#my tutorial

First things first. Below are the things and tools we need to do this:

Downloaded 4K or 1080p quality videos (let’s all assume we know where to get these—especially for high definition movies and tv series—so this post doesn’t get removed, okay? 😛)

Adobe Photoshop CC or the CS versions can work as well, but full disclosure I haven’t created gifs using the CS versions since 2020. I’m currently using Adobe Photoshop 2024.

mpv player. Use mpv player to get those frames/screenshots or any other video player that has a screen grabber feature. I’ve used adapter for the longest time but I’ve switched to mpv because the press to screenshot feature while the video is playing has been a game changer not to mention ultimate time saver for me. For adapter you need to play it in another video player (like VLC player), to get the start and end timestamps of the scene you want to gif which takes me ages before I can even open Photoshop.

Anyway! Please stop reading this post for a moment and head over to this amazing tutorial by kylos. She perfectly tells you how to install and use mpv player, both for Mac and Windows users.

One thing I have to share though, I had a tough time when I updated my MacOS to Sonoma since MPV is suddenly either duplicating frames or when I delete the duplicates the player seems to be skipping frames :/ I searched and found a solution here, though it didn’t work for me lol. My workaround for this in the meantime is decreasing the speed down to 0.70 then start screenshotting—it’s not the same pre Sonoma update but it works so I’ll have to accept it rather than have jumpy looking gifs.

Now, after this part of kylos’ tutorial:

you can continue reading the following sections of my gif tutorial below.

I want to share this little tip (sorry, this will only cater to Mac users) that I hope will be helpful for organizing the screenshots that MPV saved to the folder you have selected. Because believe me you don’t want to go through 1k+ of screenshots to select just 42-50 frames for your gif.

The Control + Command + N shortcut

This shortcut allows you to create a new folder from files you have pre-selected. As you can see below I have already created a couple of folders, and inside each folder I have selected screenshots that I want to include in one single gif. It's up to you how you want to divide yours, assuming you intend to create and post a Tumblr gifset rather than just one gif.

Another tip is making use of tags. Most of, if not all the time, I make supercorp gifs so I tag blue for Kara and red (or green) for Lena—just being ridiculously on brand and all that.

Before we finally open Photoshop, there's one more thing I want to say—I know, please bear with me for the third? fourth? time 😅

It's helpful to organize everything into their respective folders so you know the total number of items/frames you have. This way, you can add or delete excess or unnecessary shots before uploading them in Photoshop.

For example below there are 80 screenshots of Kara inside this folder and for a 1:1 (540 x 540 px) Tumblr gif, Photoshop can just work around with 42-50 max number of frames with color adjustments applied before it exceeds the 10 MB file size limit of Tumblr.

Sometimes I skip this step because it can be exhausting (haha) and include everything so I can decide visually which frames to keep later on. You'll understand what I mean later on. But it's important to keep the Tumblr 10 MB file size limit in mind. Fewer frames, or just the right amount of frames, is better.

So, with the screenshot organization out of the way, let's finally head over to Photoshop.

Giffing in Photoshop, yay!

Let’s begin by navigating to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack…

The Load Layers window will appear. Click the Browse button next.

Find your chosen screenshots folder, press Command + A to select all files from that folder then click Open. Then click OK.

After importing and stacking your files, Photoshop should display the following view:

By the way, I'll be providing the clip I've used in this tutorial so if want to use them to follow along be my guest :)

If you haven't already opened your Timeline panel, navigate to Windows > Timeline.

Now, let's focus on the Timeline panel for the next couple of steps.

Click Create Video Timeline, then you’ll have this:

Now click the menu icon on the top right corner then go to Convert Frames > Make Frames from Clips

Still working on the Timeline panel, click the bottom left icon this time—the icon with the three tiny boxes—to Convert to Frame Animation

Select Make Frames From Layers from the top right corner menu button.

So now you have this:

Go and click the top right menu icon again to Select All Frames

Then click the small dropdown icon to set another value for Frame Delay. Select Other…

The best for me and for most is 0.05 but you can always play around and see what you think works for you.

Click the top right menu icon again to Reverse Frames.

I think Photoshop has long since fixed this issue but usually the first animation frame is empty so I just delete it but now going through all these steps there seems to be none of that but anyways, the delete icon is the last one among the line of feature buttons at the bottom part of the Timeline panel.

Yay, now we can have our first proper GIF preview of a thirsty Lena 😜

Press spacebar to watch your gif play for the very first time! After an hour and half of selecting and cutting off screenshots! 😛 Play it some more. No really, I’m serious. I do this so even as early (lol) as this part in the gif making process, I can see which frames I can/should delete to be within the 10 MB file size limit. You can also do it at the end of course 🙂

Now, let’s go to the next important steps of this tutorial post which I’ve numbered below.

Crop and resize to meet Tumblr's required dimensions. The width value should be either 540px, 268px, or 177px.

Convert the gif to a Smart Object for sharpening.

Apply lighting and basic color adjustments before the heavy coloring. I will be sharing the base adjustments layers I use for my gifs 😃.

1. Crop and Resize

Click on the Crop tool (shortcut: the C key)

I like my GIFs big so I always set this to 1:1 ratio if the scene allows it. Press the Enter key after selecting the area of the frame that you want to keep.

Side note: If you find that after cropping, you want to adjust the image to the left or another direction, simply unselect the Delete Cropped Pixels option. This way, you will still have the whole frame area available to crop again as needed and as you prefer.

Now we need to resize our gif and the shortcut for that is Command + Opt + I. Type in 540 as the width measurement, then the height will automatically change to follow the ratio you’ve set while cropping.

540 x 540 px for 1:1

540 x 405 px for 4:3

540 x 304 px for 16:9

For the Resample value I prefer Bilinear—but you can always select the other options to see what you like best.

Click OK. Then Command + 0 and Command + - to properly view the those 540 pixels.

Now we get to the exciting part :) the sharpen settings!

2. Sharpen

First we need to have all these layers “compressed” intro a single smart object from which we can apply filters to.

Select this little button on the the bottom left corner of the Timeline panel.

Select > All Layers

Then go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters

Just click OK when a pop-up shows up.

Now you should have this view on the Layers panel:

Now I have 3 sharpen settings to share but I’ll have download links to the Action packs at the end of this long ass tutorial so if you want to skip ahead, feel free to do so.

Sharpen v1

Go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen…

Below are my settings. I don’t adjust anything under Shadows/Highlights.

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.4

Click OK then do another Smart Sharpen but this time with the below adjustments.

Amount: 12

Radius: 10.0

As you can see Lena’s beautiful eyes are “popping out” now with these filters applied. Click OK.

Now we need to Convert to Frame Animation. Follow the steps below.

Click on the menu icon at the top right corner of the Timeline panel, then click Convert Frames > Flatten Frames into Clips

Then Convert Frames > Convert to Frame Animation

One more click to Make Frames From Layers

Delete the first frame then Select All then Set Frame Delay to 0.05

and there you have it! Play your GIF and make sure it’s just around 42-50 frames. This is the time to select and delete.

To preview and save your GIF go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)…

Below are my Export settings. Make sure to have the file size around 9.2 MB to 9.4 MB max and not exactly 10 MB.

This time I got away with 55 frames but this is because I haven’t applied lighting and color adjustments yet and not to mention the smart sharpen settings aren't to heavy so let’s take that into consideration.

Sharpen v1 preview:

Sharpen v2

Go back to this part of the tutorial and apply the v2 settings.

Smart Sharpen 1:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.3

Smart Sharpen 2:

Amount: 20

Radius: 0.5

We’re adding a new type of Filter which is Reduce Noise (Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise...) with the below settings.

Then one last Smart Sharpen:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.3

Your Layers panel should look like this:

Then do the Convert to Frames Animation section again and see below preview.

Sharpen v2 preview:

Sharpen v3:

Smart Sharpen 1:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.4

Smart Sharpen 2:

Amount: 12

Radius: 10.0

Reduce Noise:

Strength: 5

Preserve Details: 50%

Reduce Color Noise: 0%

Sharpen Details: 50%

Sharpen v3 preview:

And here they are next to each other with coloring applied:

v1

v2

v3

Congratulations, you've made it to the end of the post 😂

As promised, here is the download link to all the files I used in this tutorial which include:

supercorp 2.05 Crossfire clip

3 PSD files with sharpen settings and basic coloring PSD

Actions set

As always, if you're feeling generous here's my Ko-fi link :) Thank you guys and I hope this tutorial will help you and make you love gif making.

P.S. In the next post I'll be sharing more references I found helpful especially with coloring. I just have to search and gather them all.

oooh! my first ever tutorial ask!!! of course! this is gonna be a lengthy tutorial so please bear with me and i hope you can understand what i am going to explain in this tut!

Photoshop understanding: Beginner friendly/Need to understand gif making, blending modes and layer masks.

First, I used this overlay for the background of my juliet gifs. Save it on your desktop bc we will be using it later on.

My coloring on this gifset is pretty simple. I mostly used either becca's coloring tut here and here, nik's tut here, and elio's tut here. but if you're still having trouble with a basic coloring, i'll do mine here as well! I usually don't keep my psd's or videos when I post my gifset, so I'll be using another video as an a example! hope that's fine. It's still the same process with the juliet gifset I did. I'll be using Benoit as the example!

First, I cropped my gif into a 542 x 542 square and then sharpened it

my sharpening settings: (Smart Sharpen: Amount: 10 Radius: 10, Smart Sharpen: Amount: 500 Radius: 0.4, Add Noise: Amount: 0.1). If it's too much sharpen then I duplicate the layer, go to blur. use the gaussian blur, (Radius: 1, Opacity Layer to 50%)

Next, the coloring tutorial starts! I added a Curves layer and used the white eyedropper tool on the brightest spot in the gif (the red circle is where I clicked the white eyedropper tool).

Next, I do the same thing but with the darkest point with the black eyedropper tool

You can tell how much the Curves layer affected the gif. Next, I'll be adding the Levels layer, I tend to use the Auto feature on this, but, I suggest it on how dark or light I want the gif to be. Since the gif is already dark enough I changed it to a 6 where the grey arrow is and to 236 on the white arrow below. And the middle one to 1.30

Next, I used the Color Balance. This will be a bit tricky since it will change the color of the whole gif. Here are my settings on this gif.

Midtones: -13, -7, -7

Shadows: -5, +3, +6

Highlights: -2, -4, -2

Then I used a Black and White Gradient Map changed the Layer Mode to Soft Light and Opacity to 10%, duplicate it, change the Layer Mode to Multiply, and the Opacity to 20%. I only use these Gradiant Maps if the gifs are too bright. If you have gif that is dark I suggest not to use them.

And that's that for the coloring tut! These are the things I use for most of my gifs! The second part of the tut I'll be showing how, I make them colorful. Add a Solid Color and changed the Layer Mode to Color, erase where the color hits the face. Go down to your Video Timeline and hit the arrow. You'll see the keyframes with position, and the layer mask. Since Benoit is moving a lot. We'll be using the Layer Mask Position keyframe, but hold on, The Layer wont move. unlink the chain that is next to the white layer mask in your layers

Then, move the layer mask frame by frame. The keyframes will autmatically appear after you move it. Sometimes the color doesn't pick up well on the gif or it looks dull, I duplicate the layer after moving the keyframes, and change the Layer Mode to Overlay and turn down the Opacity to 37%

Hey, remember the yellow sparkle gif, I told you to save? Yeah, we're going to use that now. After you import that into photoshop, I tend to make it the same size as my gif, so 542 x 542, copy that gif ctrl + c or cmd + c onto the gif. Though, before you do that, I recommend that, you should convert it to a smart object so everything is in it and you don't mess up anything. After that, paste it into the gif and change the Layer Mode to Screen.

8. Set timeline to what you want.

Five seconds of scenery doesn't really need this, but talking or action, does. Make sure timeline is open(window -> timeline) and move the bars in by click and dragging them until you get the start and end of your 'gif'.

Now, I am going to make a fast and dirty blended gif with two scenes. This is to cause my action to fail, and show you how to fix it.

But this will serve as a fast tutorial for blending gifs too.

For me, each timeline needs to be about 2 seconds long because that's how long the shortest scene is and you want them to match up.

Anything more than about 5 seconds will require clever removal of frames, coloring, or cropping to fit in tumblr's size constraints, just be aware.

8.1 Blending gifs together

Blending two gifs together is easy enough. I've opened two files, I've shortened the timelines and now I will drag this smart layer into your other file. (make sure window -> layer is open so you can see this.)

Once dragged over you'll notice that the timeline looks like this now;

Which is great for many effects, but we are going for blended, so back over to the Layers window and we are going to drag Layer 2 up and out of this Video Group.

So it looks like this, but your timeline is messed up now

Grab the layer that's behind a bit, in this case the Timeline Layer 2 and drag it till it starts at the same time as timeline Layer 1.

Like so.

Sometimes you do need to make sure your gifs line up correctly on the screen, when doing this, so go up into the main window and move Layer 2 if needed.

This is it being nice and squared up.

Now make a new layer(at the bottom of the layer window or just ctrl+shift+n) and drag both the timeline and the smart layers until it looks like this ^^^.

Go to Layer 3, and with a large soft brush smear some color on it, do not worry about perfection. Once you have that Right Click on Layer 2(in layers not timeline) and select create create clipping mask.

You'll get something like this.

I will move layer 2 around a bit, and paint/erase on Layer 3 until I get a shape I like.

Like this;

9. Actions to sharpen and make your gif.

Actions are easy, you simply Load an action and then let it do the work for you by pressing play when you've selected the action. Like so.

The first one we are going to use is a Smart Sharpen action, always do this after cropping.

Select the layer you want to sharpen and press play and it will do the rest for you. You can find lots of other sharpening actions for free on various resource blogs across tumblr, but honestly just fiddling and then saving the sharpening you like best is great!

The second Action we are gonna use is my beefy gif action! But hang on.

If your gif is 5 seconds long use it as is(pressing play at the top 'set document...', it will remove half your frames, if it's shorter, like my 2 second gif, you are going to start a single line down to 'flatten frames into clips' and skip the timeline settings so you have more frames in your gif. Like this;

Press play. Wait as it does all the work for you.

Oh no! It failed, press Stop.

And now delete EVERYTHING but 1 single frame in the timeline. Doesn't matter which ones you delete(I just deleted frame 1).

Without selecting anything else, press play on the action again and wait for it to finish.

Now you do need to do some clean up!

Delete these misc. extra frames.

10. Set gif speed.

Make sure you still have all your frames selected and then right click on any of them!

Go to other and type in what you want.

For 5 second gifs that are scenery I do around .12 seconds, and for talking about .08, for a short gif with full frames, like the one I am making, I will set it to .05 to start and then hit ctrl+alt+shift+s to bring up the gif save menu, and play it, but it looked too fast so I set it to .07.

If you want to get into the weeds you can math out how fast the gif needs to be to match your footage.

11. Trim your gif as needed

Now for me, this looks kinda bad, these last few frames, Lae'zel's face is out of frame. So I am gonna delete them off my gif and then make sure I re-select everything in the timeline window. Once I've done this I will then go ahead and select the very top layer over in the layer window. Time for the fun bit.

12. COLORING

This is all up to personal choice of course! But I highly suggest, especially for older games you do some coloring.

You can of course use PSDs, which I will be providing a free one each day all this month(oct 2024).

However the best thing is to learn how to use various adjustment layers for yourself.

I used every single thing in photoshop at least once to learn what it did many years ago, camera raw has been the newest learning curve for me(being able to import lightroom effects with it, neat!).

Fumbling around is a great way to learn, otherwise there are tons of coloring tutorials, again the various resource blogs have a ton to get you to a baseline.

For this I am going to do a slight vibrance/saturation layer, a gradient map layer reduced down to 20% and then a color balance layer.

If for some reason your coloring isn't showing up across the timeline like so;

You can just go and unify the layers, click all three.

Now, I didn't really like how Lae'zel was looking so I fiddled around with just painting on some colors until I liked the look of it. (Here is the PSD so you can see everything I did).

So from beginning to end, the first uncolored gif looks bland and washed out on tumblr, while the second is more vibrant and better for my personal taste. Some folks love muted gifs, go wild.

Now it's time to save.

13. Saving.

How you save, what format, matters.

But it is a preference thing, for me personally I use pattern for Skyrim scenery and diffusion for most everything else. The reason being Pattern can create banding lines across the face, however pattern has a more aggressive saving method so the file size is smaller.

Ctrl+alt+shift+S will bring up the save menu.

Turn Metadata off, if you are using a legit copy, as it'll have your email address and such in it.

So some things to note. Always pick optimized up top, you can save presets if you want.

To the right of that, try to generally use adaptive algorithm if you can, it tends to not wash out your colors as much. Turn Transparency on but no dither there.

Diffusion vs. Pattern. Honestly everyone is different, I feel a bit strange in that I switch it up constantly as most folks have a preferance.

But things to note about pattern! It makes gradients look lovely. So say the aurora in Skyrim or The Long Dark, or a cloudy sky in RDR or BG3. However on faces or more densely compact changes of color, it doesn't do so well.

Diffusion does have some tricks up its sleeves however for dropping a gif in size! My gif (8.065 MB);

My gif with lossy at 3. (7.825 mb)

Keep your gifs under 10mb. That means 9.99 is fine, 10mb is not, tumblr uses a different compression for everything above 10mb and its not great. So if you need to use lossy 5, do it. If you need to cut 7 frames off the top, do it. If you need to add contrast or remove a color, do it.

Make sure it's looping forever and save!

Now then;

There is more to explore, including watermarks, how to properly tag these days or more aggressive lessons in how to color a gif. But tumblr is already screaming at me for too large of a tutorial!