1. composition

choosing scenes for overlays can be a little tricky if you don’t have any particular scenes in mind, or even if you do but aren’t sure how to put them together in a way that works best. i usually fall back to one of these four compositions. from there, it helps me choose the scenes to use and how they might look together. i’ll show examples for each one, from both animation and live action, so that it’s easier for you to picture

ofc, it doesn’t always work, e.g. if i really want to use two particular scenes, but both don’t really fall into any of these. one such instance this may occur is if there’s a lot of movement/ action in both scenes, like the one i've used in the header. in such a case, you probably need to experiment a little to see if it works

2. overlay mechanics

lighten vs screen

i usually use one of two blend modes for overlays: lighten or screen. without going into the technical difference between the two, the layman understanding (it me. i am the layman.) is that screen will allow more of your bottom gif to be seen through the top gif, while lighten will select the pixels that are lighter in colour between the two gif layers and show that one, regardless of whether it’s at the top or bottom

which blend mode you use really depends on the scenes you’re working with: sometimes, screen might be too distracting because it’s showing too much going on from both gif layers, while other times, lighten reduces the overlay effect because most of the darker scene is hidden. at times, the difference between the two is minimal, at this point it’s up to your personal preference - whether you wanna trade off between just a little bit more distraction vs. a little more obvious of an overlay

i’ve put in some examples from the gifsets you linked here, to show the blend modes i chose for them and why i didn’t choose the alternate

masking

after you’ve selected your blend mode, the two gifs might not overlay exactly the way you want it, with some parts still being hidden because of the contrast in brightness of the two gifs. for instance, in the first example above, half of the face on the right is hidden by the scene with the face on the left, because the latter is brighter than the former. this is where the layer mask comes in

i follow three main “rules” when masking for overlays:

use soft brush

the bigger the brush, the better

click, don’t drag

here’s a demonstration of these three tips

brightness adjustments

once you’ve done your overlay and masking, it’s the step for brightness adjustments to finetune the contrast between the two scenes. or in some cases, this might be much more than finetuning because the contrast between the two scenes still isn’t working out or can’t be masked away

i won’t go into too much detail here because i’ve talked about it before here [x] in step 2. in general, the rule of thumb is: if you want more of a particular scene to be visible, make it brighter. if you want to more of a particular scene to be hidden, make it darker

this can be done by one/ two/ three/ all of these adjustment layers:

gradient map (especially relevant if you want your scene to be b&w or with a colour gradient - see next part on colouring): by toggling the percentage of black vs. white/ whatever other colour you’re using

brightness & contrast

curves

levels

3. colouring

if you haven’t noticed by now, whenever i do overlays, i prefer to keep the colours as minimal as possible, since overlay effects tend to already be very busy visually (also bc i’m lazy). bringing back some examples, i usually go with one of the following combinations

i usually fall back to 1, 2, or 3, just because they’re the most straightforward, easiest, and provide the highest contrast. they also work especially well when you want to keep the whole gifset to a very fixed colour palette, which makes all the gifs look more cohesive altogether

4 is where animation and live action differ. i usually do this more with live action scenes just because it’s easier to mask specific areas with live action scenes, as compared to with animation scenes. because with animation scenes, if i want to mask a face, for example, because of the lines in animation, you will need to use a hard brush to mask the precise area of the face for the gif to look as cohesive as possible (not fun, especially for characters with spiky hair tips). versus in live action scenes, you can get away with using a soft brush and not going too much into the details, at least for scenes with not that much action. for both kinds of media, another layer of tediousness comes in when you need to shift the mask around as the scene or character moves. so i don’t use this colour combination very often, usually only with (usually live action) scenes that are more static, and when i really wanna show a more natural face colour in contrast with a coloured background, instead of slapping a coloured gradient map onto every single scene

5 is a lazy way to work around 4. however, it only works when your subject (the part of the scene you want to keep in its natural/ close to natural colour) is a very different colour from the rest of the scene, such that it can be isolated with colour adjustments. this isolation can be done with selective colouring (more on that here [x]) or with the hue/ saturation layer by reducing the saturation of the particular colour(s) you want to hide. for me, i usually like to emphasise reds and get rid of blues, so this works especially well if i want to keep a character’s face colour in a scene with a lot of blues

first, i made both gifs separately. when i'm combining multiple gifs into one canvas, i typically do not crop them beforehand and instead leave them at their original dimensions so i can move them where necessary on the final canvas. this is totally personal preference.

in this case, my final canvas was 540px by 540px. i create this canvas separately and then bring both gifs over to it. i've sharpened them, but left them uncolored and uncropped.

once both gifs are on the same canvas, i add the ripped paper texture/brush. now, you can do this effect with any sort of texture or brush, not just one that looks like ripped paper, but that's what i used for this set. you can find all sorts of brushes on my resource blog or you can search for them on google or other PS resource websites. you can do the same with textures as well -- here's that tag on my resource blog.

the most important parts are the order of your layers and using clipping masks. for this effect to work, you need the brush/texture layer to go IN BETWEEN your two gif layers. if you're using a texture, you don't really need to do anything other than using either the transform tool (ctrl+t) or move tool (v) to position your texture where you'd like it. it depends on the look you're going for, but with both of the gifs in this set that use this technique, they're divided approximately in half.

if using a brush instead of a texture, you need to create a new layer in between both of your gifs first before stamping the brush in the desired location.

without any clipping masks, your canvas will just show the topmost layer, which we'll call gif #2. gif #1 is your bottom/lowest layer with the brush/texture layer above it and gif #2 at the very top. this is what my canvas looks like with gif #2 hidden so you can see the positioning of my ripped paper brush:

to create a clipping mask, right-click on the gif #2 layer and select "create clipping mask." now you should see both gifs with gif #2 only appearing where your brush/texture appears:

you can see that depending on your texture/brush and its positioning, you can end up with a lot of cool and dynamic arrangements! clipping masks and the order of our layers are going to continue to be very important in order to keep the coloring separate. if it gets hard to keep track of what is where, you can always rename your layers by double-clicking on them!

let's color gif #1 first. before adding your first adjustment layer, make sure you have gif #1 selected as any coloring layers need to be above gif #1 but BELOW your texture/brush layer. because gif #2 and the texture/brush layer are above gif #1 and whatever coloring layers, they will only apply to gif #1. you do NOT need to use clipping masks for gif #1. here are my coloring/adjustment layers and their settings (click to enlarge):

the coloring layers for gif #2 need to be above gif #2 and all of them must utilize clipping masks! with adjustment layers, there are a couple ways to do this. you can right-click on each of them and select "create clipping mask" like we did before or you can click this button underneath the properties tab of each layer:

here are these coloring layers and their settings:

the last thing i did was add the drop shadow part of the texture/brush. to do this, i duplicated that layer and moved it down a handful of pixels using the transform tool (ctrl+t).

to add the color overlay effect (making it pink), double click the layer, select color overlay, and choose your color and applicable blending mode. i just chose a pink color and left its blending mode at normal and 100% opacity.

[1] Create your gif

Make the gif like you normally would, apply coloring, sharpen, etc. If you don’t know how to make gifs yet, click here for some great tutorials.

Assuming you’ve already converted into a Video Timeline and your layers into a Smart Object in your gif making process, let’s proceed.

[2] Make sure the playhead is at the start of the timeline

If your playhead isn’t at the start of the timeline, do this before adding new layers (which are the next steps) so the new layers will be aligned with your gif and coloring layers as demonstrated below:

[3] Add a photo texture

[3.1] Resources

Download the texture here, which I found through this post. You can also get free textures from Freepik, Pexels or Free Stock Textures.

[3.2] Place your texture

REMINDER: [2] Make sure the playhead is at the start of the timeline before placing.

To place your texture, go to File > Place Embedded... > then select a texture from the file downloaded in [3.1].

I chose the texture named "VHS TEXTURE - LITTLEDR3AMS (2)". It's a long image but I only used the bottom part of it.

NOTE: Make sure the texture layer is above your gif and coloring layers.

[3.3] Change the blending mode

I set the texture's blending mode to Soft Light. Feel free to experiment with the different modes and adjust the opacity.

[4] Add a video texture

[4.1] Resources

The texture used in my gif example from Youtube. In hindsight, I should have gotten my video texture from Pexels or Videezy. They're (mostly) free to download.

[4.2] Make a gif from the texture video

Make the gif like you normally would, but no need to apply coloring and sharpening.

NOTE: No need to gif the whole video, otherwise it would be very long.

[4.3] Change the blending mode

Just like in [3.3], I changed the texture's blending mode. For this one, I set it to Screen with the opacity at 70%. Feel free to experiment with the different modes and adjust the opacity.

Now that you already know how to do that, here's a psd file of the texture I used 😂

NOTE: Before we proceed, make sure you’ve already converted your Frame Animation into a Video Timeline, and converted all your layers into a Smart Object. Here's an easy tutorial on how to do it.

[4.4] Transfer your texture gif onto your main gif

REMINDER: [2] Make sure the playhead is at the start of the timeline before transferring.

To transfer the texture, check out how to do it here. It's super quick.

NOTE: Make sure the texture layer is above your gif and coloring layers. I put my texture gif over my texture photo.

[5] Split colors (OPTIONAL)

If you've noticed, there are green and pink color outlines in the gif. If you haven't, here it is zoomed in:

[5.1] Duplicate your actual gif layer

Select your gif layer then press the shortcut key for duplicating layers: command (Mac) / Ctrl (Windows) + J

[5.2] Split the RGB channels

With the duplicated gif layer selected, click the fx button which is at the bottom of the Layers window then click Blending Options...

Under Advanced Blending, untick the R and B boxes (later, you can experiment with this and untick G and B or R and G). This is what my settings look like:

[5.3] Nudge the duplicated layer

Select the Move tool (shortcut key: V) and press the left arrow key twice. It's a bit subtle, but it should look like this when you're moving it:

You could also nudge your duplicated layer upwards, downwards or to the right. Now that we can see what it looks like, you can now go back and experiment with the channels—untick G and B, or R and G—and see which colors you like best on your gif.

〰️

I’m sure there are other ways to do this, and of course you don’t have to follow this tutorial step by step... but this is my process.

So, first you have your ‘still’ image open and ready to go (we’re gonna call it image #1)

You’re going to open up the gif that you’re going to put over the still (we’re gonna call this guy image #2)

In order to do this right, both pictures must be the exact same size and have the exact same number of frames. Otherwise, things will just not work out. Make image #2 the same size as image #1. In order to make them have the same number of frames, you’re going to go back to the still image you have open, go down to the bottom and hit ‘create frame animation’

(If it says something along the lines of ‘create timeline’ all you have to do is hit the arrow down button and change it to create frame animation)

it’s going to create a single frame animation, see below.

Go to the far right and hit this

It’s going to open up a dialogue box you’re going to select ‘copy frames’, 

click ‘ok’, then the box will disappear.

You’re gonna hit this box once again

The dialogue box will pop up again, this time you’ll select ‘paste frames’

this box will pop up and you’re going to select ‘pate after selection’, then this will happen

Now you have two frames! Woot! From here, you’re going to keep copying / pasting the frames until you have the exact same frames in image #1 as you do in image #2.

Once you have the same number of frames in both, you’re going to go back to image #2, select the first frame of the set

then scroll aalllll the way over to the very last frame of the set, HIT SHIFT + click the last frame. This should have selected each frame from 1-100

then select this

the dialogue box will appear again, hit ‘copy frames’. Go back to image #1, follow the same steps of selecting frame 1 to the very last frame. Hit this once more,

then hit ‘paste frames’ in the dialogue box. The same box will appear

You’re going to select ‘past frames over selection’ this is crucial.

It will now look like this

It went on there not centered at all, in order to center is you have to select everything but pressing CTRL + A (control + all) and now you’re image will look like this

I always think of this as little dancing arts surrounding the image lol. Anyways, now that everything is selected, you’re going to hit this button on the left side

This is the ‘Move’ button. Then, at the very top you will see this

In order to center it, you’re going to hit both of these

And that will perfectly center your image.

Nooooww you’re going to go over to the ‘Layer’ section on the right and they should look something like this

You’re going to select the very top layer (layer 100 for me), then scroll all the way to the first layer at the bottom and once again while pressing the Shift button, select ‘Layer 1′. This will select every layer of image #2. Now you’re going to find this at the bottom right

select this

This will ‘Group’ your layers together. Now, it should look like this

You’re going to highlight / select the Group 1 layer, then near the top you’ll see this

You’re going to use the drop down arrow and switch the layer settings, you can chose lighten, screen, really whatever works best for the look you’re going for. I’m going to use ‘Color Dodge’

Now my image looks like this.

The snow falling is a bit too strong for my taste, so I’m going to go to Layers area and find the opacity.

It’s currently set at 100%, but I’m gonna change it to 60% so it’s not so extreme.

Now it looks like this.. it’s a bit softer in my opinion :)

Now we’re going to add our ‘transition’ (the things that makes it look fancy on mobile)

To do this, you’re going to go back to this section

instead of pressing the group button, you’ll select this one instead

This is going to add a new layer. Make sure to keep it at the top, and it should look like this.

Now you’re going to go over to the left side and find the brush (or press the ‘B’ key as a shortcut)

and while on the new layer, draw whatever pattern you wish!

This is my final product.