#sharpening tutorial

Edit: Here is the action, after anon requested it. First and foremost, I apologize ahead of time because this is not going to be an action. At the end of the tutorial, I'm going to include a link to a PSD with the smart filters plugged in. So you don't have to go through the trouble of loading an action and then playing it. Before we get started, this will only be compatible with photoshop. Also, you must have a basic knowledge of giffing and photoshop and how to convert all your layers for smart filters. If you cannot do that, this tutorial might not be for you.

Go to Filter > Smart Sharpen. Amount should be set to 500%, then your radius amount must be set to 0.4px. Make sure you remove the Gaussian Blur, and don't touch any of the other settings.

Go to Filter > Smart Sharpen. Amount should be set to 20% - 40% (play around with it, see what looks good). Radius should be set to 20px (again, play around with it, see what looks good).

Go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter. Find the Effects tab. Texture should be anywhere from +25 to +45 (sometimes, depending on the movie, I have it in the high 60s or 80s). Then set Clarity anywhere from 10 to 25 (again, it all depends on the movie, play around with the sliders). Find the Detail Tab next. Set the Sharpening anywhere from 5 - 15. Set Noise Reduction anywhere from 10 - 20.

Go to Filter > Other > High Pass. The radius should be .4px, then go to the blending options and set it to soft light, or screen. I usually set mine to soft light.

First things first. Below are the things and tools we need to do this:

Downloaded 4K or 1080p quality videos (let’s all assume we know where to get these—especially for high definition movies and tv series—so this post doesn’t get removed, okay? 😛)

Adobe Photoshop CC or the CS versions can work as well, but full disclosure I haven’t created gifs using the CS versions since 2020. I’m currently using Adobe Photoshop 2024.

mpv player. Use mpv player to get those frames/screenshots or any other video player that has a screen grabber feature. I’ve used adapter for the longest time but I’ve switched to mpv because the press to screenshot feature while the video is playing has been a game changer not to mention ultimate time saver for me. For adapter you need to play it in another video player (like VLC player), to get the start and end timestamps of the scene you want to gif which takes me ages before I can even open Photoshop.

Anyway! Please stop reading this post for a moment and head over to this amazing tutorial by kylos. She perfectly tells you how to install and use mpv player, both for Mac and Windows users.

One thing I have to share though, I had a tough time when I updated my MacOS to Sonoma since MPV is suddenly either duplicating frames or when I delete the duplicates the player seems to be skipping frames :/ I searched and found a solution here, though it didn’t work for me lol. My workaround for this in the meantime is decreasing the speed down to 0.70 then start screenshotting—it’s not the same pre Sonoma update but it works so I’ll have to accept it rather than have jumpy looking gifs.

Now, after this part of kylos’ tutorial:

you can continue reading the following sections of my gif tutorial below.

I want to share this little tip (sorry, this will only cater to Mac users) that I hope will be helpful for organizing the screenshots that MPV saved to the folder you have selected. Because believe me you don’t want to go through 1k+ of screenshots to select just 42-50 frames for your gif.

The Control + Command + N shortcut

This shortcut allows you to create a new folder from files you have pre-selected. As you can see below I have already created a couple of folders, and inside each folder I have selected screenshots that I want to include in one single gif. It's up to you how you want to divide yours, assuming you intend to create and post a Tumblr gifset rather than just one gif.

Another tip is making use of tags. Most of, if not all the time, I make supercorp gifs so I tag blue for Kara and red (or green) for Lena—just being ridiculously on brand and all that.

Before we finally open Photoshop, there's one more thing I want to say—I know, please bear with me for the third? fourth? time 😅

It's helpful to organize everything into their respective folders so you know the total number of items/frames you have. This way, you can add or delete excess or unnecessary shots before uploading them in Photoshop.

For example below there are 80 screenshots of Kara inside this folder and for a 1:1 (540 x 540 px) Tumblr gif, Photoshop can just work around with 42-50 max number of frames with color adjustments applied before it exceeds the 10 MB file size limit of Tumblr.

Sometimes I skip this step because it can be exhausting (haha) and include everything so I can decide visually which frames to keep later on. You'll understand what I mean later on. But it's important to keep the Tumblr 10 MB file size limit in mind. Fewer frames, or just the right amount of frames, is better.

So, with the screenshot organization out of the way, let's finally head over to Photoshop.

Giffing in Photoshop, yay!

Let’s begin by navigating to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack…

The Load Layers window will appear. Click the Browse button next.

Find your chosen screenshots folder, press Command + A to select all files from that folder then click Open. Then click OK.

After importing and stacking your files, Photoshop should display the following view:

By the way, I'll be providing the clip I've used in this tutorial so if want to use them to follow along be my guest :)

If you haven't already opened your Timeline panel, navigate to Windows > Timeline.

Now, let's focus on the Timeline panel for the next couple of steps.

Click Create Video Timeline, then you’ll have this:

Now click the menu icon on the top right corner then go to Convert Frames > Make Frames from Clips

Still working on the Timeline panel, click the bottom left icon this time—the icon with the three tiny boxes—to Convert to Frame Animation

Select Make Frames From Layers from the top right corner menu button.

So now you have this:

Go and click the top right menu icon again to Select All Frames

Then click the small dropdown icon to set another value for Frame Delay. Select Other…

The best for me and for most is 0.05 but you can always play around and see what you think works for you.

Click the top right menu icon again to Reverse Frames.

I think Photoshop has long since fixed this issue but usually the first animation frame is empty so I just delete it but now going through all these steps there seems to be none of that but anyways, the delete icon is the last one among the line of feature buttons at the bottom part of the Timeline panel.

Yay, now we can have our first proper GIF preview of a thirsty Lena 😜

Press spacebar to watch your gif play for the very first time! After an hour and half of selecting and cutting off screenshots! 😛 Play it some more. No really, I’m serious. I do this so even as early (lol) as this part in the gif making process, I can see which frames I can/should delete to be within the 10 MB file size limit. You can also do it at the end of course 🙂

Now, let’s go to the next important steps of this tutorial post which I’ve numbered below.

Crop and resize to meet Tumblr's required dimensions. The width value should be either 540px, 268px, or 177px.

Convert the gif to a Smart Object for sharpening.

Apply lighting and basic color adjustments before the heavy coloring. I will be sharing the base adjustments layers I use for my gifs 😃.

1. Crop and Resize

Click on the Crop tool (shortcut: the C key)

I like my GIFs big so I always set this to 1:1 ratio if the scene allows it. Press the Enter key after selecting the area of the frame that you want to keep.

Side note: If you find that after cropping, you want to adjust the image to the left or another direction, simply unselect the Delete Cropped Pixels option. This way, you will still have the whole frame area available to crop again as needed and as you prefer.

Now we need to resize our gif and the shortcut for that is Command + Opt + I. Type in 540 as the width measurement, then the height will automatically change to follow the ratio you’ve set while cropping.

540 x 540 px for 1:1

540 x 405 px for 4:3

540 x 304 px for 16:9

For the Resample value I prefer Bilinear—but you can always select the other options to see what you like best.

Click OK. Then Command + 0 and Command + - to properly view the those 540 pixels.

Now we get to the exciting part :) the sharpen settings!

2. Sharpen

First we need to have all these layers “compressed” intro a single smart object from which we can apply filters to.

Select this little button on the the bottom left corner of the Timeline panel.

Select > All Layers

Then go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters

Just click OK when a pop-up shows up.

Now you should have this view on the Layers panel:

Now I have 3 sharpen settings to share but I’ll have download links to the Action packs at the end of this long ass tutorial so if you want to skip ahead, feel free to do so.

Sharpen v1

Go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen…

Below are my settings. I don’t adjust anything under Shadows/Highlights.

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.4

Click OK then do another Smart Sharpen but this time with the below adjustments.

Amount: 12

Radius: 10.0

As you can see Lena’s beautiful eyes are “popping out” now with these filters applied. Click OK.

Now we need to Convert to Frame Animation. Follow the steps below.

Click on the menu icon at the top right corner of the Timeline panel, then click Convert Frames > Flatten Frames into Clips

Then Convert Frames > Convert to Frame Animation

One more click to Make Frames From Layers

Delete the first frame then Select All then Set Frame Delay to 0.05

and there you have it! Play your GIF and make sure it’s just around 42-50 frames. This is the time to select and delete.

To preview and save your GIF go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)…

Below are my Export settings. Make sure to have the file size around 9.2 MB to 9.4 MB max and not exactly 10 MB.

This time I got away with 55 frames but this is because I haven’t applied lighting and color adjustments yet and not to mention the smart sharpen settings aren't to heavy so let’s take that into consideration.

Sharpen v1 preview:

Sharpen v2

Go back to this part of the tutorial and apply the v2 settings.

Smart Sharpen 1:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.3

Smart Sharpen 2:

Amount: 20

Radius: 0.5

We’re adding a new type of Filter which is Reduce Noise (Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise...) with the below settings.

Then one last Smart Sharpen:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.3

Your Layers panel should look like this:

Then do the Convert to Frames Animation section again and see below preview.

Sharpen v2 preview:

Sharpen v3:

Smart Sharpen 1:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.4

Smart Sharpen 2:

Amount: 12

Radius: 10.0

Reduce Noise:

Strength: 5

Preserve Details: 50%

Reduce Color Noise: 0%

Sharpen Details: 50%

Sharpen v3 preview:

And here they are next to each other with coloring applied:

v1

v2

v3

Congratulations, you've made it to the end of the post 😂

As promised, here is the download link to all the files I used in this tutorial which include:

supercorp 2.05 Crossfire clip

3 PSD files with sharpen settings and basic coloring PSD

Actions set

As always, if you're feeling generous here's my Ko-fi link :) Thank you guys and I hope this tutorial will help you and make you love gif making.

P.S. In the next post I'll be sharing more references I found helpful especially with coloring. I just have to search and gather them all.

For starters, one thing I find useful is, as always, download the 1080p quality footage whenever you can — what's really great about 2D stuff is that they usually don't have much gradient shading, which keeps the file sizes down regardless of the quality.

So, when you resize your gif, it'll already make it pretty sharp, in some cases I will actually just leave it at that (for example, this Regular Show gifset was only coloured and not sharpened at all) but for stuff like Bob's Burgers which is all smooth lines and big blocks of colour, I usually do some very soft sharpening.

As you may know, I always work in timeline mode, so I sharpen straight from the Filter -> Sharpen -> Smart Sharpen menu and I usually add two separate filters with different settings.

Here are some of the settings I usually use for those two filters:

and then by double clicking the little toggles on the right side of the filters, you can adjust the opacity; I usually go anywhere between 10-60%, but honestly that's just personal preference at this point.

i do most of my process through actions; of which i have several for different gif dimensions ie 540 width (typically for fancams where i keep the width of the file the same but change the height), 540 height (which i use the most for gifs like the above), and 850 height which i use for my sets that have side by side gifs like my pinned

actions make the beginning of making a gif a lot faster and especially save time when you're rushing to make comeback gifs lmao

after i've converted to the video timeline and selected all of my frames and converted them to a smart object, i apply userdramas's camera raw filter action which can help gifs look higher quality and create the illusion of skin texture when there isn't any

after this i convert the layer into a smart object again and apply my sharpening as follows (partly from anyataylorjoy's action pack)

smart sharpen 1:

smart sharpen 2:

smart sharpen 3: (this one is optional)

smart sharpen 2 duplicated

gaussian blur:

and i click this button on the far right to change the opacity of the blur (usually i set it around 10-30)

it may look funky but noise at the end will always fix it :p

after i sharpen i start on coloring!

my coloring process starts with editing values with curves, brightness & contrast, and sometimes levels

this helps to achieve the high contrast look i really like on my gifs and below are my settings for this specific set

i find that the marker in the center of the curves graph can often help darken skin tones if the subject appears too light

after i have my values down i move on to the actual colors

i start with adding a selective color layer; adjusting the red values, followed by yellow, then black, white, and any other colors i would want prominent in the gif

for example, with this set i wanted the blues to look really nice so i increased the cyans and decreased the yellows to my liking

changing the black values adds to the dimension i like in my gifs; these are my settings

forgot magenta whoops

next i add a hue/sat layer where i mess with the red and yellow values which often adds extra help to skin tones (i also recently started using hue/sat on colors like the blues here)

now these gifs didn't need it thankfully, but if needed i will also do color balance and channel mixer layers

after all my coloring and sharpening is done and i'm satisfied with how a gif looks i will convert all layers to a smart object and add noise (typically 1.5-3)

then the gif is done and i save it! these are my save settings

and that's how i turn this

into this!

hope y'all enjoyed and found this helpful and thank you again for 500<3333

[1] Making your GIF (ft. Jonathan Bailey)

Make your gif through whatever method gets you to the video timeline. Just your usual - and if you have a regular sharpening that works relatively fine, you can use it here and skip [2]. Here’s what your layers tab, timeline tab, and working GIF may look like without any other edits:

[2] OPTIONAL: Smart Sharpen your GIF

For those who don’t have a regular sharpening... routine, this is how I do my basic sharpening. I will be using two different sharpens in this portion. Click on ‘Filter’ and find Sharpen. Hover your mouse on it and look for Smart Sharpen (shown below):

Click on it, and the window below should open. The first one I use is 500%, 0.3px, and Remove Gaussian Blur, but feel free to experiment as you wish:

the second smart sharpen I use is 10%, 10px, and Remove Gaussian Blur. Again, feel free to experiment. The ending GIF should be shown with the label “Smart Sharpen x2″ towards the end of this tutorial:

[3] Use what I call the “Vivid Sharpen” to further sharpen your GIFS

Normally you’d stop at [2] and be ready to post or do whatever else with your GIF. I do this extra sharpen because not all GIFs look great when posted here (particularly those downloaded off YT, bilibili, dailymotion, what have you, or bootl*gs as mentioned above). I got a relatively nice-looking video, but this will still help make the gif look sharper.

First off, duplicate your GIF layer twice. I use the Right Click on Layer and Click Duplicate Layer method because it works best for my timeline, but a good old Ctrl+J on Windows (Cmd+J on Mac if I’m not mistaken) should work. Just make sure all three layers are aligned like so:

Turn off the visibility of the uppermost layer (mpv-shot0090.png copy 2 here; see below) Click on the second layer (mpv-shot0090.png copy in this case) and change its blending mode to Overlay. This is what the layer should look like:

Now turn the topmost layer (mpv-shot0090.png copy 2) back on. Invert the layer by clicking Ctrl+I (that’s I, not L). This is what it should look like:

Now change the blending mode of this layer to Vivid Light. See results below:

Now click on Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur above. A window opens asking for the pixel amount. I usually enter in 3.0px but again, feel free to experiment. The GIF may now look overly sharpened, like so:

Group together the topmost layer and the layer just below that. This is important. I usually just highlight both layers and click on the folder icon at the bottom right corner. Once both layers are grouped together, set the group’s blending mode to overlay. This will remove the yellow spots you see above.

This is the last step for this version of sharpening. Set the opacity level of your sharpening group to what you think looks good. For 1080p source videos, I usually go for between 30-40% (I’m using 40% in the one below) opacity, but feel free to adjust according to what you like! For the 480p gifset I linked above, I used around 70%, give or take.

Here are the different results based on the sharpenings I did!

I always try to gif with at least 1080p videos when I can it makes the biggest difference! I don’t think 4k is necessary (plus it slows down PS ALOT)

Okay so once you get your frames into PS (doesn’t matter if “video frames to layers” or “load files into stack” I’ve used both, but I currently use the latter) you want to crop & resize BEFORE you sharpen!   So if your inputed frames were say 1080x772 then you want to resize to 540x386. 

Next you’ll convert your frames into a video timeline, then covert for smart filters. Next I add the sharpening. So I use a slightly modified version of this gif action, by kylos (her gif tutorial) so I can do all those steps really speedy but I’ll break down what sharpening is happening:

Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. Then apply the following settings, you’ll also want to make sure in the settings ‘legacy’ & ‘accuracy’ are checked

Next you’ll want to duplicate the newly sharpened layer, and on the top layer we’re going to add a little blur so the sharpness isn’t too harsh (idk y we do this just it helps lol) 

Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. And set the radius to 1.0

Then on the blurred layer set its opacity to 15%. And you should have 2 layers.

And after sharpening this is what the gif looks like:

The real magic happens with colouring!! Everyone has different styles and their favourite tools. My first 3 steps always are: Curves, Levels, Selective Colour. I often just leave it to just those 3 filter layers, but sometimes I’ll add vibrance or adjust the hue/saturation.

I think the best gifs are the ones where the light areas are really bright and the dark areas are black. I think people are worried about making their gifs too dark (b/c most shows are poorly lit) so they focus more on brightening but I think the best gifs also have a really rich black. 

after adding my colouring layers its time to export! File > Export > Save for Web Legacy. These are the settings I use for exporting:

theres a bunch of resources on tumblr that (i cant find one atm but i promise ive seen some!!!!) that talk about the differences between Selective/Adaptive and Pattern/Diffuse/Noise. I just prefer Selective & Pattern  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

once we’re exported we have this!!! (he’s so pretty)

yup so here’s my mini (idk was this mini??) tutorial! so for a recap!!

no sharpening & no colouring:

sharpening & no colouring:

sharpening & colouring:

SHARPENING WITH VPS:

you can find the vps process here. the settings for mine are

Denoise > KLMN > 1.5 - 2.0

Finesharp > 1.5- 2.5

some ccs like to only sharpen on vps which is fine but I like to sharpen them a bit on ps too.

So after importing your clip in PS convert the layers into smart object. (select all > filter > convert to smart filters)

Apply the smart sharpen filter (filter > sharpen > smart sharpen)

my settings are:

amount: 100

radius: 0.3

no gaussian blur cause denoise pretty much does that job

And that's it for this one!

SHARPENING WITHOUT VPS:

You're going to import your clip the same as you always do and convert the layers into smart object just like above (select all > filter > convert to smart filter)

Apply smart sharpen to the layer (filter > sharpen > smart sharpen)

my settings are:

amount: 500

radius: 0.5

reduce noise: 75-100

gaussian blur: 0.3

Now duplicate this layer and change the opacity of the layer on top to your liking.