#liontutorials

Basic Coloring

Relighting the Gif: As you may have noticed, a lot of tv nowadays is dark asf, and even if it isn't too dark, the lighting is just off. So I usually fix this with a Curves Layer. It offers me the most noticeable lighting change than any other method I've tried thus far. So after sharpening and cropping to suit your tastes, add a Curves adjustment layer. Clicking on the White Eyedropper, I then pick a spot on the gif that is the brightest. Sometimes I have to zoom in reallllly close to find a singular pixel thats lighter than all the others. And sometimes the lightest spot is too white and doesn't change anything, and if thats the case then I'll click around a little to see if any other spots offer a change in lighting that I like. I'll repeat this step with the Black Eyedropper but for the darker parts of the gif.

Hue/Saturation: This changes depending on what I'm giffing. For Live Action, I never do more than 10 on the Saturation line. For Anime, I usually do 20 but sometimes I'll do less depending on how the 20 looked. For Live Action with POC, I will do 10 and then open another H/S layer and adjust the red/yellow parts on the H/S.

Vibrance: I start with a Vibrance layer of 30. If I had to take out a lot of red/yellow, I usually duplicate this layer at least once.

Levels: Once I get the main adjustments out of the way, I go back to the Curves layer and add a Levels layer directly above it. On the Levels layer, I use the drop down to go through each color (Red, Green, Blue) and adjust the levels of those colors individually. I personally prefer cool toned gifs, so I usually add quite a bit of blue and red and take out green, but adjust as necessary.

Selective Color: Optional I don't always do this, it depends on the scene and how it already looks after the other four layers. But I do like a strong contrast so I will often Add a Selective Color layer above the Levels layer, choose Black from the drop down, and on the Black slider I increase it to 100. But sometimes thats wayyy too much and I'll do less as needed.

Black and White

For B&W recoloring, I'll do a Curves layer like above and then a H/S layer. On the H/S I'll lower the saturation completely.

Simple Recoloring

Simple as in I'm adjusting a few colors to bring them out more.

To start with and to get a basic grasp of what colors are in your gif, I'll open a Hue/Sat layer and crank the Saturation allll the way up. This will show you the main colors that make up your gif and which ones you need to change to reach your desired outcome.

After muting or deleting the H/S layer, I'll do small adjustments inside a new H/S layer focusing on the colors I want to change, then I'll add a Color Balance layer. Usually I only adjust the midtones and highlights, but it all depends on where the colors are that you're changing. Again, I like cool tone gifs so I'll take out a lot of yellow/green.

From here you can go to Selective Color and adjust the colors up or down as you need.

It's also helpful to add a Gradient Map. With Gradient maps one end should be white or black and the other end the color you want to bring out. Set the gradient maps blend to Overlay and lower the opacity to about 10-25%. Put this layer underneath your recolor layers.

Adding Gradients

On some gifs, it's helpful to add a Gradient layer to achieve a certain look.

Clicking on the Gradient layer, set your gradient and then change the blending layer to Color or Hue. Both of these will give different effects, but it's also a good idea to play with other blending modes to find what you like. From there, I usually lower the Opacity to 30-50%, duplicate the layer and change it to Screen and lower the Opacity on that to 30.

Honestly I don't do a ton of drastic recolors and I always feel kind of insecure about it? I'm very unconfident in my drastic recoloring skills. But if you have any further questions please feel free to ask!

Even if I don't know the answer, I'm sure I know someone who does.

To start with, I made my gifs and then the template which is a 5x5 grid of squares. I made it by making a bunch of lines and then adjusting them until they were all equi-distant apart. there is probably a better and easier way to do that, i just don't know it

The base layer is Big Megumi. On top of him is the smaller unhinged Megumi and the blend on him is set to Screen. And then Gojo is on top of them all, blend set to normal.

Duplicating the grid into the folder, I used the Rectangle Tool to draw three rectangles where I wanted Gojo to show through in the middle. These rectangles were all different layers originally, then I selected them all and Merged them into one shape.

Setting the shape below Gojo's layer, I then right-clicked on Gojo and chose Create Clipping Mask, which clips Gojo to the shape. I adjusted him from there until I got him set the way I wanted in the box.

The grid goes on top of everything then I did the recoloring.

Gojo is H/S with the Sat all the way down, and there's a layer mask on him where i erased the H/S from his eyeball and then increased the Cyan with Selective Color layers.

For the Megumi's, I used H/S and Selective Color to increase the blues until I got it the way I wanted. And that's honestly pretty much it.

The middle gif is simple blending which I actually already have a tutorial on here, and the coloring method is the same as Gojo.

I didn't really add any screenshots to this tutorial, I'm sorry, but I will give you my grids. I have a 5x5 and a 6x6. There's no need to credit me for them, I hope they help you in some way!