#ps guide

i use photoshop 2021 for making my stuff. You can download photoshop and other gifs/grfx related resources from this page. (studiocarat, a grfx network for carats)

This was originally going to a part of my other "photoshop tips n tricks" tutorials but i noticed that this is a sorta big one and imp one and thus needs a tutorial of its own.

ABOUT "ACTIONS"

You can record most—but not all—commands in an action.

You can record operations that you perform with the Marquee, Move, Polygon, Lasso, Magic Wand, Crop, Slice, Magic Eraser, Gradient, Paint Bucket, Type, Shape, Notes, Eyedropper, and Color Sampler tools—as well as those that you perform in the History, Swatches, Color, Paths, Channels, Layers, Styles, and Actions panels.

Results depend on file and program setting variables, such as the active layer and the foreground color. For example, a 3‑pixel Gaussian blur won’t create the same effect on a 72‑ppi file as on a 144‑ppi file. Nor will Color Balance work on a grayscale file.

When you record actions that include specifying settings in dialog boxes and panels, the action will reflect the settings in effect at the time of the recording. If you change a setting in a dialog box or panel while recording an action, the changed value is recorded.

Go to Window > Actions. You will see a small play botton in your toolbar on the right side, that’s your actions. Click on it and it’ll open your box with some photoshop actions.

LOGO IN GIFS

Step 0: open photoshop, load your gifs, convert them into a smart object, do you colouring ! Make sure your gif is in timeline video mode !

Since, your doing a logo, you have to have a logo already made and saved in a png format in your laptop. So when you play your action, PS will automatically place you logo png from the destination it was saved in. Your logo can be in a 100 x 100 px transparent background.

for example, my logo looks like this:

Step 1: Click on the folder icon to create a new "Action Set". Name your set. for example, 'watermark'.

Step 2: Click on the '+' icon beside the Action set icon. It will create a new action. You can select which Action Set you want it to be a part of; in this case, "watermark" action set. Rename your new action as your preference.

The second you hit the record button in the dialog box, everything you do will be recorded as steps/action so don't do unnecessary steps or else you'll have to redo your whole action.

Step 3 : The small button in (3) will turn red (🔴) indicating the recording has begun.

Step 4 : Assuming you already have your logo made and saved, click on File > Place / Place embedded. It will open your file manager, select your logo and press enter. It will place your logo on your gif as a separate layer. If it is made on a small PNG (eg. 100 x 100 px), you wont need to resize the photo, but if necessary please resize the logo to your preference.

Step 5: Right click your layer and rasterize it clicking "rasterize layer". Place your timeline cursor thingy at the starting of the timeline.

Step 6: Select your whole document by the shortcut CTRL/CMND + A or Select > All.

Step 7: Now, select your logo layer by clicking it. Go to Layer > Align layer to selection. Select Align Bottom. You'll see your logo move to the bottom. Go to Layer > Align layer to selection again and click on Alight left or Align Right according to your preference.

i don't like my logo sticking to the edges, so i selected the logo, pressed CNTRL/CMND + T and used arrow keys and pressed right & up arrow keys 5-8 times so that logo doesn't stick to the edge.

Step 8: Now, in most cases, the logo layer will be longer than the gif layer in timeline. Like this:

Now, You can place your Timeline cursor thingy somewhere in the middle of the logo layer from the starting by dragging it and press cut ( the scissors icon) on timeline. This will split your layer in two. layer “logo” and “logo copy”.

Step 9: Delete the second half of the cut (logo copy) by selecting it and pressed 'delete' key on your keyboard.

Step 10: Press the square logo (■) on your action box to stop recording. Voila! you're done recording your action !

Step 11: you might notice that you can't see you logo, just adjust the logo layer so that it matches the gif layer! The only thing you'll need to adjust in each gif is the size of layer by matching it to the gif layer.

Don’t make the adjust layer size in timeline as a part of your action because it is different with every gif.

You can adjust your blending mode according to your preference but recommended are overlay & soft-light.

TEXT IN GIFS

STEP 1, 2 AND 3 ARE THE SAME

STEP 4: click on your text tool and type out your watermark name (url, name, whatever) in your preferred font and size. ( recommended size: 10). Press enter.

STEP 5: You don't require to rasterize your layer cause you may want to edit the text later.

STEPS 6 THROUGH 11 ARE SAME.

LOGO IN PHOTOS

FOLLOW STEPS 1 THROUGH 7 to get your action for logo in photos.

Action you just made for gifs won't work with photos because it has the command like "set time of time line", "Split video layer", " Select file 'LOGO copy'" and "Delete Layer" and these won’t work on a photo.

Since there is no timeline in photos, you don't require steps 8, 9 and 10.

TEXT IN PHOTOS

STEPS 1, 2 AND 3 ARE SAME

STEP 4: click on your text tool and type out your watermark name (url, name, whatever) in your preferred font and size. ( recommended size: 10). Press enter.

STEP 5: You don't require to rasterize your layer cause you may want to edit the text later.

FOLLOW STEPS 6 & 7 AND PRESS STOP RECORDING ■.

You can choose your preferred blending mode.

You will see all your action recorded and saved. PS has an auto syncing function so once you have made your action, you don't have to make it again. When required, just select the Action you want and press play ▶

My actions look like this for logos & text (url) in gif:

End result:

i tried my best to explain. if you have any problem or doubt in a step, please feel free to approach me!

STEP ONE: SETTING UP

Open your file.

Open up your image, easy peasey.

Create a Group.

Create a group, you can do that by going down and hitting that little file looking button there.

Naming.

Give your new group a name of some kind to help identify it.

STEP TWO: THE ADJUSTMENT LAYERS

Open up the adjustment layers menu.

Open up the adjustment layers menu, you can do this by right clicking over the circle at your bottom menu, right beside your file button. This part is vitally important, nothing else matters if you are not using adjustment layers!! If you just use regular filters or adjustments it’ll add directly to the picture opposed to creating a new layer.

Familiarize yourself with the list.

We won’t be using everything in this menu, in fact we’ll mainly be sticking to the middle two categories, with the exception of one from the bottom.

Brightness and Contrast.

Starting from the top, I’ll show you how brightness and contrast works, so select this option from your menu, and a new tab should open up.

Now you’ll notice when the tab opens you’re given two options.

Brightness, changes the over all brightness of the picture, whether it’s lighter or darker.

Contrast, will change how much this fact stands out, whether the shadows are prominent or lesser.

Move each one of the arrows to your liking, and once you’ve reached a point you’re fond of, just hit the little ‘x’ at the top of this pop up tab.

Levels.

Next are the levels, your levels tool will move and stretch the brightness of your image, it allows you to adjust your brightness, contrast, and tones, all by adjusting the location of the complete black, and white values.

Now by moving the arrows either on the chart, or the gradient, you’ll change your lighting. If you pull from left to right, there will be less black in the picture, and there for it will lighten.

Curves.

Next are the curves, think of curves as a more powerful version of the brightness and contrast tool.  Using this you can pull and adjust just the shadows, the midtones, and the highlights and change their intensity.

Now by pulling the bottom point over, I’m deepening the shadows, while if I instead raised it, i’d be removing them. The middle point controls your midtones, while the top point controls your highlights.

Exposure//Offset/Gamma Correction.

Using the exposure option will adjust mainly the highlights in the image, the offset will darken the shadows and midtone values, while gamma correction effects only the midtones.

By lowering the exposure I’m darkening the highlights, and raising the offset gives it a more washed out look, while adding a bit of gamma correction won’t make the grey tone the offset adds so obvious.

Vibrancy and Saturation.

I personally always like to add vibrancy and saturation to my PSDs, by adding vibrancy you’re enhancing the colours, and saturation will change how pure the colours show up.

Enhancing the vibrancy and saturation in most PSDs will help avoid white washing as it adds colour back to the skin.

Hue and Saturation.

Hue and saturation will change the over all colour of your image, as hue is the colour, while saturation is the intensity of the colour.

Now in most cases for a PSD you don’t want to go crazy, but you have a full spectrum of colours to use.

Colour Balance.

Colour balance allows you to isolate and change the colour of either just the highlights, midtones, or shadows.  Which ever way you pull the slides, is the colour that will begin to show up.

I personally love to put contrast between the layers, for the midtones I’m warming it.

For the shadows I’m adding a mixture of warm and cold colours.

And for the highlights I’m adding more cold tones to the picture.

Black and White.

While it’s pretty obvious, black and white just turns your picture black and white.

You can move the levels to choose whether you want certain colours in the before image to be darker. Ie; moving the red, will make it so the places were red were are either darker or lighter.

(But we don’t want any of that right now, so let’s turn that layer off)

Photo Filters.

Photo Filters are essentially pre-made filters you can add to your images, these come in different tones, and hues.

Choosing a warming filter just means that it’ll add a warmer tone to the image.

Channel Mixer.

The channel mixer allows you to mix colour channels, you can add colour where it’s lacking, or completely greys scale if you wish.

By selecting an output channel and then lightening a channel you’re taking out that colour, while deepening it means you adding more of it. If you have the blue channel open, and add red to it, the blue in the image will then have more redcoming through.

Selective Colouring.

Selective colouring is the option that allows you to change one colour to another. By going into the colour menu you can select that colour in the image and then by moving the pointers you could change that red to blue, or green.

In this case I’m amping up cyan  in the red channel, which is adding a blue tint to the image opposed to a red one.

An example of an extreme version of this would be if I went into every colour  channel and lowered everything except for magenta and black.

(but we aren’t going to do that)

STEP THREE: FINISHING UP

Now we’ve gone through all the main important adjustment layers, you can continue to add more until you get your desired outcome, you are not limited to just one of each. Make sure you save this as PSD to access your file again in the future.