It was originally for hockey gifs but then I see all your film ones and those are also so well done. Either way I would love to see a tutorial. Thank you.
awee thank you so much!! this is going to be a long one so i'll put it under the read more
HOW I MAKE MY GIFS — A DETAILED TUTORIAL
to make things easier, i’m dividing it in sections:
– What you’ll need – Getting the source – Making a gif – Cropping – Resizing – Sharpening – Coloring – Exporting – Fixing the speed
(and this is mostly focused on how i make my hockey gifs)
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WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
a version of photoshop with the timeline feature (i use CC 2018, and you totally won’t find some links to d*wnload it for free right here)
VLC Media Player (for non hockey stuff)
For the coloring part: some basic understanding of how adjustment layers work (i’ll explain what i do, but i recommend looking into how each setting works so you can learn how to color whatever way you want to)
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GETTING THE SOURCE:
for hockey games, i don’t pay for espn or the nhl, i use nhl66.ir to replay the game and screen record it (set to 30fps) on my phone in full screen for high quality. then i transfer it to my computer through a file sharing service called PCloud Drive.
on a computer, it’s the same thing with opening the stream (or you can also download NHLGames on Windows), and screen recording it in full screen.
on Windows: press Windows button + Alt + R to start recording (it will save on the Videos > Captures folder after you stop)
on Mac: just use your good old friend quicktime player
for movies and shows i prefer to stick with t*rrenting and those logoless twitter accounts because of the quality, but you can also screen record whatever scene you want from a streaming service if you’re using a computer.
for music videos, leave youtube as a last resort because the quality is not always good. i recommend using sharemania.us
for trailers, i recommend hd-trailers.net
and for youtube videos/social media videos/etc, there are many downloaders around the web, just search for "[website] video downloader" and hundreds of options will appear.
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MAKING A GIF:
i know a lot of people like to use screencaping as a way to import the source into photoshop, but i prefer to just work with the video itself beacuse i’m lazy (and because that’s the easiest way to do it with hockey vids anyway).
so, make sure whatever video you’re giffing from is maximum 3 to 5 minutes long or else it’s going to be real hard to find the specific part you want to gif. that’s where VLC comes in and helps with selecting only the scene you want to gif (i don’t use this step for hockey gifs, as the videos are usually very short already).
just open whatever media you’re giffing into the software, go to the starting point of where you want to cut (i set it a few seconds earlier just to make sure) and go to playback > record. let it play out until the scene ends (again, i like to leave a couple more seconds after) and press playback > record to stop it. it’ll save the trimmed video in your computer automatically (and just a heads up, it won’t send you any notifications but it’s gonna be there if you open your files, so no worries)
now to open the video on photoshop, i do it two ways:
1. file > import > video frames to layers;
choose your video and select the part you want by moving the two arrows around. make sure ‘selected range only’ and ‘make frame animation’ are selected. (to make your gifs look smoother, never select the ‘limit to every [] frames’ option. it makes the gif look choppy since it means you’re skipping frames). press OK when you’re done.
now that you have your media imported, delete any frames you don’t want (not the layers, the frames. you can do that from the timeline by using the little trash can button).
now to adjust the speed. click on those three lines to the right of the timeline section, and click select all frames.
with all the frames selected, click on the numbers on the frames (can be any frame), choose other…, set the delay to whatever you want, and click ok.
the recommended delay is usually 0.05 for movies and shows and etc. but for hockey games i like to set it at 0.04 to make it a little faster (and consequently smoother).
since it’s easier to edit the sharpening and coloring when it’s set on video timeline instead of the frames one, we’re gonna change it to that. to do that, click on the convert to video timeline button. your frames should all automatically be turned into layers.
merge all of those layers into one by going select > all layers and then filter > convert for smart filters.
I have actually turned all of these steps (from changing the speed to turning into one layer) into an action (with both speeds available) that will do all of it for you in one click. You can download it right here!
and your gif has been made! you can move on to editing!
or 2. file > open (Ctrl/Command + O);
(the one i use the most for hockey because it’s faster and it allows me to edit more than 500 frames at once – aka edit multiple gifs at once)
once the video file is open, right-click on it and set the speed to 85% for hockey or 65% for other media (this one can and will be changed later so don't worry too much about it).
to trim the video, you can use the trimming tool or you can also click and drag the beginning and end of the clip to whatever point you want.
and it’s done, you have a gif! now to make it look pretty!
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CROPPING:
easy-peasy. just select the crop tool (C) and crop however and whatever you want.
when it comes to hockey, i like to always try to crop out any network logos or scoreboards or whatever because i think it looks nicer, but obviously that’s not always possible. you work with what you have.
keep in mind that the bigger the height, the larger the file will be, and you don’t want it to go over 10mb or else you can’t upload it on tumblr. i tend to go for narrower gifs anyway because hockey, so that’s usually not a problem, but yeah. just a reminder.
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RESIZING:
as of 2021, tumblr has set the total post width to 540 pixels wide, and the gaps between gifs to 4 pixels wide. the basics you need to know are:
for one gif, 540 pixels wide (any height).
for two gifs, 268 pixels wide each (any height).
for three gifs, 177 pixels wide for the outer ones and 178 pixels wide for the middle one (any height).
if you want to make anything else you’re gonna have to do some math lol.
so to resize. go to Image > Image Size, and set the width to whatever you want according to the information i just gave you above about the sizes. personally, i like to set the ‘resample’ to ‘Bicubic (smooth gradients)’ cause i think it looks nice, but you can choose whichever option you vibe with.
I have also turned this into an action with all the sizes included :)
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SHARPENING:
there are many different options of sharpening settings out there and i highly recommend messing around with it to find which one you prefer. about my settings though, i’ll give you the step by step, but I am once again providing it in an action to make things easier.
all my sharpening is done with the smart sharpen setting. go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. make sure ‘legacy’ and ‘more accurate’ are checked, always.
1. for big gifs (540px wide)
add a layer of smart sharpen. set Amount to 500% and Radius to 0,4px (or 0,3 if it looks oversharpened). set Remove to ‘gaussian blur’.
then add another layer of smart sharpen on top of it, but this time set Amount to 10% and Radius to 10px, and again, Remove to ‘gaussian blur’.
2. for small gifs (any other widths)
i do the same thing as the above one, but with a blur layer in between the two sharpening ones (filter > blur > blur)
here’s a before and after:
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COLORING:
i use the same basics for pretty much everything, it’s usually 4 adjustment layers (layer > new adjustment layer...) that i use every time. curves, vibrance, selective color, and exposure. and i’ll add other stuff if needed. this goes to both hockey and everything else (though movies and tv shows tend to require more adjustments, hence why i said earlier that it's best to try and learn how each of these work so you can figure out how to color different types of media).
1. curves — does most of the heavy lifting, as it’s used to color correct and brighten or darken whatever is needed.
select the white point sample and choose the point in your gif that you want to make white. basically how it works, is that whatever point you choose, it’s going to automatically balance every color in your picture so that that one spot you chose turns into pure white (as in, no hues or colors, etc, in it). in this case, his jersey is my reference point and it looks kind of grey-ish so i picked a spot that was kind of midway on the brightness, turning those grey tones into white (which also brightened the gif overall).
now you’ll pick the black point sample and choose the point in your gif that you want to turn completely black. it works the same as the white mentioned above, but for the color black. in this case i chose the black areas on his helmet, which tbh didn’t change much because they were already pretty dark.
and because i like my gifs to have a lot of contrast i made some extra adjustments on the curves myself (by brightening his face a bit with the upper point and darkening the shadows even more with the bottom one.)
2. vibrance — i always set the vibrance to around +25, sometimes more if the colors on the video look kind of bland.
3. selective color — this one is gonna change from gif to gif, but the one thing that i always do is go to Blacks, and move the black setting to around +3, +4, to make the blacks even darker (like i said, i like my gifs with contrast). in this case i adjusted the reds, yellows and magentas for his skin and beard, & blues and cyans for the jersey’s collar and the blue details in the background.
3.1. extra — i also added ‘color balance’ to make the shadows a little bluer, and a ‘hue/saturation’ layer to adjust his skin tone because i felt it looked a little too red.
4. exposure — my favorite one! makes the gifs bright and makes the whites look white. just be careful not to over do it or else it will look too bright (example :/). then i’ll adjust a bit of the gamma correction to darken everything that i don't want looking so bright. and make sure the exposure layer is always above all of the others. i just think it makes it all look blended in. for this gif, it turned out like this:
and you're done! here's a before and after all this editing
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EXPORTING:
once your gif is done, go to file > export > save for web (legacy). here are my settings (though it might vary between ‘selective’ and ‘adaptive’ depending on the gif):
make sure the looping option is set on ‘forever’ before saving or else your gif will only play once and freeze!
and like i mentioned before, to post gifs on tumblr, they have to be under 10mb, so keep an eye out to make sure it’s less than that (sometimes 9.98/99mb gifs will be uploaded but won’t play, so the lower the better). if it’s too big, you might need to delete some frames or, as i do, go to ezgif.com/optimize to decrease the size with lossy (it will look a bit more grainy though, so watch out for that if that bothers you).
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ADJUSTING THE SPEED:
i only do this for non hockey content, so if you’re giffing hockey, no need to follow this step :)
photoshop has this problem that it will change the speed of your gif and slow it down when you convert frames to smart filters. to fix that, you have to reopen the gif on photoshop after you’re done with it (file > open) and do the whole timing step again, of selecting all the frames and changing the delay to 0.05. do not convert the timeline into video! just change the frame delay and save it as it is, just like the previous step, same settings, and you’re set!
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whew,, that’s it! i hope this helps and if you have any questions or if something wasn’t very clear, don’t hesitate to come talk to me! i’m always happy to help :)
