#sharpening action

1.download the media you're looking for. i use t*rrents and various accounts that post downloads. if you want to know what i use specifically, come to me off anon and i'll share them with you for legal purposes lmao. for reference, i'm using the film companion (2025) and sophie thatcher as my subject for the gifs.

2.once the media has downloaded on my laptop, i start creating folders for what i need. i leave one for 'clips' which are, you guessed it, for clipping and 'sophie gifs' for storing the gifs in one spot.

3. from there, i will open the file with the media i downloaded and start my clipping process. personally, i clip little by little for the sake of my storage so i usually clip every ten minutes in one minute increments, finish the set of gifs, and then move onto the next ten minutes of the media until i'm finished.

4. quicktime player is pre-installed on my mac so i don't have to use any external features for this, and trim as needed.

5. once i've clipped everything, this is how my 'clips' folder usually looks. imagine there's usually more, but i only clipped a couple for tutorial sake!

6. now for the fun part, we can finally open photoshop!

7. i usually the videos frames to layers to make my gifs, so you'll go to file -> import -> video frames to layers

8. from here, i'll use those little cursor bits to pick out what i want to gif.

9. and now we're finally in. this is what my personal setup looks like. if you're working with a default version, you'll want to play around with what you like, but you will absolutely need to have your actions, layers, properties, and timeline checked. you can find these in the window tab if they are unchecked.

10. now i'm going to apply my action by clicking on 'lexi's big bad gif action' and hitting the play button.

11. when this pops up, just hit cancel.

12. now we're going to highlight all of our layers by using shift + select. then right click and 'convert to smart layers'. your layers should now be condensed.

13. now we're going to go back to our actions. see how the smart sharpen is highlighted now? play that and just hit okay through the sharpening.

14. ooh, pretty! i apply my base coloring psd which looks wonky as hell because it isn't colored for this specific clip.

15. i'll open up that coloring folder and get to work. here are the specific colors i used, but all of this is going to be based on what you are coloring in specific.

16. now we're just going to crop and resize to our liking. i prefer my gifs to be 268x151 for gif packs!

17. look at that, you have a gif! from here, we'll save from web and i'll show you the way i have my settings for exporting. you can save from web by going to file -> export -> save for web.

18. it'll automatically throw you into a filter that says optimized, which i switch back to original.

19. now i'm just gonna save this to my 'sophie gifs' folder.

once you export, you'll have a little guy like this:

* if your computer is old/slow, this might not work for you cause we’re gonna use some video rendering which depends on CPU and GPU speeds and RAM capacity. ** i use Windows 10 tho this should work for macOS too. *** i’m not explaining coloring here cause what’s the point, every footage is difference, but you can see how i usually color my gifs here.

so, you’ll need:

KMPlayer (or any program that lets you cut videos into clips and save them as .mp4 or .mov);

Adobe Premier Pro;

AfterCodecs plugin for Adobe Premier Pro + AfterCodecs Panel (links are in the source);

Adobe Photoshop.

part 1: clipping

launch KMPlayer and open your video. i have an episode of Elite on my laptop, so i’m using this one.

fast forward till the moment your fc shows up on screen and pause the video. press Alt+C or right click on the player and go to Capture > Video: Capture... and click on the File Crop tab. pick another saving folder if you want, change Format to mp4, check the box ‘Customize video and audio codecs (could cause errors)’ and change Audio to None.

hit the Start Time button. fast forward and press the End Time button when your fc leaves the screen. 

press Start. repeat as many times as you need, close the player when you’re done and go to the folder you saved the clips in.

now launch Adobe Premier Pro and create a new project. i keep an empty one (’clips’ on the screenshot) so i don’t have to make new ones every time i use the app. settings of a new project doesn’t matter, i just use defaults.

drop one of the clips from your folder to the timeline

right click on the violet line (it’s your clip) and pick Scene Edit Detection...

check the ‘Apply a cut at each detected cut point’ box and hit Analyze.

wait till it’s done, your video will get cut into smaller clips like this:

go through the clips using the blue bracket (or whatever it’s called) and delete all parts you don’t need by clicking on them and pressing delete button on your keyboard.

since we’re gonna use a trial version of AfterCodecs plugin, we’ll have to make sure each part is shorter than 500 frames. for that right click on video duration and choose Frames.

now you’ll see frames count when you hover over any clip:

for me, gifs with 140+ frames look too long so i cut into parts everything over this number. to do so, press C on your keyboard or click on the Razor Tool button

and just click on the clip where you want it to be cut into two parts.

when you’re done, press the Add Markers for All Video Tracks button on the AfterCodecs Panel:

(if you don’t see the Panel, make sure it’s checked in Window > Extensions)

when markers are added, go to File > Export > Media, or press Ctrl+M (for some reason this shortcut doesn’t work if AfterCodecs Panel is selected, so click on any over panel first and then use Ctrl+M).

change Format of Export Settings to AfterCodecs, uncheck the Export Audio box, and pick MP4 Format for AfterCodecs Settings (in the bottom). if you click on Output Name (blue one), you’ll be able to change saving folder (default is somewhere in \Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro).

then click the Open AfterCodecs Settings button and check the Workflow - MultiRender box in the pop-up window. you can also change rendering quality there (default is 70%).

press OK and then Export. when it’s done, you’ll see all the clips in the output folder. you can now close the app.

part 2: sharpening and saving

this is pretty same as i’ve shown in my previous tutorial, but the action itself has a few changes (i’ll link the download in the source).

launch photoshop and drag all the videos into the app (tho i don’t recommend doing 10+ files at the same time if PS usually slows down your computer).

if playing my atn for the first time, expand the 268x150 one, scroll to the end of the list, double-click on Save and change the default psd saving folder cause the atn has my path in it which obviously doesn’t exist on your computer:

also if you’re using Adobe Photoshop CC or newer version, make sure your Image Interpolation is ‘Bicubic (best for smooth gradients)’ cause it’s the best for my sharpening (to open Preferences, press Ctrl+K or go to Edit > Preferences > General).

then you can play the action. it’ll ask you if you want to crop the picture, do it using vertical and horizontal scales on the upper menu and press Enter on your keyboard when you’re satisfied with the frame (if preview of your gif looks lq and pixelated, that’s fine, it’s just a preview).

if you don’t want the action to ask you to crop the picture, you can uncheck the ‘Transforn current layer’ step:

the action will autosave the file in the directory you’ve chosen above and will close the psd after that. now you can run the action for the next gif.  if you have 10+ gifs opened in your window, you can just run the second action (268x150 for 10 gifs), this one basically plays the first action 10 times in a row.

and... that’s it. all of the routine is done and you just now have to do the fun part - coloring.