Hi!! Amazing buffy gifs Im in awe. How did you color the background purple and not the characters even when they moved around??
Hi! and thank you so much 🫶
Through lots of curses mostly 😂
There are a few ways to do it and a lot of ways to curse, I think I chose the hardest, or maybe it just feels like that. Like, I am pretty sure there are easier ways, and I will find them one day.
And sorry in advance, read more changes position of screencaps in the post for some reason 🫤even read more changes position every time I try to fix it, it's a long post
If the character has minimum movements in the gif it is much easier, I'm adding a solid color (or gradient) and set a blending mode to the preferred one. In case of btvs gifs it was set to "color" which changes everything in the shades of the chosen color. And that's it, one layer for entire gif. But when the character moves... you have to do it for each layer separately or move the color layer around to adjust to character's movements.
Second option works if the character's silhouette doesn't change, then it's easier, you just drag that color layer to fit the movement of the character. And you can do that on timeline as well, using keyframes.
You click on the clock (I presume it's a clock, or stopwatch or whatever, the round thing near the layer you need) and the diamond symbol appears, by clicking it you can set keyframes. First keyframe is where the layer starts, then you set second keyframe and change layer position.
As an example, here's a square that moves using just those two keyframes, and by adding more keyframes you can move it the way you want, the first keyframe is where it starts, the second keyframe is where it ends, and I only changed position of the square where I wanted it to end on the second keyframe, the rest photoshop does itself.
My problem with this method is that for some reason when I use keyframes on timeline the layers end up duplicating and since I have another option, I didn't go deeper into how to fix it. I guess I will when I finally need it lol
You can work layer by layer on video timeline as well, but when it comes to working on each layer separately, I prefer frame animation. But whatever floats your boat, if it's easier for you to work on timeline that's similar.
So, I hope you already know how to make a basic gif, and we will turn this Kira gif into the second one
Not much of a movement here, but right now I don't have any other gifs as an example.
You can color the gif before starting, or color it after, however you prefer. In this case I already sharpened it, made frame animation and colored it after I added color to the background.
Go to the layer you want to work on, I will start with the first frame, obviously, and then go to "select" and chose "subject"
It automatically chooses the person, however, it comes with flaws sometimes, if the scene is too dark, or it's hard to define where character ends and the background starts, then it will probably select the person not as well as you want, in that case you will need to adjust each layer by hand
Yep, I did it with this Kira gif and died, but hey, it looks not so bad
So, now once you chose subject it selected the character, you need to invert the selection, otherwise whatever you do will work only on the character, and we need to change background. Press shift+ctrl+I or choose inverse in selection.
Then you need to choose solid color
here is with white to show you what it selected
then you choose blending mode to color
and then add a clipping mask on that layer, so that it only works on that one frame you chose
then you repeat it for every frame
I suggest to create ✨actions✨, so repeat all those steps from selecting subject to clipping mask
Set a shortcut to it, whatever you want, I just decided I don't need whatever F8 originally does
Now every time you press that shortcut while being on the preferred frame it will do the job for you. If later you need to change the background color, you can do it by pressing "make fill layer" in the action and choosing the color you want, then just remove the created layer and use the action, it will work with your new chosen color.
You can even create an action that does it for each frame of the animation, you just do it once and then let action work for you :3
And if the subject doesn't work that well and you need to adjust the color of the background for some of the frames you just use black/white brushes while being on the mask layer
Black to remove, white to add, and just draw.
If the space you want to color doesn't change its place, let's say it's a face in the background that you want to color which doesn't affect your main character, and doesn't move, then you can create a separate ONE layer above all the other layers with the same color and set the blending mode to color again. In that case you won't need to adjust that background character on each frame separately. When you set blending mode to color it works, no matter how many layers you add with the same color set on color in blending mode, it works only once. With other blending modes it doesn't work the same, like soft light will change the color if you add second layer with the same color.
Anyway, hope it helped, and I hope it doesn't look as overwhelming as it looks by the amount of text. I just like to be dramatic after I spend a day or two creating a gifset that gets *checks notes* 17 reblogs only
