#linnd2

Hi,

Prior to making my gifs, I make sure to download the anime episode at either a 720 or 1080 video quality. Afterwards, to make my gifs, I mainly use two programs: KMPlayer and Photoshop CS5.

KMPlayer is used to extract the specific frames from the anime to make the gifs. Some of my usual KMPlayer settings are "PNG (slow)" for Image format; "Continuously" for Numbers to extract; "Every Frame" for Frames to extract; and "Original size" for Size to extract. Collectively, this will give me a large amount of screenshots at a decent quality to make gifs with.

Photoshop CS5 is then used to turn those extracted frames into gifs as well as to make adjustments to the original screenshot images. To enhance the quality of the gifs, I mostly use a combination of Smart Sharpen and Surface Blur so that when the image is compressed into a gif it would still look defined and the colors would be better blended to avoid graininess. To enhance the brightness of the images I use a combination of Levels, Curves, and Brightness/Contrast Adjustments layers. Along with that, I also use a combination of Hue/Saturation, Color Balance, Selective Color Adjustment layers to enhance and modify the colors of the images. Later, I would then turn these individual frames into a gif by combining them together in the Animation TImeline and setting a Frame Delay that looks reasonable for the scene I'm gifing (such as 0.08 or 0.13). When everything is done I go to Save for Web & Devices, enter the appropriate Image Size (such as 540 x 250), and click Save. Collectively, this will give me a gif that looks high quality but there are also times that it won't look as high quality—such as if there is a flaw in the source video or if it's a very low lighting scene.