#sibylresources

Whenever I colour correct difficult scenes I get asked how I did it and the answer is always the same: channel mixer. 

I know it seems like a daunting adjustment layer and a minor mistake can drastically change your gif, but I’m here to tell you (and teach you) how to avoid that and use channel mixer as best as possible!

Things you’ll need: - Photoshop - a difficult scene - 10 mins time - a ton of patience and willingness to try

I’m going to briefly explain what exactly the channel mixer adjustment layer is and how it works, and then show you the process on a gif. 

Before we begin, I’d like to give a shout out to Val / @poisons-ivy and Hella / @katbishop for pushing me to learn how to use channel mixer and for helping out with this tutorial. 

Now, a fun fact to start us off: in all things photoshop and digital screens, the primary colours are red-blue-green.

I’m pretty sure everybody learned in elementary school that the primary colours are red-blue-yellow. There’s a whole explanation for why that’s not true which I am not going to delve into because I still think it’s absolutely bonkers and it would make this tutorial even longer than it already is, but HERE is a link to that explanation if you’re interested in reading about it. (it also explains the difference between RGB and CMYK which I thought was really cool).

In Photoshop and our eyes, RGB is primary and I’m going to leave this nifty little chart here for you to use as a lil cheat sheet:

The channel mixer adjustment layer works with RGB. It basically “breaks down” your canvas into those three colours, and gives you some sliders to adjust those colours.

I’m going to get into how to fix a specific colour-washed scene in just a minute — first I want to show you what it looks like and what happens when you move certain sliders.

I picked a neutral scene that has the three primary colours and where the whites are truly white and the blacks are truly black (thank you Mean Girls!)

This is what the gif looks like with no colouring:

as we progress through this guide, I want you to keep looking at the following: RED - Gretchen’s shirt with the red diamonds GREEN - the Perrier can in front of Karen BLUE - the empty chair in front of Karen and/or the blue shirt just behind Gretchen

This is what the channel mixer looks like when you open it up:

as you can see, in the red channel, the red is set to +100, green to 0 and blue to 0, and same for the others. The “main” colour of the channel you select is always set to +100.

Now, because no colour is purely one colour, once you start moving the sliders it’ll affect most/the entire canvas. But as you adjust, the channels will add and subtract colours based on what’s already there.

Look at what happens when I slide the red from +100 to +150

compare that to if i move the green up to +50

or the blue up to +50

Look at the red colour on Gretchen’s shirt. When adding the red to the canvas, the first one looks brighter and “redder”, the second (green adjustment) looks slightly muted, and the third (blue) looks darker.

But if you look at the other things I told you to keep an eye on (Perrier can and chair up front), you’ll see that those are also adjusted. That’s because we’re working in the RED channel right now, and in the red channel you can add red to other colours as well.

In the second image, the green looks almost yellower (because mixing red with green makes yellow).

In the third image, the blue chair looks more purple/pinkish (because mixing red with blue makes magenta).

Look at how different the canvas looks based on which slider you use:

and here you can see what happens when you play with the other channels:

Now that we’ve talked addition, let’s talk subtraction.

If you remember your RGB colour circle, you’ll realise that removing a colour means the overall canvas will shift more into the opposing colour.

Removing red will make your canvas more cyan, removing green leads to more magenta, and removing blue gives more yellow.

RED - CYAN GREEN - MAGENTA BLUE - YELLOW

These are the images after I’ve removed 50 points off each slider

Hopefully you now understand the theory of Channel Mixer!

Now let’s get to practice.

You can colour correct a lot of scenes using the channel mixer because you can select which colours you want to target and what you want to mix them with. It’s a sort of double-layered approach.

I myself started using channel mixer to remove yellow tint from movies and from there I branched out to other colours.

I’m going to show the process using a slightly yellow tinted scene — not entirely yellow washed because this is a channel mixer tutorial and usually when you have a fully colour washed scene it’s going to take more than just channel mixer to fix.

The way I like thinking about it in my brain is that the three RGB primary colours are discs that I move closer and further from each other. With a yellow scene like below, that means the blue disc has strayed too far from the center (which is neutral — white).

So my first step is to go to the Blue channel and play around there. Since I want to push more blue into the reds and greens, I move those sliders up a bit, to +15 each. 

But now you can see my gif is a little peach coloured. Too much red/magenta. Time to remove some of that by going into the Red channel.

There I drag the red slider down until I like what it looks like and end up with this:

I’ve effectively removed the yellow tint and gotten to a great starting point for my colouring because the gif looks much more neutralised. It’s a great base to work with.

For this gif, I’ve gone ahead and coloured it very minimally (a bit of levels, selective colour, hue/saturation) and ended up with:

I used only four layers (and the channel mixer is doing the heavy lifting) and look at the difference:

You can do so many things with channel mixer! Whenever I see a tinted scene, Channel Mixer is my very first step.

Here are some more examples:

two from @poisons-ivy:

and two from @katbishop:

As you can see, you can neutralise almost any colour using Channel Mixer. I hope I’ve managed to explain this great adjustment layer and how it works!

if you have any questions or if there’s anything confusing in this tutorial, my inbox is always open! :)

(and once again a great big thank you to Val / @poisons-ivy and Hella / @katbishop​ for all the help — be sure to check out their stuff!)

There are two main methods you can use to put your smaller gif on a big gif: using a clipping mask or a layer mask. 

As implied by the name, both are masks, so they “hide” the rest of the gif so that only the parts you want to show are appearing. 

Make your base gif:

For this tutorial I’m using text and a rasterised shape

In a separate photoshop window I’ve made the two gifs that will make my smaller gifs and I’ve pasted the first one directly onto my base gif. After resizing it and making sure that the layer is above the text layer in my LAYERS tab, you right click and select Clipping Mask. 

Basically what this does is it “clips” the top layer to the bottom one, so everything that’s on the top layer will only show where there is a bottom layer (think of when you’re wrapping a present and you put the big sheet of wrapping paper on top of your gift, and then fold the sides and tuck them against the sides so it fits to the gift shape, that’s what happens here). 

On the left side you can see the gif clipped to the letter H:

I’ve not put the second gif onto the base gif and resized it. Using the Magic Wand tool, you’re going to select the inside of the diamond (make sure you’ve selected the rasterised layer!) and it gives you a selection. At the bottom right of your photoshop there is an option to add a Layer Mask. 

(Think of this as slicing away the wrapping paper so that it fits the front of your gift perfectly). 

You achieve the same effect, but the process is different (which you can see in the LAYERS tab.)

There are benefits to both methods and it’s really more a preference choice than anything. 

The great thing about a clipping mask is that you can add a gif to pretty much anything; text, shape, layer, etc. 

The great thing about using a layer mask is that you can freely select what you want to appear, for example:

After all of that, you can colour your little gifs and add any effects (you can also do this before clipping/layer masking but I prefer to do it at the end when all the gifs are together so I can make sure they look nice)

and voila: 

1. Make the gif like you normally would

Apply coloring, sharpen and other stuff you would normally do to your gifs. Converted it to a Video Timeline and your layers into a Smart Object in your gif making process, let’s proceed.

2. Adjustment Layer ➜ Gradient Map

Before creating a gradient map adjustment layer, make sure you’ve made your two color squares on the left side of your screen the colors you want.

Make sure black is the color above and the color you want the gif to mostly be is the one on the bottom. If black is on the bottom, it’ll show an inverted image.

3. Erase, Erase, Erase

Drag the playhead at the start of the gif. With the gradient map having already a layer mask, select the layer mask and erase the parts of the gif you want to have the natural colors. Some gif makers involve the whole body, but I’m satisfied with erasing only the face.

4. Easy loading

Deactivate your smart filters so that it won’t take long to load the whole gifset and you’ll be able to freely move the playhead.

Next thing you’ll do is unlink the layer mask from the gradient map in order to freely move the layer mask without disturbing the whole layer. You can do that by clicking the chain between the icon of the gradient map and the layer mask.

5. Moving the layer mask

On your video timeline, scroll down to gradient map and click on the arrow beside it.

After selecting, you’ll be able to see an option called “Layer Mask Position”. Click on the clock on the left side to activate keyframes on the layer mask. This is very important.

6. Tracking the movements

Turn off auto-select. Making sure you’ve selected the layer mask on instead of the gradient map itself. Move the playhead and whenever the face is moving outside the erased parts, drag the LAYER MASK to follow the head. If you are unable to turn off auto-select, you can just move the layer mask using your keyboard’s arrow keys, once again make sure you are moving the layer mask and not the gradient map.

AND VOILA YOU’RE DONE!

Just make sure you activated your smart filters again before saving your gif.

[OPTIONAL] HAZY LOOK

Above the gradient map adjustment layer, create a new layer and set it on SCREEN.

Using the same color on the gradient map, select the gradient tool.

When you’re satisfied with the look of the gradient, duplicate the layer, set the duplicated layer to overlay and decrease the opacity to 10% - 30%.

WHAT KIND OF VIDEOS ARE BEST?

.mkv files (the bigger the better BUT i usually think anything above 5 gb is excessive and unnecessary for an episode of television BUT for a movie worth it) itunes downloads (logolesspro on twitter, hd-source on tumblr, live-action-raws on tumblr have some DEPENDING on what you’re looking for) (also, there’s a chance that if you search "show/movie hd download tumblr” you’ll find a tumblr with its itunes download available)

THAT IS IT NO OTHER TYPE OF FILES MAKE YOUR GIFS LOOK GOOD

- my suggestion is always if its new (like just came out the past month) t*rrent it! it’ll be downloaded quickly and .mkv files look the best! BUT if not check the sources above see who has the BIGGEST file if they even have what you’re looking for and then if not then you look to t*rrenting!!

here are the wandavision files i use so you can see!!

SCREENCAPPING

-if you have windows use potplayer! i have a mac so i can’t show you how to use it and it’s not available for me :( HOWEVER back when i had a windows potplayer was the best method in screencapping!!

-I HAVE A MAC! so i use mpv!! (go to mpv.io and follow the directions) BUT DON’T DOWNLOAD THE LATEST ONE (it has a bug that skips frames) try each before the latest one bc from what i heard different ones work differently for everyone!! and i don’t know which one i use (yikes!) THERE ISN’T THAT MANY I PROMISE AND IT’S WORTH IT BC MPV IS THE BEST (i used to use adapter but they didn’t take impressive screencaps in my opinion and it was evident in my gifs you can see it too! )

create a folder for your screencaps! and make sure to rmb the directory order! now we want to create a text file on our built in textedit app on mac! type up all this down below (i like jpg but you can replace jpg w png if you want) AND SAVE THE FILE AS mpv.conf THIS IS IMPORTANT SO DON’T FORGET IT! save it somewhere you’ll find easily and NEVER delete it until you don’t use mpv anymore

just in case you don’t know what to insert after, go to your screencaps folder

now you want to open mpv and go to the corner towards mpv -> preferences and they’ll tell you that there is no .conf file SO GO LOOK FOR THE TEXT FILE WE JUST MADE AND DRAG IT TO THE FOLDER THEY OPENED FOR US AFTER SAYING THERE IS NO .CONF FILE

(i learned all this from @kylos tutorial!! so if any of what i just said about setting up mpv makes NO SENSE to you check out their tutorial at kylos(.)tumblr(.)com/post/178497909311)

now we can screencap!

so let’s find the scene we want RIGHT BEFORE and MAKE SURE SUBTITLES ARE OFF

i pause and then press (option/alt + s) and then SCREENCAPS ARE BEING TAKEN!! and to end the screencaps being taken you once again press (option/alt + s)!!

now we want to delete the excess frames! and put it all into one folder!! DO NOT DELETE FRAMES IN THE MIDDLE OF WHAT YOU WANT TO GIF!! WHEN YOU SKIP FRAMES IT WILL BE NOTICEABLE!!

MAKING THE GIF

this method isn’t used that much BUT I LOVE IT so this is how i put my frames in! first i check to see the size of my frames: 1920 x 1080

so i create a NEW file on photoshop with those dimensions w these settings

now i set my tool on photoshop to path selection tool bc if you have it set on smth like move tool or crop tool at the end you might end up moving or cropping frames you don’t want to!

ok so now we select ALL our frames and drag it on top of our new file on photoshop and the MOMENT we see our first frame in photoshop JUST KEEP CLICKING ENTER until all the frames are loaded!!

you can do file -> scripts -> load files into stack but it is WAYYY slower in my opinion!

now i crop out the excess BUT i don’t resize the gif yet! the dimensions wandavision is filmed in is 4:3 so i go to crop and set the settings to this:

MAKE SURE IT’S ON RATIO SO WE’RE PRESERVING THE ORIGINAL SIZE JUST CUTTING OFF THE BLACK EDGES!! We are going from 1920 x 1080 to 1440 x 1080 this is the dimensions after i cropped

WE ARE KEEPING THE QUALITY BY NOT CHANGING THE DIMENSIONS OF ANYTHING INSIDE !!

now we want to go to actions and create an action!! open up actions w one of these two depending on what your dash looks like!!

so we create an action with this button on the bottom of actions and we’re gonna title it making a gif and hit record!!

NOW LET’S GOOOOO!!

1. make sure you have timeline on your dash!

2. create frame animation (if you see create video timeline just click the arrow next to the button to see your other option which is frame animation!!)

3. now let’s meet our best friend!! the little bar in the top right corner that has all the commands for making our gifs and MAKE FRAMES FROM LAYERS

4. WE HAVE TO SHARPEN OUR GIFS NOW BUT TO DO THAT WE NEED TO CONVERT TO A SMART OBJECT SO NOW WE ARE GOING TO CONVERT TO VIDEO TIMELINE there are two ways: the button in the bottom left corner or the button in the top right corner w all the other commands!

5. select -> all layers DON’T MANUALLY SELECT THEM ALL BC THE ACTION WILL ONLY SELECT THAT SAME NUMBER OF FRAMES SO IF THERE ARE MORE FRAMES YOU WON’T GET THEM IN THE SMART OBJECT!!

6. filter -> convert for smart filters

7. NOW WE SHARPEN!! (filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen) i sharpen twice!! first, make sure we are on legacy w more accurate and remove gaussian blue! the first sharpening will be 500% with 0.4 px radius. NOW SHARPEN AGAIN (filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen) also w legacy, more accurate and remove gaussian blur BUT this time 10% with a 10.0 px radius!

8. it’s hd now!! so let’s flatten frames into clips!! go to the top right magic button again!! and you should see a pop up saying layers are being made

9. now we convert back to frame animation w either the bottom left button or our magic top right command center!

10. make frames from layers

11. select all frames w our magic command button

12. set the animation delay to 0.05 THAT IS THE BEST ONE ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS only use 0.06 when the character is moving really fast in the video itself and it makes the gif itself look awkward BUT NEVER GO ABOVE 0.06 it’ll look slow and laggy and we don’t want that and don’t go below 0.05 bc then it’ll be tooo fast and we don’t want that either!

13. now delete the very first frame on the timeline bc it is an oversharpened duplicate of the second frame! end the recording w this button!

this is what your action should look like expanded! if you made mistakes on the way and it shows up you can just click the specific step and press the trash can on the action tab to delete in from the order!!

NOW AFTER LOADING YOUR FRAMES AND CROPPING THE EDGES OF YOUR FRAMES IF YOU NEED TO JUST PLAY THE ACTION AND THEN YOUR GIF WILL BE MADE FOR YOU!!!!

now i delete some unnecessary frames in the beginning and end and this is what my gif looks like (the size was 46 mb and the limit is 10 mb so the dimensions of the gif are 540 x 405 to get it to 5 mb BUT I HAVEN’T CROPPED IT YET SO THIS IS ME CROPPING JUST TO SHOW YOU WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE)

CROPPING THE GIF

in my opinion if you want your gif to look hd you shouldn’t crop before you sharpen!! i believe that if you crop before you sharpen you don’t allow photoshop to sharpen all the pixels whereas if you crop beforehand there is less to work with!!

dimensions is all up to you!! just make sure to go by tumblr rules!! 540 is the max width and if you want to make two gifs per row then my suggested width is 268 and for three gifs per row my suggested is 177 px! Just have the right width and the length can be whatever you want!!

now i’m going to crop my gif to 540 by 590!!

NOW THIS IS WHAT MY GIF LOOKS LIKE!

COLOURING BASICS

let me show you the best adjustment tools in my opinion and a brief explanation for what they do!!

brightness/contrast: pretty simple increase/decrease the brightness/contrast BUT one of my techniques for when i first start colouring a gif is i select all my frames and do nothing to the settings of the adjustment but i set the layer to screen LIKE THIS

curves: ik others use curves to change brightness/contrast w the squiggly thing BUT i like it to set a white point and black point, this is also a technique i use when i first start colouring a gif when screen doesn’t look good for me SO you use white point to select a pixel on the gif to set as the lightest color on the gif (setting the white point) and you use black point to select a pixel on the gif to set as the darkest colour on the gif (setting the black point) usually the white point makes it TOO bright and that’s why we use the black point to counter it and same goes for when i use screen with brightness/contrast, it gets too bright so i use black point to counter it below is the button for white point and the button for black point, respectively they are shaped as color picker tools

vibrance: generally, i never use this except for color p*rn sets but they work really well in making colors seem more strong

hue/saturation: like vibrance, i never use this except for color p*rn sets but this adjustment is to help change the colors or hue of a color for example: turn blue into purple or turn a blue into a little lighter shade of blue

color balance: I ALWAYS USE THIS!! except for in black and white gifs BUT THIS IS MY GO TO AND IF I DON’T USE IT MY GIFS ARE JUST BLAND i feel like color balance is what essentially balances the colors on your gif and adds dimension to it, it makes your gif go from looking way too yellow to a more golden neutral look and it is an essential adjustment in my opinion

channel mixer: i rarely use channel mixer BUT it is so so useful when you are working w a dark scene just play w the settings and all of a sudden all the blue in a dark scene will be a little more yellow and red and your scene will kind of just look brighter and more visible

selective color: THIS IS ALSO AN ESSENTIAL this helps SPECIFIC colors pop you’re working on a scene where there is too much red on someones face you use this tool to remove the magentaness from the yellow section OR when you feel someones face is TOO yellow and needs more blush you add more magenta in the yellow section of selective color

gradiant map: gradiant map is perfect when you’re lazy if you feel like your gif looks more neutral and you want some red in it but you don’t want to mess with any other adjustments just set a red to black gradiant on soft overlay with a very low opacity and BOOM slightly red but not too much red added!

NOW TO COLOR THE GIF!

today i have decided to start with a brightness layer set on screen

and this is what we got!

now that’s a little to bright and washed out in my opinion SOOOO to counteract it, i’m going to use my black point tool in curves and i’m going to select this point on the gif (it’s better to choose smth in the background and not smth that’s paid attention to such as monica’s hair or either of their eyelashes)

now my gif looks like this! the base color is complete!

now i think i need to balance all this yellow and red! SOOOO WE GONNA USE COLOR BALANCE!!

i think the best way to use color balance is to keep swinging the balancer until you see what you like and then keep going midtones i think i want more red and i don’t want a cyan midtone and then for shadows i think i want more cyan to counter the redness of the gif but highlights i don’t touch that much NOW HERE ARE MY SETTINGS SO YOU CAN SEE

and this is what my gif looks like

now you can stop here if you want but in my opinion i think the gif looks a lil too dead still SO IMMA USE SELECTIVE COLOR

i think there needs to be a lot lot more RED so i amp up the yellow magenta and black in the red! but i also think the yellows need to be LESS RED so i remove magenta from the yellow! and bc there’s some cyan and blue bc of monica and the flowers in the background im going to make the cyans more cyan and the blues a lil more black! i’m going to remove some yellows from the magenta!! and i add more black to the neutrals and black!! i think it’s always important to add more black to neutral and black bc it adds more depth to the gif by not just making it a bunch of bright colors and having dark colors to contrast to!! my settings are below!

and the result!

now let’s see everything together!

and the before and after!

I HOPE MY COLOURING EXPLANATION MADE SENSE!! if not you can always ask me more questions i don’t mind!!

ADDING SUBTITLES

we want to grab the text tool!

make a text box from anywhere in the middle from the left to right edge. this is so we can make sure our text is centered and will be in the same place for when we have sets w more than one gif w text!

type your text out and make sure you highlight the whole text so that all the settings apply to EACH character! you can find the alignments (for center) in the paragraph tab!

now lets right click on the text layer and go to blending options! add stroke and drop shadow!

now drag it to the desired height you would like and make sure to keep it in mind for when you have more than one subtitled gif in a set!

NOW TO MAKE SURE THE TEXT STAYS IN PLACE AND THE BLENDING STAYS YOU HAVE TO CONVERT TO SMART OBJECT!!

if you want to only have the text applied to certain frames instead of all frames, select the frames you don’t want by clicking the first frame in ur don’t want section ON THE TIMELINE and WHILST HOLDING SHIFT click the last frame of ur don’t want section and then toggle the eye switch next to the text layer

now you see the text

now you don’t

tip: use opacity to fade the text in and out!

the text is going to be on all my frames so i don’t need to toggle the eye but i just wanted to show you just in case!!

now here’s my FINAL RESULT

save for web (file -> export -> save for web) 

your gifs have to always be under 10 mb! so, if your WAYYY overboard YOU HAVE TO DELETE FRAMES! or you can divide the gif in two and have two gifs instead of one! however, if you plan on going the deleting frames route MAKE SURE YOU DELETE FROM THE BEGINNING OR END OF YOUR SELECTION i promise you that most of us won’t notice that your characters dialogue is being cut off BUT WE WILL NOTICE IF FRAMES ARE BEING SKIPPED so, don’t delete frames in the middle of ur gif!! idc how little you do it IT WILL RUIN YOUR GIF AND I SAY THIS FROM EXPERIENCE i would delete every fifth frame to cut down my gifs and that may seem like not that big of a deal BUT IT IS my gif looked choppy and poor so it is way better to cut from the end/beginning of the gif

ANOTHER LAST PIECE OF ADVICE in the bottom left of when the save for web menu shows up THERE’S A PREVIEW BUTTON click on it! it’ll show you your gif on your default browser and show you what it’ll look like once uploaded! this is perfect to check the speed of ur gif and the colouring and to notice if there’s a problem with your subtitles or maybe there’s an obvious jump in frames you never noticed before!! i always use preview bc the built-in photoshop viewer of ur gif shows the colors differently and the speed is NEVER ACURRATE!

I USED THESE SAVE SETTINGS!! many say to use selective pattern but i DISAGREE and i think these save settings are the ✨ best ✨

OK NOW THAT IS THE END OF THIS VERY LONG GIF TUTORIAL!! I HOPE THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED!! IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK I SINCERELY DON’T MIND!! JUST DON’T BE RUDE OR ANYTHING BC PPL HAVE BEEN RECENTLY :(