#lasks

also, make sure your monitor / laptop screen is probably calibrated bc i've had bad surprises lol

FOR SHARPENING :

unsharp mask -> my go-to settings are 30/30, 40/20 or 60/10. i adjust the amount/radius depending on gifsize and subject size. holy grail, it WILL add depth and dimension to your gifs just trust.

smart sharpen -> usual amount/radius : 10/10, 30/20 or 40/10. highlights are very sensitive to this one so i adjust accordingly.

smart sharpen -> for finer details, i do 500/0.3 in general, but for some fancams i put through vapoursynth 300/0.3 is less harsh

noise (optional) -> uniform > 1,5-3%. sometimes you just need texture to fake good quality lol, adding noise to flat lq gifs does magic. would also recommend if you use gradients but don't like the "smooth look". the only downside is that it makes your file larger. and i never add noise to fancams.

high pass (optional) : radius 2-5 > 30% opacity > soft light ; if you want a glowy finish, this is your filter. if i use unsharp mask i dont do high pass tho, it's just too much...

FOR COLOURING

how i use adjusment layers for contrast and depth, no particular order, i freestyle it 90% of the time :

curves/levels : use black and white points mostly, pretty intuitive to use. recently my default values in levels are (0 ; 1,27 ; 230) in rgb. both to brighten and fix contrast. i can use up to 3 of each on a single gif ngl bc do this in increments to avoid something too harsh.

channel mixers : not particularly relevant to the depth/hd thingie but it does perform witchcraft to remove tinted filters. HOWEVER, sometimes you look at your gif and you wonder why it's flat and it's because the dominant colour of your gif is tinting the rest, channel mixers is here to bring back balance and dimension !

colour balance : same reasoning as channel mixers, i try not to touch midtones and focus on highlights/shadows, but i like cold toned gifs so i'll always add some blues/cyan in there

selective colour - the star of my show, i use it 1) for colour manipulation, 2) tame harsh lights, 3) undo whitewashing -> for 2&3 i set sc to multiply > set black values to black in all tabs except white and neutral > adjust white and neutrals until i get a neutral skin colour or natural lighting, and/or good contrast. , 4) boost the blacks (2nd to last layer), +10 black values in black tab, sometimes i also add +5 black to neutrals

exposure (last layer) : the final pop, up to +0,60 ; sometimes i go with a layer mask to only target the subject/faces. sometimes i also adjust the gamma value but not often

black and white gradient map : also good for contrast, it will also reduce the number of colours on your base gif. if you have a super saturated original gif with heavy contrast this is v nice to play with to fix that

a tip specific to colourful gifs : if you're transition from vastly opposite colours, do it in increments, and have a solid colour layer of your dominant colour somewhere set to soft light or overlay (or both) on a 20-40% opacity to uniformize all that good stuff and make the blending look natural, it will prevent your gif from looking flat or hazy trust me. sometimes i also do this with a either colour balance shadows or a selective layer set to hue/color.

FOR EXPORTING

if you're working with timeline, say goodbye to exporting directecly from tl and reopening to fix the frame delay bc it causes quality loss. instead, flatten back to frames and reset the frame delay before exporting, that will save you headaches and time. -> here's a link to an action for this !

my preferred combo is adaptive/pattern

i don't know which gifset made you send the ask but here's a before/after comparaison from a gif i made from an IGTV/Reel, so not the best quality or hd finish but yeah.