#*gifmaking

[in-a-faradaze]

we should get paid to make gifs. not like, tumblr should monetize posts (jesus christ no!) but gifmakers should all have mysterious benefactors who venmo us when we post or something.

[iero]

I hope whoever uploads full movies and shows as mp4 format to 🏴‍☠️ sites has an absolutely wonderful life.

[komca]

Hellaur

I wanted to ask (if that's okay) what kind of device you use for editing your gifs? Do you use a laptop or something else?

Hope you have a great day!

Haiiii !

It's always ok to ask dw :)

I gif on laptop only, windows. It's less the device and more the softwares that are important tho.

Each gifmaker has their preferred combination of softwares and editing process. Gifmaking is all about trial and error 🤓

Here's mine :

4kdownloader / JDownloader / ☠️ → i mostly gif mvs, fancams and other ytb content so for hq downloads these are my go-tos.

mpv player (installation tutorial) → video player, i use it to take note of timestamps and choose scenes/shots.

Vapoursynth → cropping + screencapping or clipping (+ denoising if necessary)

Photoshop cc 2020 (or cs6) aka where the real magic happens → sharpening + color correction + colouring + typoraphy/layouts/effects.

tumblr mobile app → to check layout and colouring accross devices 🤡

My editing/colouring style is pretty basic imo, but I do love colourful sets so that’s what I spend the most time on :))

I know you only asked about what I use but

Here are some links to comprehensive masterposts that are super helpful for beginners (or if you just want to know how it works really) : 1 | 2 | 3

And if you have further questions you can join the @pscentral server, there's always someone who might be able to help :))

Thank you for the question, Have a great day as well <33

[in-a-faradaze]

.

[komca]

your gifs are so hd!! omg how do you do it?

hiii, tysm i do try !!

i don't know how to be concise so bare with me if i ramble too much please !

i'm going to assume you know how to gif already bc i'm mostly going to explain how i use adjustment layers. but i listed the softwares i'm using here + links to gifmaking masterposts !

the process™️details under the cut :

the obvious answer would be to use high quality videos for hd gifs but i work with lq or faux hq videos all the time, so it's all about faking it ngl... my goal is to have a good contrast and full blacks.

tl;dr : play with sharpening settings, boost your black with curves/levels/selective colour, flatten&brighten then fix the contrast, exposure and voila !

also, make sure your monitor / laptop screen is probably calibrated bc i've had bad surprises lol

FOR SHARPENING :

unsharp mask -> my go-to settings are 30/30, 40/20 or 60/10. i adjust the amount/radius depending on gifsize and subject size. holy grail, it WILL add depth and dimension to your gifs just trust.

smart sharpen -> usual amount/radius : 10/10, 30/20 or 40/10. highlights are very sensitive to this one so i adjust accordingly.

smart sharpen -> for finer details, i do 500/0.3 in general, but for some fancams i put through vapoursynth 300/0.3 is less harsh

noise (optional) -> uniform > 1,5-3%. sometimes you just need texture to fake good quality lol, adding noise to flat lq gifs does magic. would also recommend if you use gradients but don't like the "smooth look". the only downside is that it makes your file larger. and i never add noise to fancams.

high pass (optional) : radius 2-5 > 30% opacity > soft light ; if you want a glowy finish, this is your filter. if i use unsharp mask i dont do high pass tho, it's just too much...

FOR COLOURING

how i use adjusment layers for contrast and depth, no particular order, i freestyle it 90% of the time :

curves/levels : use black and white points mostly, pretty intuitive to use. recently my default values in levels are (0 ; 1,27 ; 230) in rgb. both to brighten and fix contrast. i can use up to 3 of each on a single gif ngl bc do this in increments to avoid something too harsh.

channel mixers : not particularly relevant to the depth/hd thingie but it does perform witchcraft to remove tinted filters. HOWEVER, sometimes you look at your gif and you wonder why it's flat and it's because the dominant colour of your gif is tinting the rest, channel mixers is here to bring back balance and dimension !

colour balance : same reasoning as channel mixers, i try not to touch midtones and focus on highlights/shadows, but i like cold toned gifs so i'll always add some blues/cyan in there

selective colour - the star of my show, i use it 1) for colour manipulation, 2) tame harsh lights, 3) undo whitewashing -> for 2&3 i set sc to multiply > set black values to black in all tabs except white and neutral > adjust white and neutrals until i get a neutral skin colour or natural lighting, and/or good contrast. , 4) boost the blacks (2nd to last layer), +10 black values in black tab, sometimes i also add +5 black to neutrals

exposure (last layer) : the final pop, up to +0,60 ; sometimes i go with a layer mask to only target the subject/faces. sometimes i also adjust the gamma value but not often

black and white gradient map : also good for contrast, it will also reduce the number of colours on your base gif. if you have a super saturated original gif with heavy contrast this is v nice to play with to fix that

a tip specific to colourful gifs : if you're transition from vastly opposite colours, do it in increments, and have a solid colour layer of your dominant colour somewhere set to soft light or overlay (or both) on a 20-40% opacity to uniformize all that good stuff and make the blending look natural, it will prevent your gif from looking flat or hazy trust me. sometimes i also do this with a either colour balance shadows or a selective layer set to hue/color.

FOR EXPORTING

if you're working with timeline, say goodbye to exporting directecly from tl and reopening to fix the frame delay bc it causes quality loss. instead, flatten back to frames and reset the frame delay before exporting, that will save you headaches and time. -> here's a link to an action for this !

my preferred combo is adaptive/pattern

i don't know which gifset made you send the ask but here's a before/after comparaison from a gif i made from an IGTV/Reel, so not the best quality or hd finish but yeah.

[in-a-faradaze]

oh oops i meant 14, 16 not 13, 15 LOLL but feel free to do them all haha!!!

hahah i'll skip 8 'cause i don't have an answer & 13 bc they all kind of were! crazy to look back at 11 pages of these. god, i was so hyper-productive august-october.

14. What gifset was the most difficult to make? (link)

star trek: discovery's lgbtq characters

this was time-consuming and i didn't nail the concept i had as much as i liked (using pride flag colors). i started with the first gif, and it went pretty well. then i got to the gay guys, and realized oh, the gay pride flag is a lot harder to color with than the lesbian pride flag! i probably should've scrapped the initial idea and just focused on making the text the colors of the flag. still glad i made it though. it made me remember how much i love this show and its queerness. :)

15. What gifset was the easiest to make? (link)

carnival of souls & creature from the black lagoon

some of my most popular posts were actually the easiest, 'cause they're of b&w films -- the biggest challenge was cutting out frames to make them small enough in size, lol. it's been fun seeing classic film gifs get the most love.

16. Do you have a favorite gifset you made this year? (link)

haunt

i'm not even 100% happy with how they came out, i'm more proud of the effort i put in and that i actually saw it through. lmao, now i'm noticing a glitch in one of the gifs - god damn it. i'm even less happy with how they came out now! still, it was a good way to practice intense coloring.

desmond hume + "please take me home"

this is another one i'm glad i made happen because i felt i needed to get it out of me, haha. i'm much more comfortable releasing imperfect gifs into the wild than imperfect writing, i guess, for whatever reason! i think some of the typography here is a bit much/could've been done a lot better but i still like it.

special mention to juliet burke + "the prophecy": she's just sooo pretty and i think the song is extremely juliet.

[in-a-faradaze]

on saturday my MIL asked me what i even do all day (rude, yes, she’s passive aggressive af) and i didn’t really want to say “playing games, listening to podcasts and making gifsets” so i said something like “applying for jobs, working on art projects” 🤣 and she did not ask for elaboration thank god because i’m her weird autistic DIL