I’ve gotten a few questions on how I made this gifset, and I figured I would show you, since it’s really not that complicated if you choose the right scenes for it.
This tutorial includes 3 versions of color isolation for gifs and assumes you have basic knowledge of Photoshop and gifmaking.
VERSION I
This is by far the easiest method, but it only works on scenes that have a very different background color than the object you want to stay colorful. Green and blue backgrounds work best if you’re creating a set with bw blackground + people in color. Try to stay away from scenes that have a lot of red tones in the background, as this method will not work.
This the gif we’ll be starting out with, I already used my basic brightening settings on it using Curves and Brightness/Contrast.
Create a Hue/Saturation (ctrl + u) adjustment layer on your gif in timeline.
In the drop-down menu where it says master by default you are going to pick each color that’s not the color you want to stay (in my case it’s red) and lower the saturation to -100. (I used the yellows on the picture below as an example, but I set it to -100 on greens, cyans, blues and magentas as well)
Your gif should look like this now:
You can see that besides from the girls’ red cape everything is black white, however, the red is looking washed out and not as bright as it should, so in that same Hue/Saturation layer pick Reds and slide the Saturation to the right until the remaining color in your gif is vibrant enough.
And you basically have your finished gif right here! Of course, you can make more adjustments with a Selective Color layer, but this is the gist of color isolation on a gif.
Now as I said, this method only works with scenes that have a big contrast between the background and your object; but if you’re like me and are determined to make your own life harder, you will want to include scenes in your set that cannot be colored with this method.
VERSION II
This method is for scenes that won’t work with the first version, and have very little to no movement.
This is my starting out gif; once again I have already did the basic coloring of it, but as you can see the wall behind Kate is very similar to her skin color.
Using the version 1 method gets you this; not much has changed because of the majority red tones the background has, but if you were to set Reds to -100 too, Kate’s skin would become bw too. (i left cyans on 0 instead of -100 to preserve her dress’s color.)
As this obviously doesn’t work, we aren’t even going to create a Hue/Saturation layer at this stage. Instead, you want to make a Black & White adjustment layer (alt + shift + ctrl +b)
Now you have a fully black & white gif. Selecting the layer mask of the Black & White layer, you’re going to start painting over Kate with the Brush tool (B). I have my brush set to 0% hardness and 100% opacity.
This is how your gif should look now:
As you can see it’s almost perfect, but on the left side of her head you can see the wall’s color in some frames. To correct this, you’re going back to that same layer mask but set the brush to 60% opacity and have your brush set to color white (the percentage is up for preference really, I set mine between 50%-80% depending on the colors)
And we’re done with the color isolation on this gif! To finish it off I used a Hue/Saturation layer and set Reds and Cyans to +10 to make her stand out more then put a Selective Color layer so her skin isn’t orange washed and changed her dress to a deeper blue.
VERSION III
Our starting gif for this version has a few ladies in red in the background, multiple people that I don’t want in color, and it also has a lot of movement. (we are going to work on everything being bw except for Kate)
You are going to repeat the same steps as you did in VERSION I, in the Hue/Saturation layer I set the Yellows, Greens and Cyans to -100. This is how your gif should look now:
Now you are going to repeat the steps of VERSION II. Make sure you are at the starting point of your gif in the timeline window, and paint over Kate in the Black & White layer mask. You don’t have to be as precise here, I actually like to go around my object with my brush set to 50% opacity, just so we won’t have black spots as we move the mask later. [You may think, what was the point of the previous step, if we are going to have a black and white layer anyways? And you’re right, it’s not absolutely necessary, however, it helps that you don’t have to be as careful painting over Kate, as the grass around her is already bw.]
As you can see, the layer mask only works in the very first frame, then half her body becomes black and white as she is no longer in the range of the mask.
To correct this, we are going to be using the timeline’s keyframes feature. On the Black & White layer in the timeline window, click on the down pointing arrow on the left. What’s important to us here is the Layer Mask Position option.
You are going to start slowly sliding that red line that allows you to see your gif move (but not play it) and when you see that Kate is out of the range of the layer mask you are going to click on that little clock symbol of the Layer Mask Position option
Using the Move tool (V) and the left and right arrows on your keyboard, you are going to nudge the layer mask to follow Kate’s body and repeat this step as many times as you need. This is how my timeline ended up looking:
and here’s the finished gif:
As you can see, some pink is still visible around her dress, but it’s very muted. If that small bleed through bothers you, you can always use the little scissor icon in the timeline, split the black & white layer every time there’s movement and adjust the layer mask on every single layer - but that’s very tedious and time-consuming, so I’d rather recommend choosing scenes with little to no movement and a contrasting background so you can get away with using version I or II.
As an example here’s a screenshot of the timeline of a set where I couldn’t use keyframes; I had 34 copies of the bw layer, and it still had spots where the background wasn’t perfect. So be kind to yourself (unlike me) and just choose easier scenes :D
I hope this was clear and I could help, if you have any questions left don’t hesitate to send an ask or message me <3
Please like/reblog if you found this useful, and happy gifmaking!
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