#sharpening

This is a very long post so heads up.

I’ll try to be as thorough and true as much as possible to the way I make my gifs (I already use Photoshop Actions which I’ve long since set up but now for this tutorial I’m reviewing them to show you the exact steps I’ve learned to create my gifs 😃) and present them to you in a semi-coherent way. Also, please bear with me since English is my second language.

Gifmaking Process - March 2026

I'll approach this post in my own little way but I hope anon (+ others) will get their answers regardless, and possibly walk away learning a bit more about the direction they'll be heading to when starting to make gifs. I think it's really important for people to be aware of what they're getting themselves into, especially being realistic in what's required of them before getting started. I don't bring any of these points up to intimidate anyone or to discourage people before they even have a chance to start, but I think it's important to give people a chance to recognize that creating anything is an act of love and labor, sometimes with few moments where that love and labor gets its flowers or brushed under the rug. Create because YOU want that for yourself, especially when no one else is watching. If this is you, you're in the right place :)

Things to Keep in Mind

Before getting started, it's important to be aware of your own strengths and grit, because learning any new skill requires patience, diligence, and the ability to keep trying despite all the initial failures leading up to your first few successes. Sure, it's easy to say "hey, I want to do the cool thing you're doing!" and go out to do it yourself, but what will always set yourself a part from the rest: why you've decided to create the things you wish to create. The reality is: love and desire is simply not enough, it'll require willpower, patience, determination, and security within yourself when you actively decide to participate in an online space and community. I'm a big believer of what we decide to put into the world returns to us tenfold, and that in itself is incredibly powerful when you are aware of how you engage with everything around you.

Why do you wish to create? For what reason? What do you wish to accomplish from creating?

I stress these points because so many people dive head first into things purely from curiosity or a strong desire to belong, setting themselves up for obligations rooted in external validation, transaction, and engagement farming, whether they choose to acknowledge it or not. Unfortunately, setting up such expectations ultimately leads to burnout, performance anxiety, and detaching yourself from the very hobbies and interests that once brought you comfort and joy. I believe addressing these points and keeping them in the back of your mind will not only set you up for success, but it'll bring you clarity and reminders of why you've chosen such a selfless act: the act of creating things from your own two hands with all your heart, with the by product of other people enjoying the very things you've created. It's easy to just brush these very thoughts off your shoulders and believe "Oh, who cares about what other people think? I do it because I want to." However, we all care to a certain degree about the very things that give us purpose and a drive to continue, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with admitting that to ourselves. Even if it's as simple as making gifs of our favorite people in media and entertainment hehe.

I truly wish that gifmaking was simple, however, the beginning steps of getting started requires you to be a bit tech savvy and familiar with all the specs and programs. Before I knew what skills I would need to learn before even getting a chance to open my Photoshop (I'm also an illustrator/artist hehe), I didn't think I would need to know the bare bones of coding, installing and becoming acquainted with programs such as VapourSynth (for resizing and preparing clips for Photoshop) and GitHub (for downloading high quality episodes on other platforms if you aren't able to use programs like 4K Video Downloader). I didn't think I would need to revisit skills I learned from After Effects and basic video editing to achieve the desired visual results I had in mind (even something as simple as tracking motion and playing around with compositions of original video footage because I never do anything simply and must take the scenic route aka the most difficult route possible at any given moment). What I'm trying to get at: DO YOUR EXTENSIVE RESEARCH. Your future self will thank you later, I promise.

There are so many tutorials and blogs right here on tumblr that have such great tips, especially if this is something you haven't done like anything before. My personal favorites when I got started were @usergif and @clubgif as resources, just some at the top of my head from distant memory. Whatever questions you currently have, some users have already answered them, many in explicit detail with visual aid so please take a look at those tutorials and resources first! When it comes to basic coloring and preparing your files for coloring, these few come to mind to at least get your foot in the door:

hayaosmiyazaki's GIFMAKING FOR BEGINNERS

baijingting's COMPREHENSIVE GIFFING TUTORIAL

kylos's GIF Tutorial

userdramas's VapourSynth Installation Tutorial for macOS

Preliminary Stuff

I'm going to 100% transparent: there are some parts of my process that are 100% unconventional and were born out of not wanting to learn new programs LOL. So I will be showing y'all that but before I do so, here's what you need:

Essentials: Photoshop I've seen some people use Photopea, don't ask me anything related to it because I do not use it :> and VapourSynth

Supplementary: 4K Video Downloader (I do not t*rrent nor have needed to, but there are plenty of other blogs who do and have all the answers you'd possible need), CapCut, webvideo-downloader by STharanga (for all my Asian drama series airing on iQIYI), Shutter Encoder (I use to convert video files from .m4a to .mp4 if I need to use m*vdrama to access full episodes of series from streaming not listed on STharanga's page)

Alright, here comes the tutorial part. Take notes, take screenshots, side by side with the programs open if you must. Lock in, I love y'all <3

Prepping the Clips

Download the full length video of whatever you wish to gif, I mainly gif music videos and drama series, periodically fancams/performance footage and miscellaneous idol content per request. I'll be using CRAVITY's Of Things That Come Too Easily prologue video for this tutorial (which y'all of course, need to check out their music once you leave this tutorial hehe, and shout out to Jup for helping me choose a video to use for this post cause y'all were about to get super glitch effect examples and I was like noooo their poor eyes! <3).

Import it into CapCut and allow it some time to create a proxy so you're able to scrub through the footage cleanly with minimal lag. My project file is set to 25fps and audio is manually muted (so you don't blast your eardrums out), you can access your frame rate by going to Settings.

I want to create a members gifset, I usually order them from eldest to youngest unless their appearance is specific to the video itself. My preference when selecting music video clips I want to gif:

Minimal to no lipsyncing

Visually striking compositions

VFX shots

Fun textures or patterns

Clip the video into sections, this is where learning your program's hot keys will make the workflow more efficient, especially when you're anticipating to have a huge workload. Once you've clipped down the desired videos, select all and right-click, selecting Export selected clips. It will bring up a menu panel, double check that your frame rate is correct for your personal preference (again, mine is 25fps), I usually keep my resolution at 2K with .mov as my file format. Once you've clicked Export, it will notify you with a pop up menu, asking if you'd like to open the folder that your clips now exist in if you don't have that folder open already.

What I like about this method is that with your own naming convention, the files will already be in numerical order, keeping everything as organized as possible as it populates your folder. This is where you start dragging your .mov files individually into VapourSynth, there are plenty of tutorials that showcase step-by-step on how to export an output.mov file of your clip. All I personally do in VapourSynth is resize my clip's dimension and playing around with my clip within the composition like keeping my subject from creating tangents along the borders, keeping my width at 540px for maximum quality. There are many people who adjust their sharpen settings in VapourSynth, I prefer to keep the integrity of my original videos in case I have plans on revisiting the adjustments at a later time. You have the liberty of setting the height of your gifs to your liking, depending on what you are trying to achieve with that specific gif/gifset (ie 540px x 540px, 540px x 300px, etc).

Once you've created an output file, it's VERY important that you move the output file into a folder you'll be storing your content in, or else VapourSynth will overwrite each output.mov file it creates in its existing output folder. When you move each output into your folder, it'll ask you if you want to Keep Both, Replace, or Stop your task. Always always select Keep Both. As you move your files, the naming convention will automatically create copies along with numbering them.

Select all of your output files and drag it into Photoshop. It will open each .mov file as its own compositions, this is where you'll manually adjust your frame rate if it's not already at your desired rate, adjust your clip's speed and duration of the gif (nothing longer than 3.5 seconds from my personal experience).

To expedite my workflow and keeping my gifs consistent, I have a main PSD file that includes my watermark and whatever layers needed for whatever I want to create. Always create a new document by Save As..., which will keep all existing layers and not disturb your main one. After you've made the appropriate adjustments to your clips, you'll Convert to Smart Object, and dragging it into your new PSD document.

Disclaimer: I personally use a layer filled with a peach-tan color (you can see it peeking in the bottom right corner), setting the layer mode to Overlay at 30% opacity. I use this same method for my digital illustrations, it just helps bring together all the colors and make it more cohesive!

Smart Sharpen

From my own experience, I've used sheryl-lee's Smart Sharpening settings, however, instead of 30% Amount and 20px Radius in the second Smart Sharpen filter, I personally use 10% Amount and 10px Radius. Of course, these are just stepping stones, as you work more often, you'll naturally gravitate to a style you like and is unique to you!

You can see a huge difference just from sharpening the video. but be wary of your video's:

Light source

Motion or energy

Colors

Contrast/Brightness

These are things that'll really determine how intense you want your sharpening to be, sometimes the Smart Sharpen filters can be overdone, causing some details to look rigid and harsh.

Curves

Curves adjust your contrast and brightness, I prefer this method over Levels or Brightness/Contrast. Whenever you're adjusting your graph, remember that the different quadrants are from black in the bottom LEFT corner, with your white in the top RIGHT corner. The different peaks behind the line is your Histogram, which will inform you of what values already exist in your video. If there's a dip on the left side, there aren't enough shades in your video, move the arrow along the x-axis to the right. Vice versa, if there's a dip on the right, there aren't enough tints in your video, move the arrow along the x-axis to the left. Once you've made the main adjustment, use your cursor to create two points, playing around with the line's curves while still maintaining a narrow S shape!

Selective Color

Selective Color is found in the same menu, which you'll be able to adjust with the various CMYK sliders. My advice for these kinds of adjustments: work from BIG to small. Start with your Neutrals, since I mainly gif people, I pay the most attention to their skin color, being mindful not to whitewash them. After I've been able to adjust their skin tone by adjusting the sliders in the Red and Yellow category, I'll fine tune other colors that stand out to me in its specific composition, especially keeping the environment in mind. Are we outdoors? Indoors? Natural lighting? Artificial lighting? What can I emphasize that the original cinematographer and director had in mind? This is where you can really push for whatever style you desire.

My favorite tip from art uni days: go far in the opposite direction to make sure you know what the bounds of your possibilities are, and make appropriate adjustments. If you don't know if it's not "warm" enough, slide the cursor to make it "cool" or "too warm." If it looks too "yellow," what would it look like if it were too "blue?" It's not permanent until you post it anyway, this is where you need to train your eyes to see what's not there. Push the limits so you know, keeping what is considered generous or stingy. Sometimes, it's a little too blue, sometimes it's a little green, sometimes it's a little too dark. If it's a stylistic choice, be liberal about it. If it's intended to destroy the integrity of someone's physical appearance, 100% rethink those creative decisions.

My Workspace

This is the part that make me laugh the most, but there's always a method to the madness. The reason why I create so many PSD files all at one time: I'm able to arrange my workspace to show as many of my gifs as possible. If the window is too small, I use the Navigator tool to help me see what I'm working with. This way, I'm able to make micro adjustments to individual gifs, comparing the coloring from one gif to another. If one person's skin tone is looking too yellow in one gif versus the other, I'm able to make those adjustments right away. If I notice that there's specific colors that stand out in multiple compositions, I use the Selective Color adjustment to bring that same hue into each gif. In this case, blue and cyan really took center stage, as well as the warm in many of the members' faces from being outdoors. If the values look off from one another, adjust until they do. They're all meant to be a part of one set, have fun and play around!

Exporting

These are my settings once you navigate to File > Export > Save for Web... Make sure you're pressing Save... and not Done haha, that was something I needed to get into the habit of doing when I first started. However, actions are going to be your best friend in this instance. If anyone needs help with creating their own actions to move quickly in their gif making process, again, there are so many tutorials out there but I'm more than happy to get into more specifics about my process. This is just a general post, and if the people speak, this could be a first post of many more to come :)

Final Results

Thank you to anon for sending me an inbox message, this was super exciting for me. I hope I can be of help for anyone on their gifmaking journey, I know some of my process is rather unconventional just from me reading and looking at more popular tutorials, but hey, it works for me! Take care, everyone <3

Soft Sharpening ATN

💌 𝒃𝒂𝒉𝒂𝒚 𝒌𝒖𝒃𝒐 . 𝐚𝐭𝐧 *

✰ softens & sharpens photo without needing topaz labs . ✰ works best for pngs / jpgs . not tested on gifs . ✰ a like or reblog would be greatly appreciated ! ✰ donations to my ko-fi would mean a lot as well . ✰ coloring psd not included .

PSD : "CLOUDY ROYAL DAY" BY @mwilkshke

GIF CREDIT : X-X-X | X-O-X | X-X-X

note : idk what's with me and ladybug plushies with that exact face but I have two and I loev them

SHARPENING ACTION for Photoshop

It's a small thing we don't always think about when editing a picture, but sharpening really does create a difference in your final edit!

DOWNLOAD THE ACTION HERE

You may like or reblog this post, no need to credit me if you use this resource!