#mishaquotes

Here's my typical setup:

1. Your video

2. Photoshop

3. A screencapping tool

4. Notepad

5. Cute Destiel desktop wallpaper (optional)

Some additional notes on each:

1. You want to have a copy of whatever video you're trying to GIF on your hard drive. Don't try to grab your frames straight off the Youtube player or some other stream, because even if you hit play-and-pause-again as quickly as possible, the jump will be way too long. 

If you're doing an episode, use your DVD or Bluray or whatever, um, alternative method you have of downloading these episodes. Note that higher quality is better, obviously, so if you can get 720p logo-less Bluray, awesome. If you want to GIF an online video (a convention panel, sneak peek, etc.) you can use KeepVid to download Youtube and Vimeo videos. (For Twitvids and such, it's slightly more complicated, so if you ever need a guide for that let me know.)

You'll want to open your video file in a media player that offers the option to go through the video frame by frame. I like VLC Media Player, but Windows Movie Maker (that's the movie editor, not just the default player) has this option as well, for instance.

2. I'm using CS5. Pretty much any version of Photoshop ever has the ability to make GIFs, but if you're using one of the rather old (pre-CS) ones, it may involve switching to a separate application (ImageReady), and things will look pretty different from my screencaps.

3. I guess you don't absolutely need to use this if you don't want to install a separate program, but it'll make your life about 348% easier. I'm using Greenshot, which is simple and free.

4. This is totally optional, but I tend to have a Notepad window open so I can quickly write down timestamps, lines of dialogue, etc.

Once you've got all of that, it's time to get started! First, if you haven't used Greenshot before, right-click it's little icon in your system tray and under "Screenshot Destination", make sure "Copy to clipboard" is the ONLY selected option. 

You don't want to have it open it's image viewer thing each time or end up with a whole bunch of single screencaps all over your hard drive. You may also want to turn off its sound (under "Effects") while you're at it, or risk getting annoyed very quickly.

Next, go to the correct time in your video (where you want your first GIF to start), and hit the printscreen key on your keyboard. Instead of just capturing your entire screen, this will now give you the option to select the region you want to capture by clicking and dragging a box over it.

Use this to select the area you want to GIF (either your entire video, but without the surrounding windows, desktop etc., or only a certain part of it). You will only need to do this once, for your first frame, and it'll save you the trouble of cropping your screencaps in Photoshop later (compared to just using your printscreen key traditionally).

Once your selection is done, open a new file in Photoshop (it should automatically adjust to the dimensions of your captured region), and hit paste/ctrl-v. There's your first frame.

Now, go to the next frame in your video player. In VLC, this is done by pressing the "e" key. Windows Movie Maker has previous/next frame buttons underneath the video. What's important here is that you generally don't want to capture every single frame, or you'll end up with a huge GIF; at the same time, you don't want to skip TOO many frames either, or it'll look all jumpy and jerky. (Remember, this is why you wanted to download and have the frame-by-frame option in the first place. :P)

So honestly, this is a bit of a trial-and-error thing, where you just kinda have to develop a feel for how many frames to skip, and which particular frames you DO want to copy and use for your GIF. This doesn't have to be the same number each time, either! Sometimes I use three subsequent frames in a row, sometimes I'll skip 2 frames, 3, occasionally even up to 5-6 frames if it's a very "static" moment. 

As soon as you do arrive at the next frame you want to use, hit shift+printscreen on your keyboard. This will copy that same area you selected previously to your clipboard. Paste it into your PSD and there's your second frame!

Keep doing this until you've got all your frames in the PSD. You'll want to aim for a maximum of about 20-25 frames per GIF to stay within Tumblr filesize limits, generally. Now it's time to make the thing actually animated:

Make sure your animation pane is on. If it isn't, turn it on under "Window" in the menu bar. Then click the little options button in the top right corner of the animation timeline, and select "Make frames from layers".

You can hit the play button on your newly created animation to see what it's like, but it's almost certainly going to run a little fast.

So, select all of your frames (click the first one, and then the final one while holding down shift), click on the "0 sec." text underneath any frame, and pick a delay. Which one you need will depend on how many frames you ended up skipping during the previous part. Delays anywhere from 0.05 to 0.2sec tend to work best for me. Note that you'll need to pick "Other" and type in your delay manually if you want to use something shorter than 0.1sec.

Next, you can alter the colours, contrast, vibrance, etc. of your GIF any way you like. I have a separate tutorial on some of the adjustment layers I like to use up here. Just fiddle with a bunch of them until you get the look you desire.

Then select all of your new layers (using the shift key again, like with the frames), and from that menu button on the animation pane, select "Match layer across frames". This ensures that your new adjustments are made to each of your frames.

Resize your GIF to whatever size you want it to be, using Image > Image Size. A full-width image on Tumblr is 500px wide; half-width is 245px, and one-third is 160px.

If you want to add any text to the GIF, put it in using the Type tool. Adding a "Stroke" effects layer (under the "FX" button on the Layers menu) will generally make the text easier to read. Then use the "Match layer across frames" option from above on your new text layer to ensure the text is visible on every frame.