OH! @briannasroger I just saw your tags on this very sad captain ! ❤
After all the cropping and resizing is done, and after you convert the layers to a smart object, I go filter > sharpen > smart sharpen and start with these settings here, legacy and more accurate, remove gaussian blur and set to shadows / highlights:
Then I do the first smart sharpen with these amounts:
and then I do a second smart sharpen:
And that’s it!
After that, I play around with vibrance, selective color, curves and color balance to get just the right colors for the gif that I like, usually I like them to stay closer to the original colors, sometimes more on the darker side or more vibrant.
Also, 720p to 1080p of the video makes a HUGE difference to the quality of the gif too. The higher quality of the video the better!
Hope this helps!!╰(*´︶`*)╯♡