#kyle.explains

firstly, the basic idea of how to make reds in skintones pop is to build up the green, it will neutralize the yellow and red that you see all over the face, that way when you do up the red it will only grab onto the most red parts of a person's face aka the lips!

LEVELS:

so ofc, as always, I start of with levels, as always, I use the top black pipet to grab the darkest part of the picture which most of the time is at the collar or under a cap.

then at the levels I play around a little with the red, green and blue not just RGB and especially with the red to make sure most of the red is neutralized in the face.

this is what the levels look like

for this gif its not to needed because the lighting is pretty neutral to begin with so I'm mostly using the levels to darken up the imagine and add to the contrast. I yellow up the face a little to make the red in his lips pink up. I will neutralize this later

this is what it looks like rn

VIBRANCE:

next thing I do is grab the vibrancy and up the vibrance to about 50+ and actually a little bit of the saturation to make the colours I already have a little bit extra

CURVES:

same as the levels, I grab the black pipet and choose the darkest part of the image to make sure the contrast is high, for curves I will also use some heavy playing around to sharpen the blacks and whites

dont worry the colours will later be neutralized

this is what the curves look like

this is what it looks like rn

CHANNEL MIXER:

now this part is really different per gifset, here I'm gonna mostly be playing around with the blue to neutralize the colours even more and make the red pop a little more.

here is what they look like

this is what it looks like rn

BRIGHTNESS AND CONTRAST:

because you lose the highlight points when you use channel mixer I'm gonna up the brightness to about +30

SELECTIVE COLOUR:

so this is the fun part, I'm not gonna share all the colours ofc cuz thats 10 pics ajkds, but the red and yellow is the most important here to neutralize the face and make his lips pop, also magenta is really important, the lips almost always have magenta in there so that layer will add even more contrast

here is what they look like

with a gif like this I'd personally recommend upping the blue, blue and red obviously stand in contrast to making the blue stronger with also make the red pop even more

also the white and black are important, white to make eyes pop and black to add contrast and play around further with whatever you think looks pretty

this is what it looks like rn

and yeah, sometimes I do another layer of selective colour to up the red and magenta to make the lips even stronger and the blues brighter which is in technique the same as the last explenation

this is what it looks like rn

and thats it! thats how I basic edit to make specifically someone's lips pop! this works the best with interviews bc they have the most neutral lighting, its hard to do this techique if you first have to fixx the colouring to get it to a basic neutral but its possible just a fuck ton of work.

this kind of all comes down for me to he 'levels' adjustment layer because this, is what that does in one click.

so I'm mostly going to be explaining how that works. it comes down to the little pipets you see here on the left side

these three help you pick your darkest and lightest part of the picture photoshop does half our work so. the top pipet is your blacks and the bottom your whites. the best way I can explain the picking out your darkest and lightest points is with this

the yellow are the points id click to pick my darkest points and the green my light points.

it's normally easiest to find your darkest points in gifs so what I normally do is grab the black pipet and grab my darkest point which makes the colouring alone imediatly go up in contrast and also semi fixes the basic colours.

(what happens is what the gif does above! where on the right side you can also see how your sliders adjust instantly to how photoshop read your file)

then I play around with the sliders. if you move the right slider the black goes up if you move the white goes up. I just play around with it until the contrast feels right. this is what my levels slider looks like

now you have a gif with deep blacks but no solid dark colours yet so now I normally just grab the vibrance an dup it to smth like +50 or higher and dont touch saturation. and this is what my gif looks like with just levels and vibrance.

then if you're lazy and wanna keep it easy and still have a basic nice colouring you can stop there but I normally go into my fav lil toy in photoshop 'selective colour'.

now I'm not going to run down every tab in selective colour but for this colouring specifically I know there's blue in his fireproofs and obvisouly red and yellow in his face.

so with selective colour I make sure these colours are upped. and for my 'cinematic' style I make sure my blacks and whites are also high up.

so after playing around with selective colour, this is what I have. this is just two layers of basic selective colour. (if you want me to share every laer of selective colour pls tell me n ill gif it so u can see)

then sometimes I stop right here but id like it to be a bit like deep so im gonna use channel mixers (which is kinda hard to figure out but just play with it and see what you vibe with) to make the base a bit more neutral so then we have this

and then I'm just gonna trow one more selective colour on top and we're done

we've got this and I'm pretty happy with it but id play around with the blacks a bit, id prob go back into levels and play around with curces and brightness/contrast for these but thats all extra stuff

but yeah this is how I do my 'cinematic' colouring

file -> import -> video frames to layers

then I use the lil thingys at the bottom to select the part I want to gif

then u wait like 6 hours because fuck photoshop and then you always need to remember to have your timeline on which you do by going

window -> timeline

otherwise you wont see the video. then it all depends on what and how I wanna gif, the video I'm using now I recorded with OBS which I know imports at 0,02 second per frame thats the lil number at the bottom of your timeline

I personally like my gifs to be pretty quick so I just add 0,01 to it so when I record w obs I almost always make it 0,03 sometimes slower if I want it to be.

sometimes a video records quicker or slower I always just play to see what I got to work with. anyway you change it by going to the three lil stripes on the side and click on the select all frames and then I change it to 0,03 otherwise u only change the one you clicked on atm

after that I change the amount of frames to what I want. most of my gifs are about 60-80 frames but it depends on if I wanna show something specific.

but for this I wanna gif 220 frames so I just use my calculator to devide it into the amount of gifs I want. for this I'll do 3 so its at about 73 frames. so I make sure I have the 73th frame selected before converting

then we go to the lil three lines again and click on convert to video timeline this time

this is what it should look like when you do that

then the first thing I do is use the little selection dragger things to to to my little marker so the selection is at 73 frames (that selection is the part you're eventually gonna export)

then I select all my layers on the layers tab, select all of those layers and convert them to smart objects by right clicking and going to convert to smart object in that tab

I do this to make the gifs smoother and so I can sharpen them. after you do that you should only have one layer and your timeline should still be able to move if you click play

then we do the actual fun part. so first things first, shape it to whatever size you want, there are like size rules for tumblr for gifs in like what way they show the best I am lazy and just do what feels right with what gif.

for this I'm making it easy and just giffing the full screen so we're just gonna grab the lil crop tool and well.. crop

then this is what it looks like rn for me if I export the gif, this works but I normally sharpen and colour to make it more aestetically pleasing and all that

so what I do at this time is open a psd I have saved with a bunch of different colouring and my watermark to make it easier for me. so I add the watermark at this point and then I start sharpening.

sharpening is a bit more detailed and its all up to your own preferences but to sharpen you make sure you have your layer of ur gif selected and then you go to

filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen

and then you just do what looks good I have two sharpening presets which look like this

and the second is this

and then I like a lil more spice in my sharpening so I also add a 'sharpen edges' which is with the name filter -> sharpen area as before

and this is what a sharpened gif looks like without colouring but I think the difference between this one and the one before is pretty big already

then the actual fun fun part COLOURINGGG. so for me I have a psd saved with a bunch of colouring that works for differents things like podiums, interviews etc, for this I obv dont have a saved psd so I'm just gonna play around with colouring

you do colouring by going to your layers all the way down and clicking on the little half moon, here you just play around and do what ever u want.

for me the first thing I do is to to 'levels' and choose what part I want black, then I fix basic lighting changes with 'color balance', after that I go into 'vibrance' and kick up the vibrance bc I love a colourful gif and then I just play around with 'selective colour'

(if ya'll wanna know how I do colouring I'd love to explain into more detail if u all want)

and then, then we go onto the shitty part the export so you go to

file -> export -> save for web (legacy)

then you see a big very probably complicated looking screen so I'm just gonna show my settings, you can play around with this if you want until its something you like but this is what I personally like the most

then at the imagine size I just change the size until the mb is small enough for tumblr.

tumblr gifs work best if its less then 5mb (you can see the mb on the bottom left, in the sc here its 17.m) so I just change the size until its up to that 5m currently its at 900 x 723 so I just change the with to 500 and its linked so its automatically gonna take the height to 402.

this is still to big eventually the size that worked was 420 x 362. then you click on save and name it whatever u want also in the end I croped the size a lil but

this is the final result.

yay lil purple mick

I hope this helped someone in how I work and for those who dont gif it made it clear how much FUCKING time it takes to make these. this took me like 30 mins so if I didnt have to type at the same time one gif takes me about 15 minutes to make and I have a pretty new and fast laptop so it can take a lot.

it's the same reason people use it instead of green screen. there's no blue in a humans natural skin tone so when you play around with the colour it will only change the placed the blue is intentionally not the skin/hair etc

that's why it's harder to colour for example Charles w Ferrari, red is always in a humans skin also why it is easy to colour Seb at Aston because green again, is not.

so, anyways, let's talk sharpening first because I changed it a lil. I still use the same 'spice' preset from the tutorial my second sharpening is just a bit diff by trowing up the radius a lil.

then, the fun part. COLOUR!!! so first thing, the layers for this gif look like this:

so. to explain all of that a lil I'm gonna go down every layer and explain why and how I use them

btw these are all called 'adjustment layers' you can grab these at the bottom of your layers channel and whre u see that lil half moon thingy, thats where ur adjustment layers are hiding.

also important, I colour very instinctually, I just do whatever feels right at the time.

then, if you only wanna learn the basics and easy stuff especailly if you're new id recommend most focusing on learning how 'colour balance' 'levels' 'curves' and 'selective colour' works.

levels:

so, levels looks like this, you can use the lil pipets on the left to grab what u wanna lighten or darken. the top is blacks and the bottom one is whites.

most of my gifs have two levels layes. one were I use the pipet to grab the blackest part of the gif and one were I use it to grab the whitest part.

then I just play around with the little nubs at the bottom to darken and lighten shit.

vibrance:

this is very basic and easy, I just trow up the vibrance a lil to get the colour to pop out a lil

channel mixer:

then channel mixer. okay, so, this is new for me, I am still figuring this out but I use the little output channel to grab diff colours (u can ofc choose between blue, red and green)

then I chance the nubs a lil around to change the colour. channel mixer grabs the colours you have in the gif and makes them just a lil different.

this way when your whole shot is for example far to yellow you can trow up the blue to contrast the yellow and neutralise it.

brightness contrast:

well, again pretty obvious, I dont like my gifs to have unatural high contrast so i trow down the contrast a lot and depending on what kind colouring I wanna do I either plus or minus the brightness but I also keep that at 0 a lot

colour balance:

this is kinda the easy version of channel mixer. if your gif is to yellow well. you go in the plus on the midtones with the yellow/blue line. its easy and can help neutralise a gif without to much hassle.

on the top part were 'midtones' is right now you can change it to change the colours on highlights and shadows too which is wonderful cuz that way u can specify where and what u wanna change what colour and neutralise what.

(it also helps w more creative colouring for example if ur planning on making a gif purple u can trow up the yellow, megenta and red)

curves:

now, okay, curves, tbh, the one I find most intimidating, this lil motherfucker can change ur whole colour w one lil slide to the left, it svery useful, you can again at the top were the lil 'rbg' is change it to specify green, red and blue. this curves u can do a shit ton with.

you can play around w the line as much as u want curve it all ways u want so honestly, just play around w it do some random shit see what works for u.

selective colour:

and then, my most beloved, the best lil adjustment layer in the bunch.

this funky lil layer grabs what ever colour u choose and can take and change it however u like. so if you for example are in this yellow layer and you grab the yellow line the ones thats on -19 and you put it left it makes all the yellow in your gif disspear turn into a pinkish purple.

that is how tou can make colours really pop. thats how I make my yellows are all the way in the minus and the megenta is in the plus. that way your blue goes really blue and deep. I obviously use the 'cyan' to make it pop even more to

but this lil adjustment layer is how a lot of us gif makers make out fav lil pink/purple colourings.

and then obv make sure if you dont compress ur gif that its under 10mb when u export that makes ur gif the highest quality posible with obviously makes the sharpness sharper and les grainy.