How to put GIF overlays on your edits
Anon asked: Hey! If it’s possible could you tell me how to apply the sparkly overlay?
Sure! This is how I do it, I’m sure there are other ways but this is just the method I use. This tutorial is for placing an overlay over an image to create a moving GIF using Adobe Photoshop. There may be other programs you can use, but Photoshop is my go-to. I only learned this recently so I’m a beginner myself, but I hope you find this helpful!
It is possible to place GIF overlays on top of both still images and other GIFs. This tutorial shows putting an overlay on a still image, but GIFs aren’t much different. Don’t stress if you make mistakes or don’t get it right the first time, Photoshop and GIF-making take practice!
Difficulty: medium, basic Photoshop skills are useful
Basic commands:
Ctrl+C = copy
Ctrl+V = paste
Ctrl+Z = undo
Ctrl+Alt+A = selects all layers
Four lines > “Select All Frames” = select all your frames
Click first layer > Shift-click last layer = selects layers between
1. Find an overlay for and edit your image.
You can find sparkle, snow, etc. overlay GIFs quite easily on Tumblr or through a simple Google search. You’ll notice that these overlays have either black/dark or white/pale backgrounds rather than transparent ones - it’s supposed to be like this! We use a tool on Photoshop to remove that background later, so don’t worry. I’ll be using this spark/fire/smoke GIF:
I personally find it easier to just edit the size of the image to be the same size as the GIF. Just work out your GIF’s dimensions, create a blank document in Photoshop with them then paste and resize your image on the canvas so that your image and GIF are of equal size. Feel free to add filters or edit the colours too of your image before we move on!
2. Open your image and GIF in Photoshop.
Now, notice how when the gif opened it has all these separate layers? This particular GIF has 59 layers/frames. I would say that you don’t really want many more layers/frames than that, depends on how much patience you have. If you want to get rid of some layers, click on the top layer and press the “Delete” key, it’ll then move down to the next layer so you can essentially hold down delete until you have as many as you want (though this will cut the GIF shorter).
3. Open up your timeline.
On the top bar, click Window > Timeline. Your page should now look like this:
If it doesn’t and you don’t have all the separate frames in the “Timeline” window, don’t worry! If the centre of the timeline tab has a little drop-down box, select “Create Frame Animation” then click on it. Then, in the corner of the timeline tab, you’ll see a few little lines.
Click this, then “Make Frames From Layers”. This should get you to that first image!
4. Now go to your image, currently opened in another tab.
This is a super important step! Without it your edit won’t work, I know I made this mistake several times while I was learning. You should have the same amount of layers/frames of your image as layers/frames of your GIF. My GIF had 59 frames so I’ll be duplicating my image into 59 layers. Remember that “Layer 0″ will count as a layer too, when we convert them into frames.
Then turn this into a timeline of frames as I showed above. “Create Frame Animation” > little lines > “Make Frames From Layers”. Double check that you have the same number of frames in your image and your GIF!
5. Group your GIF layers and image layers.
Please do this - working with hundreds of un-grouped layers is the biggest headache and easily avoidable. For both the image and the GIF, select all layers (Ctrl+Alt+A) then Layer > Group Layers. Name the groups something along the lines of “Image” and “GIF” to make it easier later.
6. Time to start bringing them together.
Create a new document with the same dimensions as your GIF/image. We’ll be compiling everything here.
Go to your image - the base. Click the little lines > Select All Frames, then click the little lines again and choose Copy Frames. Go to the blank document, click the little lines, then choose Paste Frames. A pop-up will appear.
We’ll always be choosing “Paste Over Selection”.
7. Add the GIF.
Go to the GIF and repeat the Select All Frames and Copy Frames thing from the previous step. Go back to your document and choose Paste Frames. It’ll seem like the GIF frames have covered over the image ones, but don’t worry, we’re about to fix this!
Beforehand, just check that a) all frames are selected and b) in the layers panel the “GIF” group is selected. Then, in the layers panel, pick the drop-down menu that probably says “Pass Through” at the moment and change this to Screen (or Darken or Lighten, it depends. If Screen doesn’t work try one of those two!).
Hopefully, the background of your GIF has now disappeared and your page looks like this (click the play button at the bottom to watch the GIF through):
8. Save it the right way.
This is pretty easy but it’s just important to note that this is how you save it rather than just “Save As”. Click File > Export > Save For Web (Legacy). Set all the options to be like this and watch your GIF through just to check that it’s right:
Then choose “Save” and save it wherever you wish!
Completed GIF:
