#see...

step one: find a video

you can use videos from youtube, vimeo or whatever. i usually use tor.rent.s, especially when i’m giffing episodes. for the ‘cleanest’ gifs i would suggest 480 / 720 / 1080 videos. the difference between 720 & 1080 isn’t that much, 1080 just lets you crop a little more out.

step two: cut the video

if i’m giffing a long video, anything over 10 minutes, i’ll cut it down using avidemux. basically i trim out any scene that doesn’t have my desired fc in it. that’ll shorten the video immensely. if the video is over 10 minutes after cutting i’ll usually save the video in parts ( this is for capping purposes ).

using avidemux is pretty simple - open your file by clicking the blue folder....

wait for it to load. once it has use the UP ARROW to go through the video - the software uses keyframes to jump and it’s pretty great. holding that arrow down will zoom through the video. find a chunk you want to cut and go to the beginning keyframe of it - hit CTRL + PG UP. and then find the end of the section and hit - CTRL + PG DN. you’ve just selected an area, and it should look ( depending on the length ) like this...

hit - CTRL + X to delete it. if you messed up and cut it wrong hit CTRL + Z to undo it. do this until you’ve cut the video down to how you like. next you’ll save the video, these are my settings and they work great...

then hit CTRL + S to save. you can name it whatever you want. finished cutting? GREAT on we go!

step three: the cap & sort

capping can be exhausting, but it’s my preferred method. i use free video to jpeg converter to auto cap my videos - upload the video you saved in avidemux and choose a destination, then hit convert. now you just have to wait until it’s done. after that you sort through your caps.

step four: photoshop time

open photoshop.

when i make gifs in cc, i simply use the action i made a while back. YOU CAN FIND IT HERE. load the action and expand the folder. play LOAD (5) GIFS. it will open a load stack files thing - now hit browse...

locate your screencap folders. you’ll have to upload each folder one by one, so when you open your folder hit CTRL + A to select all the screencaps and then hit enter. your images will load and as soon as the ‘OK’ turns white hit it to begin. as soon as the images are done loading into ps another stack thing will appear, so repeat the process four times using other folders.

when that’s done you can actually start to make the gif - now here’s where it comes to MY PERSONAL gif settings. what i do is usually NOT CROP THE GIF and just play the ‘play for STACK’ part of the action. this resizes, sharpens and adds a basic psd to my gif, like this.

without psd

with psd

it takes no time at all to make the gif. that’s it. that’s my process. then i save the gif with these settings...