#please!!

first thing you're gonna need to do is screen record. i use obs studio because it is open source and doesn't put a watermark on videos. there are a bunch of tutorials on how to use it.

Next, create your basic gif. this is where my pal and yours, Canva, comes in. other people I know swear by ezgif. I find canva easier for picking the desired length, but ezgif is great for making longer gifs, in my experience. How to do the canva way is below.

1. create a design by selecting video. unless I'm using an instagram video or similar, I select video (Landscape). you'll be able to crop later.

2. upload the videos you're going to turn into gifs. I've started making game folders so that it's easier to caption gifs later, but they can all go in the video folder.

3. Drag your video of choice into the editing area, then cut the length to the section you want to gif. 3-4 seconds is my sweet spot because of tumblr gif size restrictions (note this is why ezgif may be preferable for something longer).

4. double click video and crop. This isn't required as you can crop during editing, but unless you pay for canva, there are size/quality limitations, so cropping in canva can help quality.

5. once it's how you want it, click on share -> download. in the file type, select gif, and download.

photopea

1. once you've opened the gif(s) you want to work on, you are going to select all of the layers (see bottom, right corner). if you need to crop, you can do that now. I nearly always keep my gifs at 16:9 ratio, but you can mess around with that here.

2. Resize your gif. on tumblr, that means a width of 540 pixels. this will make your life infinitely easier for every step after this as the larger the image, the longer it will take to load. image -> image size. you can technically stop here, but the next couple steps make my gifs look a little nicer than what pops out from canva.

3. filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen. I do this twice. the first time I do between 150% - 180%, 0.5 px, and the second time I do 10%, 10 px. mess around with it. other people have incredibly sharp gifs. these numbers are what I've come up with based on other tutorials for non-sports gifs. I have another pal that prefers 200%, .3-6 px.

4. image -> adjustment -> curves. this can help with some of the color correction, but be careful. this is also the step where a lot of gif makers whitewash people of color all to hell. do not do that.

5. image -> adjustment -> color balance. I mostly mess with midtones, but in range, you can also play around with highlights and shadows to get the color you want.

6. image -> adjustment -> selective color. I like to push black in my gifs between 5-20%, & I'll sometimes mess around with other colors depending on the team, but this is one of those steps that is not required at all.

7. sizing, resizing, and making it fit for tumblr size restrictions. file -> export as -> gif

often, I end up with a gif that's too big. I can mess around with quality to get it under 10 MB, but if quality starts to get too low, it means I've got to get rid of some layers.

cut layers from the front and back of the gif (you can also do this if you originally have a gif from canva/ezgif that has extra scenes/layers you don't want). select the layer you want to get rid of and hit the garbage can on the bottom far right. the little eye on the left of the photos will let you go through each layer individually.

once it's done, you can export as gif and upload.

if you're still stuck with size -- give ezgif a shot. it allows you more flexibility to make longer gifs at smaller sizes.