#ps advice

The HD part all depends on the quality of the video, which should be as high as possible, usually 720p or 1080p.  I mainly download my dramas from tosarang or some similar site; for direct downloads, I use doramax265, but that has a lot of pop-ups.  You can pretty much google “[insert name of drama] download” and find it somewhere.  Right now, I’m using the Daum PotPlayer to watch everything.  I suggest googling how to do stuff with the player because I’m still learning, and there are guides everywhere.  But, at the very simplest, ctrl + E takes a single screenshot.

In Windows 10, you can also use the Windows button + prt scr, which I do if I’m taking single screenshots from DramaFever for a picspam like this one: http://arangs.tumblr.com/post/149405768784

(I generally don’t download cdramas and twdramas because they are usually hardsubbed in Mandarin when you download them.  Also, they’re harder to find, and I can’t read Chinese at all.  I can’t read Japanese either, but they’re still easier to find.)

I kind of explained how to use VLC to take screenshots here: http://arangs.tumblr.com/post/137908577909/how-do-you-gif-mkv-videos

icons: http://arangs.tumblr.com/post/137853691124/an-anon-asked-me-to-make-a-step-by-step-tutorial

editing for screenshots: http://arangs.tumblr.com/post/135606465174/can-you-tell-use-how-you-edit-your-screen-caps

to make gifs, @banghae​ explains it very well here, using the Daum PotPlayer: http://banghae.tumblr.com/post/132675106412/can-you-show-me-how-to-create-these-amazing-gifs

Aww, thank you so much!!  That makes me feel really great, and it makes all the time I spend on them worth it :)

I almost always download the raw episode as a torrent via either tosarang (public Korean torrent tracker) or avistaz (formerly asiatorrents, a private tracker which you need to register for, and I’m not sure if registration’s open right now or not).  I’ve also gotten direct downloads sometimes.  Just google the show name and episode number and 720p or 1080p, plus download of course.  Then I play them with the VLC player and take screenshots with that (you can set which key you want to use, I use the enter key).  For gifs, I sometimes need to slow down the speed of the player to 0.8x or even 0.5x if the scene or part I want to gifs is really short–this is especially true of photoshoots videos because everything is so quick in those (I had to slow down the video for almost all of the gifs in this set).  Oh, and that reminds me.  For photoshoots and music videos, I download the YouTube videos with keepvid, which is super easy to use and self-explanatory.

As for the editing, for edits and picspams and the like, I either take screenshots or save an hq version of a picture (always greater than or equal to 540px for the width because that’s what tumblr uses). I usually make my own psds.  If you use Photoshop, just play around with the layers until you like what you see.  The adjustment layers I almost always use are curves (1 or 2 or these), levels, brightness/contrast, possibly a selective color if need be, some gradient, maybe a color fill or two (adjusting the opacity and fill), and sometimes exposure.  But you’ll need to account for day vs. night scenes (Twenty Again night scenes are awful to color).  You can find a lot of tutorials on tumblr.  Right now, I sometimes use a psd I got from somewhere (don’t remember where, sorry) that I’ve modified to suit my tastes.  I use Photoshop CC.

For gifs, I do the same thing when it comes to coloring, although typically my edits will look more…realistic?  What I mean is that I play around with the color fills more in gifs than I do in my still stuff.  For example, here is a gifset I made for She Was Pretty ep. 6.  I remember I used a purple color fill on that one (in addition to some other stuff, but that’s what sticks out).  And here is a picspam I made for Sassy Go Go ep. 1.

hi!! sorry about the late response i was out of town

oh my god!?!?! thank you so much. for screencap memes i have a pretty basic routine; i sharpen all the caps (smart sharpen: amount 500, radius .2) and then i use a topaz labs plugin to soften it up, and if it still looks grainy or i want a more ‘blurry’ effect i use gaussian blur (2 radius and adjust opacity in smart filters)

then i either use a screencap psd or i make a very generic one just with curves, brightness/contrast, and vibrance. the most important thing for me is textures especially ‘light’ ones (like no pattern just colors) and i find one that will look good with the cap, resize it, and put it to ‘screen’ and adjust opacity. if it still isn’t as colorful as i’d like it, i’ll add another layer, select a color that goes well with the texture, paint a bit where there aren’t any faces or such, and then blur it (gaussian blur) and lower opacity