Here I am at 2am talking about sharpening on anime gifs with about 10 hours sleep, never thought i’d be talking about sharpening like this but alas, i’ve seen 1 too many gifs like this so I thought about bringing it up.
Sharpening, a wonderful tool to help your gifs look nicer. Unfortunately theres literally everyone in the community abusing it. I’m not really sure why people don’t actually notice this issue, or just turn a blind eye to it, but the issue with gif-makers over-sharpening their gifs is quite real. I’d say about 80% anime gifs made nowadays are over-sharpened, at the very least from what i’ve seen going around its about that percentage. So let’s get into it!
Here is a normal anime cap
nothing wrong with it, just a normal cap resized to 540px by 304px, the standard tumblr gif size.
Here is the cap sharpened and surface blur added
looks nice right?, not too sharp, no white halos around the lines and it makes the lines stand out just a little bit.
Now heres the same cap with the same sharpening and surface blur from the top example, except this one is sharpened a bit differently, I won’t say whats different about the two but the lines stand out more in this cap, overall looks nice and allows the gif to look more pleasant.
This is not what I see on tumblr right now. What I see is sharpening done to the extreme.
this cap right here, is over-sharpened to the max, the lines are so much thicker and edgier and all the little details that really shouldn’t be shown are brought out. This is not how it should look like at all. Sharpening should not be this noticeable on gifs/caps/edits, sharpening is just meant to be a small enhancement to the gif not be the entire gif itself.
Here i’ve pointed out some things to take into consideration when sharpening, look at the highlights and shadows, they actually have gotten solid lines on them from the sharpening, this obviously should not happen, so when you go to sharpen next time look at your shadows and highlights and make sure you don’t make them look like actual lines. Basic tip is just sharpen 150 by 0.3, most of your gifs should look fine with that setting. (But you can obviously fine tune it for every gif)
right side is obviously the over-sharpened side and left side is the nicely sharpened side, the difference is huge. Left side is so much more natural and smoother while still retaining a bit of sharpening to it which makes it look great. Right side is just a huge mess with shadows and highlights being clearly visible and the whole thing just looks edgier and messier really.
Sharpening is just an enhancement, like surface blur if you overuse it, it will turn your gifs into shit and make you stand out as a PS noob really. Colouring your gifs nicely is really the only priority most people should have and should try learn better. Sharpening it this much will not help you make better gifs. There’s also the topic of other filters but i’ll leave those for another day.
P.S I’ve done it before too so don’t feel too down if your only noticing your sharpening now, i’ve had to spend months trying to figure it out but hopefully this will help you realise the difference much faster than I spent time figuring it out :)
EDIT: removing read more as my blog blurs out the images a bit which renders the advice useless LOL
