save settings

i always save my gifs under selective diffusion! when making a super colourful gif, sometimes i'll do adaptive pattern, but 99.9% of the time my gifs are selective diffusion with 256 colours

when making black & white gifs, you might be able to get away with lowering the number of colours, allowing you to squeeze more frames in.

keep every gif below 10mb because that's tumblr's size limit, so i keep my big 540px x 540px gifs to about 40-50 frames and my dialogue gifs to about 55 frames. mostly i just keep as many frames in as possible to push the 10mb limit

adjustments

sharpen your gifs! my sharpening settings are 500 at 0.3 radius and then 10 at 10.0 radius!

i start every colouring with a curves layer, then a levels layer. i like my gifs bright, so sometimes i add a brightness contrast layer on screen before i use curves

i loveee bright gifs. i love the whites in my gif to be white and the blacks to be black, so i use levels a lot in my gifs

my usual colouring process starts with brightness/contrast on screen (if applicable), curves, then levels

usually i try to keep the number of adjustment layers low because a lot of adjustments tends to mess with the quality

colour balance is your best friend. a lot of movies & tv shows have a yellow tint, so upping the blues can help decrease that — i use this a lot because i don't want my gifs coming out too yellow

selective colour is also your best friend. this helps you target specific colours in the gif, like reds and greens and magentas, and is especially helpful when correcting skin tones

channel mixer is the best for removing tints. whole scene coloured red? use channel mixer to make it look natural! showmakers decided the scene should just be yellow? channel mixer here to save the day! you can use this tutorial as a lovely guide to using it

overall, i like my gifs more colourful, so i also use vibrance and hue/saturation a lot!

make sure not to red/yellow/pink/white-wash the people in your gifs! having reference photos with decent lighting up helps a lot when colouring to make sure you're staying true to their skin tone

general tips and tricks

always, always, ALWAYS gif 1080p or 4k footage if you can get it. anything above 10gb will work just fine! honestly, the size of the actual file doesn't really matter that much unless you're doing large gifs (like 540px x 540px or 540px x 800px), but there'll be a quality difference between a 720p 1gb file from youtube and a 4k 12gb file for sure

(in all honesty.... the secret to my crisp gifs is the fact that i have massive files. my star wars movie files are 4k 38gb and i just downloaded a 50gb file for dunkirk because I Am A Nerd.) this is not required at all i am just blessed with a lot of storage and i love having the best files possible for my favourite media, but generally, large files = better quality. HOWEVER, the difference between 17gb and 38gb is practically negligible so don't worry

large files are also better for colour manipulation because the quality doesn't drop as quickly

tumblr dimensions are ALWAYS 540px for the width. you could go wider but tumblr compresses it down to 540px width anyways so you might as well just start at 540px to preserve it. i tend to do 540 x 540 for sets like this, 540 x 350 for dialogue, and 540 x 300 for wide shot scenes.

i like having colour schemes in my sets. if you look through some of my movie sets, you'll notice they usually have a theme — this a new hope set is mostly pink, while this dunkirk set is mostly blue. that's just personal preference but i find it helps me so much when picking scenes, and makes it a lot more cohesive imo

WATERMARK YOUR GIFS. twitter loooooves to repost gifs from here unfortunately and sometimes other people on this website will steal them too, so it's just a good idea to always watermark. i designed a fun little one for myself and it just makes me happy to see it on my gifs. you can just add a little text with your url down at the bottom of your gif!

tag people on your sets! tag source blogs, tag other creators, tag the general edit tags for your media, whatever! i usually tag the blogs i see post a lot within the fandom and my mutuals. most users will have their tracking tag in their bio, mine for example is #userkosmos

create a general edit tag for your works, and link it in your bio. makes it a lot easier for people to browse your works and also makes it easier for yourself to organise!

most importantly, have fun! gifmaking shouldn't be a chore, and sometimes taking a step away (or maybe ten steps away...) does wonders for your creativity

gifmaking tutorials

how to make hq gifs by cal-kestis

giffing 101 by cillianmurphy

giffing tutorial by breakbleheavens

gifmaking for beginners by hayaosmiyazaki

gif tutorial by kylos

how to colour yellow-tinted shots by nobodynocrime

how to avoid colourwashing

how to avoid pink and yellow washing by jeonwonwoo