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we're gonna go over this gif. since both gifs are from the same scene, they both have the same adjustment layers, just a different colour overlay.

this is what i'm starting with. pretty dark, doesn't seem to be much contrast

the first thing i always do is add a brightness/contrast layer, and set the blend mode to "screen", which gives us this.

i can tell her face is going to become too red when i add other adjustments down the line, so i'm gonna add a channel mixer layer and move it underneath the the b/c layer. in the red channel, i'm gonna reduce the reds to +93, and in the blue channel i'm gonna raise the reds to +4 and the blues to +3.

which gives us this. her skin is a lot more neutral.

the next thing i always do is add a curves layer, and use the white dropper. there's not a lot of spots to click with it—the door is the lightest object but it's still too dark, which will whitewash the gif too much, so i'm gonna zoom in and click one of the pixels in her eyes, which really brightens up the gif and evens out the whites.

to go with the white dropper, i add a second curves layer and use the black dropper, and click a spot in her hair. it doesn't do too much to darken the gif, but it does even out the blacks.

now, i need the gif to be a little more brighter overall, so i can add the contrast later. i'm gonna use a levels layer, dragging the top white slider to 229, and then the bottom white slider to 249, just to keep the white from becoming too glaring

which gives us this

colouring looks good, so i'm gonna add the contrast using a black-to-white gradient map, and set the blend mode to "soft light" and then adjust the opacity to 50%. this is my preferred way to add contrast as it retains the original colouring best. if i used an actual contrast layer, it would make her skin too red.

her skin did end up a touch too red, but that was more to do with the red that was already there. i could go back to the channel mixer layer at the bottom and adjust it further, but removing the red with the channel mixer ends up darkening the area as it neutralizes it, and i find her face is already a bit too dark. so instead i'm going to add a selective colour, move it beneath the gradient map and in the red channel i'm gonna reduce the blacks to -24. now her skin is bright and even.

this is the other gif with the exact same layers

the final step is to add the colour layer. i prefer to use gradient maps over solid fills, as i find they add a bit more dimension to the colour.

these are the two gradients i'm using, both of them with the blend mode set to colour.

which gives us these two gifs.

and when i put them together, i get this

the pink stands out nicely, the orange not so much.

so i'm actually gonna rewind to when i added the colour gradient maps. i colour 99% of my blended gifs with frame-by-frame colouring, and since it's a bitch to add more adjustments after i've already duplicated it 40 times, i always add a black-to-white gradient map underneath the colour layer. if i don't need it, i can just turn it off, and if it makes the gif too dark, i can just adjust the opacity.

in the case of the blended gif above, that is with both the b&w maps turned off. now, i don't need to use the one underneath the orange map—by virtue of the pink gradient being lighter, that gif will always be the brighter of the two, and in this case the orange gifs background is darker.

the pink gif can definitely be darker though, and this is how it looks with the b&w gradient turned on and at 100% opacity

the orange is much more distinct now, and bonus, the blend where her face moves looks a bit better too, as the background where it moves over isn't as bright.

here's another example from an earlier set

i'm not gonna go over the base colouring for it, partially because looking back i don't like it much lmao (i was still getting the hang of colouring season 3).

this is the gif with the b&w layer underneath the colour layer turned off

very bad colour blending happening, the purple is lost in the green, the hand even ends up tinted green, and just in general nothing stands out.

but if i turn on the b&w layers, we get this.

we have purple! and distinct blends! and a non-shrekified hand!