#ricksmarlene

Grainy HD/Pixelated Video

Depending on the size and definition of your source file, the video itself may be pixelated, which will show up even the more once you start brightening, coloring, and sharpening. In general, the higher the GB, the higher the resolution, the more you can manipulate and stretch the gif from its original appearance before it starts to disintegrate.

I have learned not all 1080P files are made equal. Some are pixelated and will just give you grainy gifs (which you then have to compensate for).

Usually, I lean towards very bright, vibrant gifs. However, for videos that start out pixelated, I sometimes brighten it less or manipulate the colors less. For example, check out the gifs below.

The original looked like this. Incredibly dark with a ray of light coming from the left (how can they be outside in the daylight and the scene be this dark??).

Then I start brightening.

The innocuous light coming from the left is now making the pixels stand out even more, washing out the color.

When a gif looks grainy, I will often switch to smaller dimensions such as 540 x 270 or 540 x300 to compress the image and (hopefully) minimize some of the graininess. The graininess remains, but the gif and therefore the most offensively grainy areas are also smaller.

Example: 540 x 400 v 540 x 300 (Brightened to show contrast)

Yet, for this particular gifset, I wanted to do 540 x 350, so I had to find other means for decreasing the graininess.

Tip: If the source material is not the problem, usually, the culprit for grainy/pixelated gifs is overmanipulating. If you make everything too bright, you start to see the individual pixels, especially if the original scene is very dark. Same thing can happen if you oversaturate or over sharpen.

Therefore, I tone down the brightness. Though still there, the pixelation is less noticeable. Nevertheless, when I add Selective Color to make the greens more vibrant, the pixels go haywire. Green and cyan pixels across her face, on her lips, in her hair.

So, I add a mask to the Selective Layer to remove the green/cyan from her hair.

This is the final PSD.

Turning Low Contrast to High Contrast

Take a look at this picture. Beautiful scene, but a gif-makers nightmare. Her entire face is covered in a blue-green wash. The highlights and shadows have also been grayed and tinted, drastically lowering the contrast, making the gif duller. The first action I take is to remove the wash and blacken the shadows.

Now, the blue film that was clouding her face has been stripped away and I can see her features more clearly. However, the base color scheme still isn't neutral. I can still see the yellow-green wash, and the gif is slightly darker now.

So, I now select the brightest area to be the whitest (here I chose the bright spot on her hoodie on the far right). If you look at the screenshot below, you can see her the yellow-green wash has now dissipated. There are still hints of blue at the top and bottom, but it looks more natural (imo), and it's not over her face, which is the most important part of the gif. SHE has been returned to a neutral color scheme. Also, the contrast between the shadows and the highlights have been increased, making the gif look sharper. The overall brightness has been restored too.

To summarize: Using the curves eye dropper works as a color correction. When a scene is covered in a color wash (blue, green, or yellow filter), the shadows and highlights also become tinted. By selecting the darkest shadow to be black, the curves layer strips the gif of the color wash (this works best when there is a wide range of shades). When you do the same with the brightest highlight, it removes the wash even further. Using curves to color correct is usually my first step in the gif-making process. Then, I start brightening.

I use most of the brightness options. I rarely use exposure. The order in which I put them in changes all time, and often, I move the layers around throughout the process. This time, I started with Brightness/Contrast first. I left it on Normal and moved the brightness up by 50. A lot of people use the Contrast on Brightness, but nowadays I prefer to use the Curves eye dropper and Levels Contrast options instead. Again, it's all a matter of preference. There are a thousand ways to get a satisfying end result.

For your first brightness layer, you can do another Curves layer. It's honestly my favorite brightening tool. You can manually adjust your Curves or you can use the Auto feature, and let it self-adjust (I usually still tweak it even if I use Auto as a base).

OR you add a Brightness/Contrast layer set to Screen instead of Normal, and you would get similar results. For this one, I adjusted the opacity to 40% (or whatever the gif can withstand. Sometimes, it's as low as 15%). This brightens the mid tones and shadows as well, so I rarely ever leave it at 100% on screen.

For this gif though, because I'm a brightness lover, I used both lol. Instead of manually adjusting the Curves, this time I pressed the Auto button and let it self-adjust (I think I just find pressing the button fun lol). The gif is already so bright, it only moved the brightness up a smidge.

Technically, at this point, I could call it quits and be done with the gif, but I never finish a gif without some color manipulation. So, I immediately turn to color balance.

There were still hints of the original blue green/yellow green wash, so I adjusted the color balance away from green and away from cyan (cyan also affects green).

Then I added a 2nd Color Balance to adjust the highlights. You can do this on the same color balance but I like to keep them separated (just so I can play with the colors freely without worrying about ruining the previous color balance I liked).

I also decided to lower the Brightness/Contrast layer which I set to Screen to 30% instead of 40% because I was seeing too many pale, grayish pixels (because they had been lightened too much). I also replaced the 2nd Curves layer with a Levels layer (see below), so I could have more control over which area was being brightened. I only adjusted the midtones by .05 in Levels and left the highlights and shadows alone. The result makes her skin glisten just a smidge less.

Sharpening Your Gif

Last step: Smart Sharpen. If done properly, sharpening your gif should completely remove any blurriness. In addition, the Smart Sharpen tool further enhances the contrast and brightens the highlights. I sharpen my gifs twice. I got this method from another gif-maker, and I've been a fan of it ever since. The gifs just come out crisper. If I feel it's too sharp, then, I can just remove the 1st smart sharpen filter (the 10%, 10 pixels), but I rarely do that.

See steps below:

Convert Frame Animation means convert frame animation to timeline. If you do not have timeline, see this tutorial on sharpening without timeline.

The blur has been removed. However, the highlights are too bright now.

As a counter, I turn off the 1st Brightness/Contrast layer and push the 2nd Brightness/Contrast layer which I had set to Screen back to 40%.

Side note: I got rid of the 1st Brightness layer because Brightness/Contrast set to Normal affects highlights more, whereas set to Screen it affects the midtones more. By removing the 1st and increasing the 2nd's opacity, I mitigate the glare of the highlights without sacrificing the overall brightness of the gif.

Final version (sharpened):

Original version (sharpened):

Original version (unsharpened):