MJWATSON’S GIF TUTORIAL.
hey! i made this tutorial awhile ago but accidentally deleted it. so by request, i made it again! we are going to learn how to make GIFs in photoshop CS6, like the one below the cut.
alright, so i am going to make sure to screen shot and break down every single step. it’s gonna look intimidating and convoluted, but i’ll make the walk through so easy to follow it’ll be impossible to be confused, ok? ok!
what you will need to make the GIFs:
photoshop CS6
a way to download videos (torrenting, youtube downloaders, etc)
a way to screen cap the videos (KMPlayer is good for windows, but i have a mac so i just use quicktime player (which you can also use for windows), and that’s what i’ll be showing you
step 1:
open your video up with quicktime player. windows / apple (i’m not going to show you how to download videos, this is just gonna be a GIF tutorial, but you can google it and i’m sure there are other tutorials for that).
you will then want to go edit > trim like i did below:
once you do, a bar at the bottom of the video with yellow toggles on each side will pop up. it looks like this:
both the left and right move, you will want to make it so it’s cut around the specific scene you want to GIF. once you find the scene, make sure the yellow is around it.
it doesn’t have to be PERFECT, so it’s okay if you get a chunk before and after you don’t want to GIF, we will narrow it down more so in photoshop. so just get the general area for now till it looks like this:
then click the ‘trim’ button. then file > save:
name it whatever you want, doesn’t matter. but i usually like saving it to my desktop just so it’s easy to find for when we want to open it up in photoshop. but that’s up to you too!
step 2:
now you will want to open up photoshop CS6 and go to windows > timeline:
then this handy little bar should pop up at the bottom of your screen. this is called the timeline and where we will be making our GIFs!
now it’s time to open up our caps from the video we saved to make out GIF! go file > import > video frames to layers:
then another window will pop up, you’ll want to find that video file we saved. so search for that and then click ‘open’.
another window will pop up. remember how i mentioned earlier you can narrow down the scene even more so you’re only GIFing the caps you want to? this is where we do it!
make sure ‘selected range only’ is ticked off (it will automatically tick that if you toggle the thingies) and make sure ‘make frame animation’ is ticked. so yeah! toggle those black things to around the area even more in case you got a lil something extra. even if you don’t get it perfect there too, you can also just delete the caps you don’t want. so again, it doesn’t have to be perfect.
press ‘ok’, and then it will generate all the layers in the layer section (the very right of photoshop) and in your time line, so your photo shop will look like this:
and if you look closely you can see i still have one cap at the beginning that i don’t want to be a part of the GIF despite narrowing it down. it happens. so just select all the caps you don’t want to GIF from BOTH the timeline, AND the layers section and click the little trash can on BOTH.
now that we have all the caps we want, i like to change the speed of the GIF first, so the GIF isn’t too slow or too fast. highlight all the caps in the TIMELINE section.
click ‘other’, and another window will pop up to put your custom time. the money spot for me is anywhere between 0.8 - 0.11. it’s up to you.
then we want to crop the GIF. these are the new tumblr dimensions if you want to make them so they fit and look nicely for tumblr:
i want to make mine so there’s 2 GIFs horizontally, so my dimensions are gonna be 268 x 150. i feel like 150 is a good height when it comes to 268, but again, it’s all about customizing it to be what you want.
click the rectangle marquee tool that’s on the toolbar on the left of your photoshop. it looks like this:
the options for it will pop up at the top of photoshop. keep ‘feather’ at 0px. make the style: fixed ratio. then put in your dimensions:
now take that tool and drag it across the cap, what you would like it to be cropped like:
once you’re satisfied, crop it! image > crop:
then it’s time to resize it so it’s ACTUALLY 268 x 150 and not just the dimensions. image > image size. (i am not going to screen shot that cause you can see literally in the above screen shot where that would be located!)
change the width to ‘268′ and if you made it fixed width, it should automatically do the correct height when you do.
another good thing to do, or at least what i like to do, in the screen shot below do you see where it says ‘bicubic automatic’? change that to ‘bilinear’. otherwise it’ll give you a weird 1px border around all of your GIFs.
then your GIF should be the correct size after you click ‘ok’! now it’s the fun part.
step 3:
find a PSD you like! a PSD is how to colour a GIF.
here’s a lovely blog that i like to go to to find my PSDs if i’m too lazy to do my own colouring. browse until you find a colouring that you want. within the description of the post there’s normally a spot where it says ‘download’. click that, download the PSD, then it will open up in photoshop.
if you look over to the layers section of that PSD, you’ll see a little folder:
drag that little folder over to the GIF you’re working on’s layers, and make sure it’s on top of all the layers:
then your GIF should be coloured!
you can also open up that folder by clicking the arrow next to it, and adjust all the different types of layers to make it customized if you want. your preference.
we’re almost done!
step 4:
now we just have to sharpen the GIF to make it look more crisp.
to do so, select ALL your caps in the layers section (make sure your PSD folder ISN’T select). then click the tiny arrows in the top right of the timeline. this will pop up a menu, and you want to click ‘convert to video timeline’.
it should make it so your timeline makes the caps disappear. then you’ll want to go filter > convert for smart filters:
this should make all your caps in the layers section clump together. now sharpen it by going filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. these are my settings for sharpening:
you should make every single setting in your sharpening look exactly like what mine does above; the only thing you should customize is the ‘amount’. toggle that left or right to get your desired sharpness. click ‘ok’. you’re sharpened!
now you just have to save.
step 5:
file > save for web:
then another window will pop up that looks like this:
make sure all the settings look like this:
then at the bottom of the window, make sure that the GIF is UNDER 3MB.
and also make sure your ‘looping options’ is ‘forever’, otherwise it will stop lol.
click ‘done’, and then save it!
i know that this seemed like A LOT, but honestly? this GIF probably took me 5 minutes. once you know the process you will be able to speedily go through it. i just made sure to get all details just so it’s as simple as possible.
i hope you found this tutorial helpful! and if you end up making a GIFset because of this, make sure you tag it with ‘mjwatson’ so i can check it out and support ya! :)
let me know if you have any questions, or if you have any other tutorial suggestions. thanks!
