Since I’ve been asked before a bunch of times how I make gifs back on my old account when I was primarily known as sungjaeandnanashusband how to make gifs, I’ve decided to create a tutorial at last. The only reason why I didn’t sooner is because it takes time, so I wanted to cultivate my skillset in making gifs to a somewhat decent level in order to better help all you guys.
Now, I may or may not be concise in my instructions, but hopefully you will find it helpful in one way or another.
This will be the end result
For starters, I use Photoshop CS6, albeit not the extended version because I couldn’t find a decent copy of it. Plus I’m used to the non-extended version too much at this point soz~~
First, what you want to do is open the program obviously and wait for it to load (do not click the loading window of PS or else it will crash). Just be patient as it loads, or try to be, and then once it has loaded, you should see a window that looks something like this:
Your next step, now, is to click on File>Import>Video Frames to Layers (see pic below)
Once you have opened it, PS will prompt you to give it a video for it to extract the frames from in order to make layers out of them. For this tutorial, I will be doing a gif of one of my favorite MVs from one of my favorite boy groups ever: 24k (that’s where the end result gif was giffed from^^)
But before we get to that, we first need to decide what frames we want PS to extract so that it doesn’t take the wrong ones. This is important because PS will only extract 500 frames a piece (which is about 10 to 15 seconds of video feed a piece approx), so we have to make sure that the selection made is precise.
Tl;dr of the last two paragraphs: just read along.
Once you have found the video you want to gif. Photoshop will load it. It may take some time, but once you have it, the end result should look something like this:
Once you have the video open, take a look at the black sliders (highlighted in the pic below)
These are what we’ll be using to tell Photoshop exactly which scene we want. Now you have two choices in this case: either let the video play out until you see the scene you want, or manually find it yourself. There really isn’t an easy way, but what I typically do is manually move the black sliders myself in order to find which scene I want to gif as its quicker for me. Ofc, you might find the first suggestion I gave you easier, but its all about preference tbh.
Also, please take note that the left slider is the slider you use to tell PS, ‘This is the frame I want you to extract first. And that the right slider is the slider you use to tell PS, ‘This is the frame I want you to extract last.’ Also note that when I said PS will only extract 500 max frames, that doesn’t mean it always will. That’s just the maximum. You don’t have to extract 500 whole frames in order for it to extract what you need properly.
In fact, you can extract 250 frames, or 100 frames, or 300 frames, or 249 frames. It doesn’t care, just as long as you don’t try to make it give you more than 500 frame.
Once you have selected the scene you want with the sliders, click the OK button.
If you get a warning that says
Or a warning that says, ‘This will produce a large document and possibly take a long time.’ Without the, ‘frames will be limited to 500.’, basically it means exactly like I’ve been saying. That it will not extract more than 500 frames. If it tells you that without the warn message, PS is pretty much telling you, ‘This isn’t more than 500 frames but is still large and bulky enough for us to warrant giving you this message.’
Now you just have to wait for PS to do its thing and import the frames you selected into layers so that we can finally get to the good part…almost. Actually we’re about less than half the way there. If it feels like its taking effing forever for the frames to be extracted, then do something else while you wait. Once it finally finishes, your empty Photoshop window should now contain the frames you imported, with the timeline animation window at the bottom and everything else in its place.
Now that we have finally imported the frames we need, we now need to prepare the frames in order to make a feasible gif. A lot of people who asked me for help seemed to mostly have trouble on this part. Its very important that so pay attention^^
First, we must resize the gif to Tumblr’s max requirements. Since the max standard for a feasible gif is 540px wide, we must resize it so that it ends up being that same amount.
What I typically do is crop my gifs to 540px wide by 300px tall. Since, if you resize it, PS will make it 540px wide by 304px high anyway, if you want to save yourself some effort, just do what I do and crop it :)
Go to the left panel and find the crop tool. The panel should look like the pic below and the tool you want is p much the where the yellow circle is
Once you have it, move your mouse to the top and you should find a fckton of presets for the crop tool that look like this (think of it as menu bar idk)
If the pic above is too small to see, click here
Now you might think all you have to do now is punch in the numbers and then crop it, but its a lot more complex than that. You need to make a crop preset by clicking on the drop down menu and then clicking on ‘Size and Resolution’ which should be at the very bottom of the menu
If the pic above is too small, then click here
Now once you have that opened, hopefully the rest is self-explanatory. All you have to do is enter, for the width: 540, and then for the height: 300. For the res you can leave it or make it 300. Then check the box that asks if you want to save the preset and click okay. Now all you have to do is wait.
Once it has finished cropping, we are now free to do the fun part. First, delete any frames you don’t want/need. This is important because as I’ve continued making gifs, I’ve learned that the less frames there are, the better. Esp. if you‘re working with something that is highly likely to exceed the max cap limit for gifs on Tumblr (2mb), but we’ll worry about that once we’ve actually made it to that step.
Now once you’ve done that, most people, at this point, will tell you to convert the frame animation to a timeline animation, but this is where the handicap of using PS6 Not Extended comes to bite us in the arse. Because unless you have the extended version, you can’t do it. So I instead use actions that sharpen each and every frame for me. You can find that action here (credit for this action goes to the lovely people at itsphotoshop)
You can follow the steps provided on the link to figure out how to sharpen it; the version of photoshop they use is practically the same regardless of what version of PS you use.
Once you have sharpened it, I recommend making the delay time 0.02 ms higher than the original delay time. So for example, if when you imported the frames, the delay time was 0.03, then you would make it 0.05. If the delay time was, by default, 0.05 or higher, then you would leave it.
Now once you’re done, you need to go to File>Save for Web. On the bottom right hand corner, it should indicate how big your gif is. If it is larger than 2mb, then you need to go back and get rid of some frames and then change the delay time. If it is still too big, then reduce the size by cropping it or use a b&w gradient map. A huge part about learning how to make gifs is experimenting with the settings on your own and stuff until the file size cap isn’t over the mark (2mb), because otherwise, it will freeze. This is also how I learned how to color on my own as well as edit my gifs and things in general, by playing around with adjustment layers till I found something I could do with. This tut will not be going in depth on that, as that’s a completely different subject for an entirely different tutorial, but I’m just giving you some pointers^^
Anyway, once you’re done, save it for the web and then boom. You’re done
If you have any questions, feel free to PM me. I hope I helped; thanks guys!!! o/
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