i made this carrd for just that! and my main is @blanket-burrito-bucky
⇒ tags:
note: if you want me to tag any tws, please go ahead and send an ask. i'll be more than happy to tag it.
#luck writes:
this tag has all my writing, fanfiction or original. some pieces may not be posted here, but only on my ao3, and some may only be posted on here. it depends upon the content. but i will try to post it on both platforms.
#luck's moodboards:
i edit pictures sometimes! this tag will have all my moodboards for various themes, usually in a 3x3 format, and any occasional colour palletes.
#luck's edits:
I started dabbling in full on graphic designing type of editing and IT'S SO FUN!! so there'll be a lot of that. mostly stucky and bucky right now, but I'll see what inspiration I get! This tag will also have all photoedits.
#luck draws:
this tag has all my art, from doodles to complete pieces. i make pen sketches, graphite sketches, and paint sometimes.
#luck's gifs:
this tag has any and all gifs i make. still pretty new at it but i'm learning little by little. [kinda on haitus for this one]
#helpbook:
this is my rbs of any tutorial or guide i find that can help me, for future reference.
⇒ taglists:
send an ask to be added or removed, and please mention the specific taglist!
A few people have asked how I did the effect in my pinned post and this set. So, in this tutorial, I’ll show you how to do this typing animation and give you a download to a template I made for the overlay! Disclaimer: This tutorial uses Video Timeline and assumes you have a basic understanding of gif-making in Photoshop.
hello! so i found your blog and i love your gifs! how do you make them so pretty, like the sharpening? i use actions and they sometimes looked over sharpened or ugly.
Hey, glad you like my gifs :) I pretty much use the same process as most everyone else for making my gifs (smart sharpen at 500%/.3 radius). I strongly suggest not using actions that you find around here. Most of them use that weird gaussian blur/sharpen method and that always looks messy to me. Here are the three things you need to do to make nice gifs:
1080p video. Always. Every single time. If you must use 720p that will do in a pinch, but if there is a 1080p version (90% of the time there is, especially if it’s something that’s come out in the past 5-6 years) always use that.
When taking screencaps, get every frame. This is so important and I still see people getting every other frame or even every third frame. That might have been cute in 2010, but we know better now. (note: I use MPEG Streamclip for screencaps and there isn’t an option that just says get every frame. Everything is shot at roughly 24 frames per second, so that is the number you’d use in that case to get every frame. I don’t know what the settings are for VLC, but you shouldn’t use VLC anyway… love yourself.)
Your sharpen settings should always be the same, 500% and .3 radius. This will work every time. I promise. Trust me. Just do it. I use the convert to timeline and smart object method, because it’s just easier and I don’t have to have some long complicated action with a set number of layers I can sharpen. I love myself too much to put myself through that, and you should to. I stole a trick recently to help boost and refine my sharpening. A second pass with the settings at 10% 10 radius is a useful trick. It’s not necessary, but it makes a slight difference if you want to try that too.
Bonus: Photoshop always slows gifs down when you save them. Your frame delay rate should be about .05 seconds (some people use .04 or .06 but I believe that really depends on which version of PS you are using). If you reopen your gifs after saving, you’ll find that a .05 delay somehow becomes a .07 delay due to some dumb glitch. Fix the rate, and re-save. It should work fine after that.
That’s pretty much all you need to know to make smooth gifs every time. That said, if you want to cheat… I actually made an action (I know I said don’t use actions, but mine is great) that will do all the work for you in Photoshop (resize, actually make the gif, sharpen, and even get rid of the 1px border that Photoshop makes when you size down). I suggest actually figuring out all these steps on your own and maybe using the action as a guide to help because it’s good to actually know what you’re doing in PS. Anyone can just click play on an action ya know?
as requested! this is a super super detailed tutorial for the a-z of gifmaking basics, starting from getting photoshop & downloading hq movies/videos alll the way to tagging & scheduling your gifsets on tumblr for max interaction. if you’ve wanted to get into gifmaking but feel intimidated or you don’t know where to start, this is the tutorial for you!!! making gifs might seem overwhelming at first, but with practice, it’s quite easy to get the basics down. for reference, this post is up to date as of nov. 2020. please rb if this helps!
Her eyes were black, and large as lotus-petals, her complexion was dark, and her locks were blue and curly. Her nails were beautifully convex, and bright as burnished copper; her eye-brows were fair, and bosom was deep.
Indeed, she resembled the veritable daughter of a celestial born among men.
KMG Mahabharat | Book 1: Adi Parva | Chaitraratha Parva | SECTION CLXIX
⤷ requested by @chaanv for my follower celebration
Hiii, sorry to bother you but I was wondering if you could tell me how do you sharpen your gifs? The ones from your pinned post look so great I'm in love. I hope you're doing good 💗💗💗
hii! don't worry you're not bothering me at all, i like getting asks :) thank you!! i don't think i do anything super out of the ordinary when sharpening my gifs, but i can show you some settings and give some tips!
in short, the way i make my gifs is load it into photoshop, convert frames to timeline and make them a smart object, crop the image how i want and shrink it to 540px, then sharpen it and then colour it. it's best to work with an image that's same size as what you're actually uploading, bc if you edit the whole thing and then size it down you might lose quality.
as a general tip, i’ve noticed gifs of things like action scenes are usually less sharp bc there is a lot of movement, so keep that in mind. and ofc dark scenes are harder to get sharp.
to sharpen my gifs i use smart sharpen, these are my settings:
i've tried a lot of different sharpening settings over time, but i found out less is more. sometimes i also add noise, which can help sharpen a gif more, especially if its a dark scene. but it also increases your filesize so be aware of that.
for that i use these settings, although i might change it around a bit.
besides that i've noticed that it really helps to have a lot of contrast in your gifs! obvious shadows and highlights, and with a clear difference between colours. i like having vibrant gifs, but it also helps making them more clear. photoshop can only pick a palette of 256 colours, and your gif wil export sharper if there are more unique colours, instead of all being in a similar spectrum.
these are my export settings:
(instead of noise you could also increase lossy a bit, it has a similar effect but actually decreases your filesize. but don't add too much, if i use it i always keep it under 15)
this is the palette before and after i coloured my gif, with colouring is a lot less monotone!
and this is the difference with and without colouring (but with the same sharpening settings):Â
so you can see it isn’t just in the sharpening settings, it’s a lot of the colouring too!Â
i always upload my gifs to my drafts first so i can see how it looks on mobile (bc we all know there’s a huge difference unfortunately lmao). just also be aware that sometimes mobile doesn’t load the gifs correctly, which makes them look low quality even though they aren’t. what helps for me is to force stop the app and reopen it, until it looks like what i know it’s supposed to. the top gif here isn’t loaded correctly, the bottom one is.
so yeah that’s basically it! a combination of the right sharpening, colouring and export settings. please let me know if you have any questions, like i said you’re not bothering me, i promise! 😊
hi can you make a tutorial on how you sharpen your gifs? i especially love the black and white ones you make
Hi Nonnie! Sorry you've had to wait a little bit, I've just been really insanely busy with a thousand things 😅 Anyway, I'm not sure how exactly to do this, but hopefully this makes sense!
We'll be doing this scene, to go from the top gif to the bottom gif:
(This tutorial assumes basic knowledge of gif-making and smart filters, and is probably long-winded because I haven't been making gifs for very long, but this is the way I do mine.)
Tutorial under the cut:
Couple things to note that make a huge difference before you even start:
Use high-quality videos! I try not to go below 1080p for anything, and sometimes that means downloading bigger files.
Make sure that whatever application you use to get your frames isn't distorting them, or skipping frames. I use MPV player.
Make sure your gif size is correct when you crop it, if you're posting it somewhere). For example, if you're making a single gif on a row, Tumblr's optimum width is 540px. If you make it 500px, or 550px or whatever, it's going to look super crunchy and weird after you post it, so stick to their sizes.
We're gonna begin at this page (if you need a tutorial on how to get here, let me know, but I'm assuming you know!)
First, make sure your gif is a smart object! If your gif isn't a smart object, you won't be able to apply the smart filters. If it is, you'll see this symbol next to it. To convert all your layers to a smart object, select them all, right-click, and select "convert to smart object."
Next, duplicate your gif layer so you have two. Hide the top layer and select the bottom layer. Your layers should look like this:
Remember we're working on the bottom layer first! Go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. Use these settings, depending on what looks best for your gif/video quality:
The radius can be set to 0.2px to 0.5px depending on your quality/preference. You can also choose to remove Lens Blur instead of Gaussian Blur but these are my preferred settings. (I don't do anything with the Shadows and Highlights section)
Next, do another Smart Sharpen, but this time, use these settings:
(a popular choice for this second smart sharpen is 10%-10px, but I like the clarity 20% gives just a little bit more.)
This is what my layers look like right now:
And this is what my gif looks like. I removed the sharpening from the right side of the image, and while it's not super obvious like this, I think you can see the difference best in Buck's eyes. The eye on our left has much more detail and depth, while the one on our right isn't as clear:
You can stop right here if you want to, if you're happy with the way your gif looks. However, my preference is always to soften the crisp edges just a little so it doesn't look over-sharp, and also give it some clarity, which is where that second layer comes in.
Select that top layer and un-hide it. Remember that there are no filters on this layer so far. Go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Choose a radius of 0.4-0.7px, and click enter. The gif will look like this:
Next, change the opacity of this top layer to 20-25%. You should have your sharpened gif back, but it will look just a little softer and less harsh along the edges. You can change this opacity depending on your scene, so it's really like a slider you can control to go back and forth.
Your layers will look like this:
Then, one more optional step that I like to do is add a noise layer. This seems counter-intuitive, but when you have big blocks of color, the noise helps disperse them just a little bit.
Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Use these settings:
Then, in your Layers pane, right-click where it says Add Noise, and in the menu, click Edit Smart Filter Blending Options. You should get this dialogue box, where you can change the opacity of that filter to 50%.
I know it kind of seems like "what's the point?" when this particular layer is already low-opacity, but it does make a difference (to me, at least) in some gifs where there's a lot of color/light, especially after you color the gif in!
This is what your layers should look like:
And this is what my gif looks like after I run it through the frame animation, all sharpened!
Here it is colored the way I color my gifs xD (and also slightly slowed down):
And here it is in black and white (I love black and white, too xD):
I hope this helps, Nonnie! Feel free to drop me an ask if something here doesn't make sense.
Last tips:
Don't be afraid to play around with multiple settings until you find the one that works best for you.
Make. An. Action. I can't tell you how much actions save time when I'm working because then I don't have to remember every last detail. The first few times, just get in practice of doing it yourself, but after that, actions are amazing. Some people on tumblr have actions you can download and use, too.
Different scenes/lighting will result in different outcomes of your sharpening, so you might have to play around with it. Sometimes, I add an extra Smart Sharpen layer to that bottom layer to help clarify some of the details, and other times, I just change the existing settings to fit the scenes.
Sharpening tends to be a personal preference thing, so just play around with all the settings until you find one that works best for you.
— photoshop: cc 2020, but this should be compatible with most versions of PS
— level: beginner
— please like/reblog if you use/find this helpful
— tutorial under cut:
@murdocks asked for a tutorial of how to gif things using photopea, so here i am! for those of you who don’t know what photopea is, it’s a free online editing software that’s very similar to photoshop. in fact, you can import photoshop psds, brushes, etc. if you so choose, but for the sake of this tutorial, i’ve stuck with the basics. fair warning: this is quite long. i’ve started out with how to use the website, then moved on to a practical application.
