#howtogif

I've been asked how do I make my gifs and I find it hard to explain so I thought I'll do a sort of tutorial to help everyone. Before I start, I would just like to warn you making gifs is addictive.

To make gifs I use Photoshop CS5 and Camtasia Studio 8, I haven't bought either of them I just keep downloading it when the trial runs out.

First of all you need to select the piece you want to gif. For the tutorial I'm just going to use the TARDIS going through the time vortex. For this you need to open camtasia studio 8 and click on 'Record the screen' in the left hand side corner. When you do this it should come up over the piece you are gifing.

Once you've done that you need to get to the part you want to gif (I'm doing it off my DVD's but it will be the same with others like youtube too) then click 'rec'. When you have recorded the part you want then either press 'stop' or 'F 10'. When you have stopped it, it should look like this

After that you need to click 'Save and Edit'. Make sure you save it as '(*.avi) file' as the 'Camtasia Recording Files (*.camrec)' doesn't work in photoshop.

When you have saved it, make sure you name it something simple as when it comes to finding it, it might be quite hard. 

once you have done all that, you can close Camtasia studio 8, you won't need it any more.

Next step you will need to open photoshop. when you have you need to click on 'File' 'import' 'video frames to layers' like this

Then find the clip you want and select it.  When you've selected it, it should come up like this 

The parts I have highlighted you will need to click on. When you have you will need to hold down shift while using the slider or the arrows (I tend to hold down shift and use my arrows on my keyboard).  Click 'ok' when you are happy with what you've got.

At the bottom of the screen you should now have your frames, like this

My advice is to try and not have many frames as it will take up to much and your gif won't be as big as you'll probably want it. 

Hold down 'Ctrl' on your keyboard and click on each frame and change them to 0.2 (You don't have to do this but I tend to, so it slows the gif down).

Once you have done that you need to click on 'file' then 'Save for web and devices...' like this

  Which should then come up like this

Tumblr can only hold gifs when less than 1mb. If you put it on being over it simply won't play which I have done in the past. If your gif is more than 1mb you can turn up the 'Lossy' which is on the right side here 

I usually use 15 to about 21 if the gif takes up to much.

I play around with the size depending on how much it has taken up, if you are making it into a set then you can make it fairly small, but if its single you need to make sure you haven't used as many frames so you have the mb to make it bigger. 

once you have done that click 'Save' and you have your self a gif.

I hope this tutorial has helped anyone who is wanting to make a gif, please feel free if you get stuck to message me, my ask box is always open and I'll try my best to help.