a bit brighter.

Click on the eyedropper on the left. The bottom one is your white point, the top one is for the dark point. I usually start with the white point. Once you've clicked the white point eyedropper click on the brightest part of you image. In this case I chose the white spot on the ice pack. Next click the black eyedropper and then click on the darkest part of your image. I chose the part of Eliot's hair right next to the left side of his face.

The next adjustment layer I do is the Levels layer. This is also to brighten my gif. This one just takes some experimenting so slide the little arrows until you like how it all looks. It's gonna be different with each gif you make.

After this I add a layer of Brightness/Contrast. I don't always need more brightness but I tend to at least add a little bit of brightness. Then I add always add some contrast to darken the darks a little more and even out the coloring some.

Next up is the adjustments in the colors. I always like to add a Vibrance layer to make my colors really pop. But the downside is it also brings out colors I do not want to pop. That's when I add a Selective Colors layer.

Selective Colors allows you to adjust specific colors in your image. The idea behind selective color is that each color has its counterpart: cyan-red, magenta-green, yellow-blue. Adjusting them will help isolate certain colors in your image. In this case I want to reduce the red in Eliots face so I'm gonna go to the Red section and adjust those settings. Add as many layers for as many colors as you'd like to get the result you want. Also, doing them in separate layers helps if you need to go find the layer and make changes.

Finally I added a layer of Color Balance. This lets me adjust the colors in the highlights, midtones, and shadows. With a little experimenting you can smooth out or completely change the colors in your gif. It's really useful.

Once your done coloring select all your adjustment layers and add them into a folder. This is also a step you can skip but it makes it easier to copy all your coloring if you want to replicate it in another gif. To do this hold down Ctrl and click on each layer. Then click the little folder button at the bottom of the screen. I have it circled in this image. After you click the folder all your adjustment layers you've selected will be grouped together and look like this:

Text/Subtitles

So your gif is looking beautiful but what do you do of you want to add some dialogue or other text to you gif? I can help!

Click on the text box (the one on the left side that looks like an T) and drag the dotted lines in the area you want your text to be.

Typey type everything you want

Font, size, color can all be chosen in the circled areas below. Just highlight the text and change your font type, size and color to fit your liking. My go to font when I'm making subtitles for a 540px gif is Calibri Italic and I go with a size between 18 to 21.

Once your satisfied with the text, the size, the color, the placement and all that double click on the text layer in your layer box on the right hand side of the screen (circled in red in the image above). Make sure you are double clicking in the blank space and not in the text area of the box. You want this box to open:

Check the box next Stroke and match my settings. This will put an outline around your lettering and make it pop a bit which in turn makes it easier to read. Click okay.

Make sure your text layer lines up with your gif layer in the timeline. So you're going to see this:

Your gif layer is the very bottom layer. The editing layers, all grouped together, is above that. The text layer(s) are at the top. Double check that all the layers are the same length and that your text layers aren't going past your gif layer. If you only want the text to show up for part of the gif you can control the length of the layer on the timeline. Just grab one of the ends and move it to your start and end points. For example, if I only wanted one of my text boxes to show up in the middle of the gif I would move both sides until it looked like this:

Another good thing to know about timeline mode: There are two brackets, one on either side of the layers, that tell you this is the beginning and the end of the gif. Anything outside of that will not show up when you save the gif. You can move those to cut your gif rather than trying to cut frames. You can also move those to cut off hanging portions of your text.

One final note for adding text, in your layers section on the far right side of your screen, put the Text Layer at top of all your other layers so it's unaffected by your coloring edits. Just click and drag it up to the top.

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6. Saving the Gif

Exporting Gif

Now you're ready to save all your hard work!! Congrats!

Go to File-->Save for Web

A new window will pop up. The first thing you should do is check the size of your gif. Tumblr images cannot be over 10mbs. So check to make sure that size is less than that. That can be found on the left hand side just below the image of your gif. I've circled it in read in the next image.

If your gif is too big (bigger than 10mb) there are a few things you can do. You can get ride of a few frames by move the beginning/ending brackets in the timeline. That usually does it. If you absolutely have to, you can resize the gif down but I don't recommend this because once you get out of the 540px things in the photoset get funky. But it is an option if you need it. You could also crop your image some.

The next important thing to make sure you do is to ensure that your gif loops forever. In the bottom right, circled in red, you'll see looping options. It's going to be set to once. We don't want that. Click it and change it to Forever so your gif never ends.

Also make sure you are set to "gif" rather than a jpg, png, or wbmp. We want gif. See the final red circle at the top for where that is.

Feel free to copy my settings here. I tend to keep it at Adaptive and Diffusion and no dither.

You can click the play button beneath the looping options to check the final version of your gif. Make sure everything runs smoothly, the text (if you added any) is visible when you want it to be visible, and that the end isn't blank or anything weird. If you have any problems just hit cancel and go back and fix things.

Once that's all done click save, choose your save destination, and give your new gif a name!

Congratulations! You've just made a gif!!! WOO!!

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7. Uploading a Gifset on Tumblr

Okay now that we've got our gif (or gifs) we are ready to upload them to tumblr!

Select the photo icon, click the upload from computer, find and select your gif(s).

Wait until they're all loaded then click, hold, and drag your gifs so they're in the right order for your photoset whether that's all stack on top of one another or side by side. This can be tricky because tumblr sucks and changed things so now the post box jumps around as you try and move images. Just be patient and move slow and pay attention to where you are in the post. Or you could upload each gif one at a time.

Don't forget to add a caption! The caption is the perfect place to put what it is we're seeing. You can add a quote or a description but be sure to add the name of the TV Show and the episode or the Movie title so everyone can easily see what this is from.

TAGS

Tags are so so important because without them no one will ever see your beautiful work. Tumblr pays attention to the first 20 tags so these are the most important when it comes to visibility. The best things to add for tags are the general fandom and character tags, edit tags (like marveledit or whumpedit), source blog tags, user tags, and trigger tags.

Next add your trigger tags/trope tags. This is important for the whump community because we gif a lot of things that can be very triggering for people so it's vital we tag for it so people can block it if need be. When in doubt if you should tag it for a specific trope, tag it.

For example if I was posting a whump gifset since I am a whump focused blog I'd first add the two main tags for whump gifsets. Those are #whump (our gen tag) and #whumpedit (our community tag for art/gifsets/edits/videos). The whumpedit tag is so important because this tag is specifically for whump visual art and other edits. The #whump tag is important because who do not like whump will block that tag so be sure it's in there so people can easily avoid triggers.

After those tags add your fandom and character tags. So for this gif I'd add #Leverage and #Eliot Spencer. You can also add the edit tags for your fandom so I could then add #leverageedit and #eliotspenceredit. Please don't forget the fandom tags! Not only does it help people know what the gif content is actually from so they can find it for themselves if they'd like to watch it but it will then add it to the fandom tags so people looking for content from this show/movie will see it. Increases your audience because people are more likely to search for a name than an edit tag or user tag.

Other things you can add in the tags are user tags and blog tags. A lot of big gifmaking/source blogs track a specific tag. They then go into that tag and see everything people made and can then reblog it. So feel free to tag your favorite blogs that you think will like your post. For example, I track the tag #aceofwhump. If you want to add that tag there's a chance I'll give it a reblog and reblogs are great for visibility.

So in posting this gif I would tag it as the following:

#whump, #whumpedit, #leverage, #eliotspencer, #leverageedit, #eliotspenceredit, #my gifs, #mod post, #beaten, #ice pack, #bruises, #blood

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Before I could start making this gif, I needed three things; the two scenes that I wanted to use, and a video of the glass shattering effect. I already knew the scenes I wanted, so then I took to YouTube to find a video which I can't for the life of me find again (edit: thanks to add1ctedt0you in the replies for linking this video!), but it looked like this:

Something like this is what you want. Ideally the green part would be entirely white, but as long as there are two clearly different colours you can usually work with it.

This looks a lot slower than the gif that I made, but that's not because of the frame rate - which is exactly the same above as in the final gif - it's just because there are extra frames in this slower one that I cut out. In the video I used, the glass shattering happened very slowly. I didn't want that, so I ended up skipping several frames when I loaded the frames into Photoshop before using my gifmaking action. I just did this by manually selecting one frame, skipping the next several before selecting another frame, and repeating this until I had selected 60 frames.

After using my gif action, I had a smart object of the glass shatter effect that looked like this:

That's a much better speed! It still wasn't quite where I needed it to be though. I needed this in black and white, so I slapped a hue/saturation adjustment on the smart object and set the saturation all the way down to -100.

Okay great, I could start putting the gif together now.

First, I made a copy of the glass shatter smart object, because I'll need that later. Then, I pulled in frames from the scene that I wanted to appear in the hole after the glass shatters, and I used those to create a new smart object with my gif action (we'll call it Scene-bg). I pulled Scene-bg into the same window as the glass shatter objects. Then I created a new smart object by combining one of the glass shatter objects with Scene-bg, which I did by selecting both layers right clicking, and selecting "Convert to Smart Object".

I renamed this smart object to Shatter-fg. I opened it by clicking on the little icon next to the layer name in the layers window here:

The most important thing here is that the shatter effect object should be the top layer, and I set the mode to "lighten". This will make sure that the lightest colour of either this layer and the layer behind it is displayed; that means that anywhere that's white in our shatter animation will still show up, but anywhere that's black we'll see what's in the layer(s) behind it.

Then I threw some adjustment layers between them to get the colouring I wanted. I used a curves layer, a hue/saturation layer, and I also added text with an outer glow layer effect. Here's what the layer order looked like and the settings I used for each layer:

After this process, Shatter-fg looked like this:

Okay nice, this is starting to look like something! I saved this and went back to the main file with the other glass shatter object.

I needed to invert that other glass shatter object. There's a weird quirk with the version of Photoshop that I use where it doesn't like it when I apply specifically an invert adjustment to a smart object (it appears correctly when editing, but not on export) so I did this by creating a new smart object which included a separate invert layer, but if you have a newer version of Photoshop you can probably just apply the invert adjustment directly. Just note that you'll need to do one of these options; it won't work if you add a separate adjustment layer in the main file, it needs to be applied specifically to the smart object (which we'll now be calling Shatter-bg). It looked like this after I inverted it:

Once that's done, I made sure Shatter-fg was the layer directly above Shatter-bg, and set the mode of Shatter-fg to "darken" and Shatter-bg to "lighten". Since Shatter-fg is set to darken, it will be visible only when it is darker than the layer behind it. By setting Shatter-bg to lighten, I've guaranteed that the layer behind it will always be lighter (ie, white) in the places we want Shatter-fg to be visible, and will be black otherwise. Once I update those settings, this is what the gif looked like:

This is all there is to the glass shatter effect itself. Next I pulled in frames from the second scene to fill in the black areas. This layer needed to go below both glass shatter layers, so that it only shows through where the black. Then I added adjustment layers and some text. I used curves, hue/saturation, and vibrance adjustment layers, and I also added the "archer" text below the glass shatter layers so that it would be hidden to reveal the "prey" text. The other text I added above all of the layers, since I wanted this to be visible all the time. Here is the layer order and all of the settings I used for each of the layers:

I also grouped Shatter-bg and Shatter-fg and shifted them on the timeline so there would be some time to see the background gif before the shatter effect starts.

And that's all! Then it''s just a matter of exporting the finished product:

So, you make two separate gifs, but obviously make sure they are equal on number of frames and frames delay (sorry I made this tut with whatever was in my drafts))

Its 35 frames each with 0,05 delay here. 

Convert them both to timeline. 

Then you go to the canvas size of your first gif (the one you want to be the upper one in the gifset) and set the height of the canvas double of your gifs size + 5px. 

Both my gifs are 400 px height, so I set it 800 + 5px (distance between big images in the gifset) = 805 and clicked the upper arrow in the anchor to place the gif on top of the canvas:

...and voila!

Now you copy your second gif on here:

...and move it down the canvas with ctrl+T tool. Make sure bottom edge of the second gif hits the bottom edge of the canvas, of course! Like this:

Pew-pew! now we have two gifs on the same canvas with a 5px empty space  between them. see?

Now add your colouring/sharpening... whatever your prefer to do in your gifmaking process)) I usually add my colouring before placing the text, and sharpen everything in the end, so here:

And now we add the text as a top layer and do whatever we wanna do with it (idk, set opacity or choose blending mode, or color, or whatever you choose to do)). mine here is just plain white

Then sharpen your gifs (if you haven’t already) and...

just pick a crop tool and set it to the original gifs size (540 x 400 here). and crop!

first gif first - crop it to original size and save it. 

then redo back to two gifs on one canvas and crop the second one!

that’s it.

just do it carefully, not to miss the borders)

literally, that’s it!))

here’s the result:

told you - super simple! 

Step 1:

Open Photopea. Once you're there, go to the file menu in the top left corner of the site. Click on the new option, which will prompt the above box. Determine the size of your canvas. Since I used four gifs sized 268 x 150, I figured the size by multiplying both the length and width by 2 and by adding 4. Which is the size of the spaces between. Leave everything else the same, except changing the background from white to transparent.

Step 2:

Open the file menu again and select the gifs you wish to use.

Step 3:

Go into one of your gifs. Select all the frames by clicking on the frame at the top, holding shift, and scrolling down to the last frame and clicking on it. Once you've selected all your frames, open the edit menu to the right of the file menu. Go down to copy and click on it.

Step 4:

Go back to your canvas, open the edit menu again, and go down to paste and click. Your gif will appear and you can now move it to your desired position. Make sure all your frames are selected when you move it.

All your gifs will appear in the left corner, so I reccomend making the gif that you wish to place there the last one you add to the canvas. After adding a couple gifs, your gifs will appear below the left corner gif, so if you're adding more than two, it can get troublesome.

Step 5:

Once you have all your gifs added to your canvas and in your desired positions, select all the frames of a single gif. Next, click the folder icon. This will group all the frames together. Make sure to do each gif separately.

Also, delete the background layer.

Step 6:

This is how your menu should look after grouping each gif into its own folder. Select each folder in the same way you do frames.

Step 7:

After selecting each folder, open the layer menu at the top. Scroll down until you reach the animation tab. Select it and click merge.

Step 8:

This is how your menu should look after merging the folders and you're done!