DISCLAIMER: everyone colors their gifs differently, but this is how i choose to color mine. i don't care if it's incorrect or i'm doing something wrong, but this is the way i like to do it. and no, this tutorial does not include the use of the channel mixer because i still don't know how to work it lmao!
let's get started!
you will need:
any version of photoshop will do
basic photoshop knowledge
STEP ONE:
after you've done all the necessary steps to create your gif (i have a handy dandy gif making tutorial here), the first thing i like to do is add a curves layer. it should look like this when you open it.
then, what you'll want do do is click on the third dropper thing (idk what it's called) on the left hand side of the panel. i've highlighted in red.
doing this will find a white point in your gif and sort of neutralize the colors, i guess. idk really how to describe it? so then what you'll want to do is to look for any white point in your gif. for example, this is what my gif looks like and i will be clicking on the white part of the guy's blazer. when you hover over the gif, the dropper thing will come up and then all you have to do is click on that white point. you'll also have to adjust this accordingly to your desired scene.
for this scene in particular, there really isn't much of a difference, but i promise it's there!
STEP TWO:
next, what i like to do is add an exposure layer. it should look like this when you open it.
and these will be my settings. you'll have to adjust this based on how bright or dark your scene is.
now there's a slightly more of a difference to what the gif looks like.
STEP THREE:
next, i like to add a levels layer. it should look like this when you open it.
and these will be my settings. again, you'll have to adjust this based on how bright or dark your scene is.
we're staring to get somewhere now!
STEP FOUR:
next, i'm going to add a selective color layer with these two settings. again, adjust as necessary. this part is completely optional, however, i still wanted to throw it in here for reference.
STEP FIVE:
finally, i'm going to add a brightness/contrast layer with these settings. adjust as necessary.
and then, you're finished! you can obviously keep going and add more to it, but is what i'd like to call a base psd. which is something you can use to build off of, and then go into the more in-depth coloring.
if you have any questions or concerns at all, don't hesitate to reach out! like/reblog if this tutorial helped you at all. <3
how do you do the coloring in your gifs? it's so pretty 🥰
this is such a huge compliment. thank you!! i'm glad you think so, considering this is my first whack at ~seriously doing it. coloring is my favorite step! i’ll be as helpful as i can, but if you find any of the tips too vague, feel free to dm me!
we’ll be using this webgott gif set you indicated as the guide! here are the before and after samples of the gifs so you see what we'll be tryna achieve from base to final frames:
for the steps, ill go over several things:
a. Why I do this step: a.k.a. what i’m trying to achieve with each adjustment layer
b. How I do this step: how i personally adjust the settings
c. Before and after samples of the colors so you can see the progress after each of my steps
onward
this is my first time typing down a tutorial so please be kind. i am (very) new to all of this and most of what i learned, i’ve learned from reading a bunch of tutorials on here (that i’ll credit down below), and watching too many youtube videos on color adjusting digital images, and coloring old wwii photographs.
this answer will be focused on just how i personally color, but i’ve linked some guides for creating base gifs that i also studied.
! before anything else !
i use photoshop to create and color my gifs and mpv to capture my screencaps from my files. also this ISN’T the ONLY WAY and the BEST WAY to color. this is just how i personally go mad on photoshop. <3
Coloring tutorials that have been super helpful in getting me on track:
dicom gifs - not technically a coloring tutorial, but this is how i import my scripts on to photoshop.the process feels smoother for me (no need to reverse the frames etc. and the resolution always looks and feels better when i'm done with them)
general coloring + hi res gifs - great place to start with tips on what files to use for maximum crispness
masking layers - for when you only want to apply an adjustment layer to a specific part of your gif, great for skin tones!
STEP ZERO: know what you like
This sounds very “ok captain obvious” but i do think it’s such a vital part of the process. the technical stuff gets very tedious, very quickly. and if you don’t know what colors draw you in, what colors you’re trying to lift and see in your gifs, you’re going to be tinkering around with the settings for longer than you’d like. so have references ready, if that’s your jam.
and with that, i'd like to show you some examples of colors that i gravitate towards that greatly influence how i color my gifs. i'm a huge 40s technicolor girl, 35mm 60s film girl (see ernst lubitsch, powell and pressberger, jacques rivette, agnes varda). and because i’m coloring a piece of media set in WWII, 1940s, i like studying the colored photographs (think winnix chair photo in color).
so am always looking to punch up my reds and greens, deepen and add browns, saturate skin tones so there's warmth there, while grays/shadows tend to veer towards a cooler tone.
sorry for the thick paragraphs under this but i think it’s very crucial! once you’ve got that down pat, or at least have some handy references with you, it’ll be less of a pain to go through the next steps.
My process/sequence of adjustment layers
Base DICOM Script → Curves → Levels (optional for me) → Color Balance → Color Fill Layer → Hue and Saturation → Selective Color
What that looks like on Photoshop:
STEP 1: DICOM BASE SCRIPT
Why I do this step: These are your frames! This is also the part where you adjust the sharpness of the gif so you don’t get a blurry image after cropping it down to tumblr dimensions.
How I do this step: I use actions for my DICOM script. I used to do it manually but now I use this Good Good Action Scripts by Redbelles. Cuts down the time, arranges them in the timeline for me. And as I’ve mentioned, it just feels better for me.
If you’re using pngs/screencaps as your base script, you can follow the instructions here instead.
This is also the part where you can adjust you can play back the gif and see if you’re happy with the positioning of your crop. Your timeline will look something like this.
STEP 2: CURVES LAYER
Why I do this step: i’m concerned with getting what i just label as "true color." you'll notice that with band of brothers especially, the more you look at the scenes, the more you'll just how a) yellow the daylight scenes are, b) how blue gray and nothing else the darker scenes are, c) the lighting can get muddy.
personally, when I adjust curves, my goal is to try to get the image as neutral as possible, which then allows me to inject as much color as you see fit. So think of it as eliminating as much of the coloring the editors of the show placed into the scene, so that you end up what is essentially a blank canvas.
How I adjust my Curves Layer: I pick the high, mid, and low lights of the scene. This video goes into that in depth. But you can also just choose the auto options if you’re just, like me, concerned with getting the image as neutral as possible. For a while I did in manually to understand what it was meant to do. But if you want to do it easily do the following steps.
> Auto adjust - by clicking the hamburger icon/ the three lines on top.
> You can choose between “Enhance per Channel Contrast” or “Find Dark or Light Colors”. Make you you tick on the “Snap Channel Midtones” to get the most neutral image. The tool bar should look like this:
Let’s compare the frames with and without the Curve adjustment layer:
Great! We’ve gotten rid of some of the darker overlays on both their faces, see more contrast between the foreground and the background. This gives us a better base image to color in for the next steps.
STEP 3: COLOR BALANCE LAYER
Why I do this step: To me this is like underpainting but not really? It feels like that though.What it helps me do is to adjust the hue/dominant colors of the highlights, midpoints, and shadows. so let's say even at it's most "neutral" state, I still find the image too yellow or too red. At this point of the process, I’ll add more cyan. if i want the yellow to adjust into an orange/brown area, I add in a bit more magenta and adjust the greens. it's here where i decide if i want the shadows to lean more towards a cooler tone or a warmer tone. It helps you make these crucial adjustments before you go in with the Hue and Saturation layer. (This is where you knowing what colors you like, comes in immediately!)
How I do this Step:
> Add a Color Balance Layer
> Adjust the three points: I’ll exaggerate the Color Balance adjustment so you can see what points are being targeted by each hue adjustment and where you can add those colors under this step. The tones do bleed into each other, so adjust sparingly if you’re not going for a complete wash of color.
Midtones: Let’s you adjust the “middle” areas, i.e. some of the biggest chunks of the frame. See Web’s entire face, the gray wall in the back ground, his ODs
Shadows: Let’s you adjust the darkest parts of the frame. See his hair, the barrel of the M1, the darkest parts of his glove.
Highlights: Let’s you adjust the colors of the the brightest parts of the photo. For this frame it’s Web’s forehead, and the very tips of his fingers.
Let’s compare the frames: With the Curve adjustment vs. Adding the Color Balance
You’ll notice that I’ve only nudged the tones a little bit here. The accompanying gif (Liebgott’s) has greener overtones, and I wanted to balance some of that hue in this set.
Highlights: Wanted more brown tones. Nudged the arrows to add more red, green and justtt a small bit of blue.
Midtones: Nudged the arrows to have a touch more red and a touch more yellow to make the skin tone lean to a warmer hue.
Shadows: Needed this to be cooler so I nudged the arrows to give it a bit more Cyan, while still adding just a hint of yellow. Together they make the image a tinge more green.
Once I’m happy with this, I move on to the next step. You can go back to this step, of course! If you want to make adjustments after you’ve applied the next layers. <3
STEP 4: LEVELS LAYER
Why I do this step: I use this in place of a Brightness and Contrast layer or Exposure Layer. This is where I reintroduce shadows and points of light. Here I can choose to add a bit more depth, or to reveal more of the shadowed points of the image. I don’t always move this around, and this is an optional step for me, but I did it for this gif set.
How I do this Step:
> Add Levels layer
> Adjust midpoint arrow to the right or left - this can lift any shadows if you move it towards the left, and deepen any shadows if you move it towards the right.
> Adjust the highlights arrow to the right - Optional as well. If you want to introduce/emphasize the brightness in the image, make the high points even whiter, you can slide this more to the left.
> ****I don’t adjust the bottom slider. This adds a “fade” into your image. If you want lesser contrast, and more of that flat quality, you can move this around but I barely touch this.
Let’s compare the frames: With previous adjustments vs. Adding the Levels Layer
Here, I deepened the contrast and shadows, I wanted more black in Web’s hair, and to give more depth to his ODs and gloves. The shadows also help define their features more prominently, better outline for both their eyes and nose. For Lieb, I lifted the shadows a bit to show more of his face, and see more of the redness of his lips that I love.
STEP 4: HUE AND SATURATION LAYER
Why I do this step: You’ve prepped your canvas! This is where everything’s sort of breathed into life. Spoiler alert, if you’re coloring Band of Brothers specifically, you’ll be moving the red and yellow a LOT, and rarely any of the other color layers since they are… non-existent in most frames. Here is where I give the skin more color, differentiate the shades of olive and green that’s prominent given that they’re soldiers. This is also where you’ll see the blue/green eyes pop out if the frame permits (Web, Winters, Bull, and Randleman’s eyes tend to reveal some blues and greens every now and then!)
Hue Area: Mixes your chosen color and adds more magenta or yellow.
Saturation Area: Dulls or Saturates said hues.
If you move your arrow towards the extreme left, you get a dull green, if you move it to the right, you get highlighter green.
How I do this Step:
> Add Hue and Saturation Layer
> Open the drop down - I try not to move the ‘Master’ area because it washes the entire gif with hue and color. I’m only targeting specific areas and colors.
> Adjust Reds - I tend to make my reds lean more towards magenta. To do this I drag the arrow towards the left and inject some more magenta into the mix, not too much that they look sunburnt (though sometimes that’s inevitable. I’ll show you how to fix it later on!). I saturate the red a lot. As I’ve said, I love red lmfao. So I want that to be lifted in the image.
> Adjust Yellows - I also want my yellows to be a bit more orange in darker scenes where they’re seen mostly on skin. So I move the arrow again to the left.
> Adjust Greens - There’s green here huzzah! I wanted to lift the color a bit more from his uniform, make it more olive than a dark gray/brown, so I added more yellow by moving the arrow to the right and upping the saturation.
*Tip: If you’re unsure about which color you’re adjusting, you can take the dropper tool on the screenshot, click on the area of the frame you want to fix up, and it will register the prominent color.
Let’s compare the frames: With previous adjustments vs. Adding the Hue and Saturation Layer:
You’ll notice there’s a lot more pink on their faces, some reds on Web's fingertips, and a brighter, more prominent red on Lieb's lips. The color of their ODs is a bit more true to its name of olive drab now! The contrast of the added color to Web's skin also makes his eye color pop out more. Their skin looks alive! Yay!
STEP 5: SELECTIVE COLOR LAYER
Why I do this step: I think of this as finishing touches. Sometimes I find that I want to adjust the reds, yellows, etc. more specifically and I can mix in more color to get it to the exact tone I want. This is where I can do that. Selective color lets you add or remove more cyan, magenta, and yellow tones from your hues.
How I do this Step:
> Add Selective Color Layer
> Open the drop down and choose which hue you’ll be adjusting
> Adjust the colors accordingly- I don’t use it in this specific gif, so here’s a different one of Harry in Carentan. I adjusted the reds and yellows to have more cyan (moving arrow to on the Cyan scale to the left), making the red more purple, and the yellow more green. It’s VERRRY subtle, but it matters greatly to me lmfao.
STEP 6: COLOR FILL LAYER
Why I do this step: I really... love browns and warmer skin tones, even if they're right smack in the middle of Bastogne (lawl sorry!!!!!). band of brother's footage in particular, if i only adjust the skin tone at the hue and saturation level, there will be parts of the skin that register as white or gray (i.e. technically not hues) and not "red" or "yellow", what that means is, even if you adjust the saturation and hue and amp it up to the highest level those patches of white and gray will remain white and gray and you'll be left with patchy soldier skin. sure, it's realistic but i want warm skin!
How I do this step:
> Add Color Fill Layer: Click the Circle symbol that's half white, half black. Select "Solid Color"
> Choose a color: I gravitate towards a light brown or a light orange. Click okay and don’t panic when your entire image is covered by a solid block of color.
> Play with Blend Mode and Opacity: I usually use Linear/Color Burn which allows me to see warmer colors overall but especially, and most importantly for me, their skin. The end result is giving them the TINIEST bit of a tan but also introducing more natural color against the grays and whites that register. Less patchy skin on you WWII vet!
You can tinker with the opacity and blend modes to see which looks best for you.
Let’s go back to Web and compare the frames: With previous adjustments vs. Adding the Color Fill Layer:
Tada!
Now all that's left is to transform them back into frames on the Timeline (see linked tutorials above!) and save.
And that’s more or less how I color my gifs! I tinker a lot with the layers after. Sometimes you need to see it all together and then make the adjustments after. I do more of some steps, and less of some depending on the frames and the scenes.
Having a good grasp of color language helps a lot and it’s something you do end up learning while making gifs or just looking at images/media whose colors call to you.
Sort of as an end note/exercise, you can see what it is about the color and lighting of The Pacific that draws you in, and amplify that in your gifs. Perhaps you’re drawn to the orange of the sun, or the bright almost jewel green of the tropical foliage. Maybe you’re really into the browns and the dusty scenes. It all helps you pick out what you want to ramp up and tone down in the colors.
I hope this was… even a tiny bit helpful. Again, feel free to DM me or hit me up on Discord if you want some clarifications/if you need help WHILE you’re making the gifs. Happy to help! <3
An anon asked me if I would ever consider doing a tutorial for how I make gifs! It's very flattering that you like my gifs enough to want to know exactly how I make them, so here is a little tutorial using my favourite character from my favourite movie ❤️
I might also make a separate tutorial for giffing dark scenes later 😌
Here's a download of my gif in PSD form if you'd like to get a better look at the settings I used.
Programs used: PotPlayer, Photoshop.
First, you need to get your screencaps. I would suggest using a high quality recording of whatever movie/TV show/video you want to make gifs of. My recording of Fellowship is in 1080p, and the quality looks incredible!
I use PotPlayer to get my screencaps. To do this, open the video file in the program and find the moment you want to gif. It's probably best to go back to just before that particular moment, and then press Ctrl + G. This will bring up the consecutive image capturer window. Below are the settings I use to get my screencaps:
Then, press start and wait for your moment to be captured! Once you've got everything you need, press stop and navigate to the folder that you indicated under storage. Here you will find all of your screencaps! You probably ended up with way more than you need (I know I certainly did 😅). Now, delete all of the screencaps that you don't want in your gif.
For the actual gif making, I use a cracked version of Photoshop. I don't exactly remember where I found it unfortunately, but I'm sure that there's people out there who might have some links handy if you look around! Once you've got PS open, navigate to File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack... and click on it! That will open the Load Layers window.
Now, change Use to Folder. Then, click browse and navigate to the folder that contains your screencaps. Click select folder, and after a few moments of loading your window should look more like this.
Then, press OK, and wait for your layers to load. Depending on how many caps you have, it could take longer. Once it's finished loading, you need to decide on your gif dimensions! For this, I decided on 268px x 225px. Once you've chosen your size, use the crop tool to get your gif to that size. Now, you should have a smaller image, like this:
The next step I do is to use this Photoshop action by @maziekeen. They have a little tutorial on how to use this action there, so I'll just say that once you've loaded it into your program, use part 1 / load into stack. Press the play button, and then the OK button on the two windows that pop up. Now, your gif will be nice and sharpened, and you'll be able to see it move for the first time! Here's what mine currently looks like, without any other edits:
Now, it's time to start on colouring. Every gif (or scene, sometimes you can reuse the same colouring if you're giffing an entire scene) is different, so it will have different needs. However, I tend to always use the same layers in the same order for all of my gifs — it's just the settings that change. I think the colouring of this particular scene is lovely, so I don't want to change it drastically, I just want to enhance it.
First, I create a Curves layer. At this point, I also like to make a group to hold all of my adjustment layers. This makes it easier for you to switch your adjustment layers on and off if you want to compare with the original colouring!
Going back to your curves layer, pick the little white eyedropper tool in the Properties tab. You want to find and click on the whitest area in the gif and make it a bit brighter! I picked the white in one of Boromir's eyes.
This is what my gif looks like now with the Curves layer:
Next, I use Levels. It's a very subtle change, but you can notice a slight darkening of the blacks in the image. Here's my settings for this layer:
And here's the gif with this step applied. Like I said, it's a very subtle change:
Up next is Brightness & Contrast. This layer is just a case of messing around with the settings until it looks right for you. You don't want to make it look too bright or too contrasted, though, because it will make the colouring look weird.
A bit more of a change this time! We're getting there:
Next, I like to do Colour Balance. Sometimes I wait and do the Selective Colour layer first (it'll still be above Colour Balance though), but with this gif, I decided to do it first. I want Boromir in the foreground to contrast more with the watery background, so I upped the Red in the Midtones. I think Midtones is the most important part of Colour Balance, so the Highlights and Shadows are more minor adjustments here.
Here's the gif with the Colour Balance layer!
Now, we have Selective Colour. Like I said before, I sometimes like to do this layer and then go back to the Colour Balance to make minor adjustments. For this gif I mainly focused on slightly reducing the cyan in the reds and yellows to add a little more colour to Boromir's tunic and hair.
I'm a big fan of bright, vibrant gifs, so I like to use the Vibrance layer copiously.
I upped the vibrance to max, but it's left Boromir's face looking a bit too red and his neck is a little pink, so I went back and did some minor adjustments to the Colour Balance and Selective Colour layers to fix that. Then, voila!
Now that we're done with colouring, go back to the beginning of the timeline at the bottom the screen. Then, go back to Actions and scroll down to the bottom, and look for the action called part 2 / finishing. Just like with the first action, press the Play button and it will work its magic!
Press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + C, and try playing your gif from there. Sometimes, the gif will be too fast and you'll need to slow it down, and you can't always tell until you play it in the 'Save for Web' window. I ended up slowing mine down from 0.05 to 0.07.
Once your gif is looking just right, press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + C again. These are the settings I use to save my gifs, and I think it makes them look really nice! Then click Save, and save your gif wherever you want.
Now, once you've saved your gif, you can post it to Tumblr (if that's what you're wanting to do) or simply keep it to yourself! But I'm sure that others would love to see your creations :D
***
A little extra info - this gif doesn't have text because there's no dialogue, but these are the settings I use for gifs with text (the text size depends on the dimensions of the gif):
Sometimes I use white text, sometimes I use yellow. And if there's more than one person talking I use both!
I hope that this tutorial was helpful, and if you have any more questions, feel free to ask!
Okay, so, I posted a coloring tutorial for one of my moots a few years ago on my main, @zackmartin (I believe I've since deleted it) but that was the technique I was using when I started making gifs 7ish years ago, and I’ve since updated my routine so I decided to post a new tutorial with my new technique.
I'm going to show you how I achieved this:
I'm using Photoshop for this. I'll try to make this as detailed as possible so it's beginner-friendly, but you do at least need to know how to make and export a gif. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out! just be aware, this tutorial really image-heavy
A few notes before I begin: 1) this is like, the bare minimum most basic way to color a gif. This is what I’d be doing if I was giffing a scene and that’s it. If you’re interested in different coloring styles (like my suite life episode series) then let me know!
2) When coloring gifs with POC, you need to make sure not to change their skin color by making them too light, too orange, too yellow etc. The JATP source blog posted a masterpost of different tutorials to teach you how to color gifs in different ways (like with the pastel coloring for instance) without whitewashing/orangewashing POC. But, honestly there’s a ton of tutorials out there that show you how to avoid this if you do a little digging. NO EXCUSES!
Anyway, let's get started! Before I do the coloring, I ofc make my gif, crop it, set the frame rate, resize, and sharpen. (you can find my sharpening tutorial HERE)
I. BRIGHTENING
(as a quick note, I don't focus much on London's skin tone during this stage, because I'm going to fix it during later steps)
The first thing I do is white balance using a curves layer. To do this, I click the little circle thing in the toolbar below the layers, and then click curves like so (you'll do this every time you want to add a new layer):
And then I click the bottom eyedropper tool on the left-hand side:
Then I click the lightest white part of the gif. (I’m not sure how to explain this well, but it basically white balances that spot to make it pure white. Like, if I clicked on the gold part of London's bracelet, then the whole gif would turn out really blue because it would be trying to white balance the gold) (hopefully that makes at least a little bit of sense)
Anyway, there’s a trick I use to find the lightest part of the gif; hold down the option key (or alt if you’re on windows) and while you’re holding down the option key, drag the little white arrow on the right-hand side:
(i apologize for the quality of the screenshots, tumblr keeps destroying them :/ let me know if I need to clarify anything)
Then I use another curves layer to do the same thing with but with the blacks. So, I add another curves layer, and then click the eyedropper tool at the top this time:
And then I click the darkest, black part of the gif. You can use the same trick by holding the option/alt key and dragging the triangle on the left-hand side:
Next, I add a levels layer. I drag the middle lever thing to the left, and the left lever to the right. (I don’t usually touch the little lever thing on the far-right, but it’s really up to personal preference. I learned to color gifs by basically messing around with settings, so I’d recommend doing the same and just seeing what you like best):
Finally, if I want to go even brighter, I usually add a brightness/contrast layer. I typically turn up the brightness a bit, and turn down the contrast. But, since I brightened a lot with the curves and levels, I usually don’t go that far. These were the settings I used for this particular gif (even though I'm going to share most of the settings that I used, I wouldn't recommend using the exact same ones on your own gif as it'll really depend on the scene you're using):
II. VIBRANCE
Now I add a vibrance layer. I like my gifs to be bright and vibrant, so I usually turn up the vibrance, and turn down the saturation a bit. These are the settings I used for this particular gif:
And this is what the gif looks like so far with just brightening it up a bit and adding vibrance (it might look a bit too bright right now, but I'm going to fix that in later steps):
III. SELECTIVE COLOR
Now, I add a selective color layer. The reds and yellows typically affect skin tones, so this is where I'll start to fix London's. These are the settings I used for this gif (I usually wouldn't change all of the colors, but this is just one of those situations where they happened to be present in the scene I'm giffing):
IV. HUE/SATURATION
now I add a hue/saturation layer. I typically turn up the master saturation to +10 and the lightness between +3 - +5 regardless of the gif. Then if I still need to fix skin tones, I'll mess around with the reds and yellows. These are the settings I used:
V. PHOTO FILTER
Next, I add a photo filter. I usually stick with the default one, I keep the layer set to normal, and I turn the opacity down to 25%:
VI. B&W GRADIENT MAP
finally, I add a black & white gradient map, and I click the little box to reverse it:
Then I set the layer to soft light and I turn the opacity down, between 10% - 20% depending on the gif:
A lot of times, I'll stop here. If I'm satisfied with the way the gif looks, and London's skin isn't too pale/orange/yellow etc, then I could just add my watermark, export and be done. But, there a few other optional steps I might take if I'm still not quite happy with it.
VII. OPTIONAL
Usually the next thing I'll add if I've decided to keep going is a color balance layer. It obviously does as it says, helps balance out the colors, but some gifmakers also like their gifs to have like, a reddish tint or a bluish tint or what have you, so this can help with that too. I wanted to balance out the reddish/yellowish tint, so these are the settings I used:
and this was the gif before the color balance:
and after:
And if I want to play around with the colors a bit more, or fix the skin tones further, I might add another selective color layer or a hue/saturation layer (or both, depending).
Rarely, I might add an exposure layer. (I added one to this gif for the purposes of this tutorial). These are the settings I used for that:
And if the gif came out a bit too bright, I might add another brightness/contrast layer, except this time I would turn down the brightness and turn up the contrast (again, I did that with this gif for the purposes of this tutorial).
And, that's pretty much it! This is my finished gif!
Like I said earlier, I pretty much learned how to color by messing around in photoshop, so I would really recommend playing with the different layers and settings for yourself, as well as checking out other coloring tutorials and other gifmakers methods and see what you like and what you don't. And finally, the best thing you can do is just,,, practice. I've been gifmaking for about seven years, but I feel like I didn't really become decent at it until this year
Again, If you have any questions let me know! and feel free to tag me in your creations! #userzackmartin 💕
GIF Coloring Guide: An Introduction to Adjustment Layers in Photoshop
This is going to be a super basic guide meant to show you the power of Adjustment Layers in Photoshop. It’s not going to be a step-by-step tutorial, though, in which I dictate what exactly you should do because it will always be different for every gif.
I’ll be turning this Isagi gif:
into this:
What you need:
Adobe Photoshop (any version should be fine. I use CC v23)
Basic gif-making knowledge using Photoshop
Basic Photoshop knowledge in general
What this guide is good for: A simple gif where the brightness and colors of each frame are about the same.
I’m writing this guide for those who already know how to make a gif in Photoshop. You’ve imported your frames, deleted the ones you don’t need, and you know how to save it as a gif. I will only be teaching you how to color, so I’m not gonna walk you all through the Photoshop basics. You can google that yourself.
Now, first things first, I want you to keep in mind that the GIF file format can hold only up to 256 colors. Thus, when coloring gifs, I try to “reduce” the colors by making the blacks blacker, the whites whiter, removing color noise, and de-emphasizing colors that are not essential to the overall scene. Otherwise, the final image will just look noisy or muddy because of the gif trying to compensate for all those extra colors—which is not bad in itself, by the way, if that’s the look you’re aiming for. I just prefer my GIFs to look HD.
And from what I’ve noticed, noisy and muddy gifs will also have a larger file size. The uncolored gif above, for example, is at 6.69mb. Meanwhile, the colored gif is at 4.96mb. Both were exported using the same settings. Although we have a 10mb file size limit for gifs here on Tumblr, I still like to keep the file size down as much as I can.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s get to the actual guide—
In the Isagi gif I’m using as an example, I made him look like he’s glowing in the dark and also partly blended him into the background. Here’s a screenshot of all the adjustment layers I used to achieve this effect:
All these layers should be on the very top of your gif layers. I grouped them together for convenience in toggling all changes on and off, allowing me to quickly check the “before and after” of the gif.
Before I explain what those layers do, I just want you to know that the order of those layers matter. I purposely put one Selective Color at the bottom, and that second Selective Color is no mistake. More on this later.
Selective Color 1
Selective Color is my favorite, and it’s also the most important. It lets me fine-tune individual colors without affecting the other colors much. It’s also usually the first thing I add as it lets me pick which colors to emphasize and which to de-emphasize.
Now, let’s look at our unedited Isagi:
(Above is a still image and not a gif. From hereon, I’ll be using still images coz the gif looks about the same in each frame anyway)
The colors on Isagi look too gray and cold to me. I want to make the black of his suit darker, remove a bit of that green tinge on his skin, make the blue of his eyes bluer, and just give him an overall warmer look.
Here are my settings for Selective Color 1:
Unedited vs Selective Color 1:
Although I said I wanted to remove the green tinge on his skin, I did not touch the “Greens” at all in my Selective Color 1 layer. That’s because doing so would also reduce the greens in Isagi’s eyes, and I didn’t want that. Instead, I tried to counter the green on his skin by adding some Magenta and Yellow on the “Whites” to make it appear warmer and more reddish instead.
Of course, I didn’t come up with the final settings above in one go. As I added more adjustment layers on top, I would go back to Selective Color 1 and play around with the different sliders until I was satisfied. Gif coloring doesn’t have to be a one-way process. With adjustment layers, you aren’t affecting the pixels of the image itself, so you can always go back and tweak your settings.
Dragging the slider to the right for positive values would return darker colors, while dragging it to the left for negative values would return lighter colors.
I want my Isagi gif to be vivid and for Isagi to look like he’s glowing in the dark, so I dragged the sliders in “Blacks” up to the positives. Then in “Whites,” I dragged the black slider down to the negatives.
However, if you want a more muted look like this Isagi gif 2:
...You can slide the black slider under “Blacks” to the negative values instead.
Curves
Curves, along with Levels, is usually the first thing a gif-maker learns to use. It’s good for quickly getting some nice brightness and contrast on your image. I’ve seen some gif-makers refer to Curves as the better version of Levels, but I disagree. Curves and Levels, though both affect contrast in an image, go about it differently and achieve very different effects.
In my Isagi gif, I used both Curves and Levels. But in some of my other gifs, I used only one of them.
Curves is what I usually add in the beginning stages of coloring (i.e. the layer is placed lower) when doing complex coloring. Although I never make Curves the bottom-most adjustment layer, sometimes I add it first just to give the image a burst of brightness or to quickly darken an image that may be too bright. I would then put a Selective Color underneath to make necessary adjustments.
Our Isagi gif, on top of being still muddy, is now also too reddish. I had only added those reds to get some warm undertones in our gif, and now that we have that, it’s time to reduce those reds. We’re not gonna do this via adjusting Selective Color 1 because doing so would only bring back the greens we wanted out. Instead, we’re gonna subtly bring in some whites to the gif by making it brighter with Curves. And while doing so, we can also enhance the contrast on the image.
Here are my settings:
The more S-shaped that curve is, the more contrast and saturation you’ll get. I just want a subtle change, so the curve is nearly flat.
Unedited vs Selective Color 1 vs Selective Color 1 + Curves
See the difference? Now there are darker blacks and less green on Isagi’s skin. The colors are also starting to pop, and the gif looks less muddy.
If you want colors to look muted instead, like in Isagi gif 2, you can do a reverse S curve instead. Well, actually, feel free to play around with Curves. It doesn’t have to be S or reverse S. You can add as many points there as you like and form whatever curve you want.
Selective Color 2
Remember when I said that the order of adjustment layers is not random? I’m now going to explain why.
When we added Selective Color 1, the image that layer is editing would be our unedited Isagi with all those greens and grays.
However, when we added Curves on top of Selective Color 1, the image we were editing was no longer the original Isagi but the Isagi + Selective Color 1.
Layers build on top of each other. It’s like when you’re painting. If you add red paint and then put blue above it, you get violet. If you want to put another color on top, you’ll have to work with the violet and not the red that’s no longer there.
That said, our Selective Color 2 here is not going to be redundant. Selective Color 1 was coloring the unedited Isagi, but Selective Color 2 will be coloring the version that has Selective Color 1 + Curves.
Now, I intend to use Selective Color 2 to enhance Isagi’s green aura as well as the blue of his eyes. We weren’t able to increase the “Greens” in Selective Color 1 because doing so would also make Isagi’s skin green. But now that Isagi’s skin is more red than green, we can play with the “Greens” of his aura safely.
Here are my settings:
Unedited vs SC 1 + Curves + SC 2:
Levels
Now, time to make our gif bright and vivid. You can use another Curves layer here or a basic Brightness & Contrast layer, but since the colors of our Isagi gif are predominantly black and white, I’m gonna go with Levels since it works really well with black and white images.
Here are my settings:
See those 3 sliders under that graph? From left to right, those are sliders for Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights. If you slide them to the right, said shadows, midtones, and highlights would turn darker. Slide them to the left, and they become lighter.
I often get carried away the first time I add Levels, resulting in extra vivid/saturated images which I later have to adjust. So yeah, try not to overdo it. It’s like vanilla extract. A little goes a long way ;)
Unedited vs SC 1 + Curves + SC 2 + Levels:
Beautiful ✨
The image is no longer muddy, but we’re not done yet!
Color Balance
I haven’t used Color Balance much in my gifs because Selective Color often does bulk of the job for me. However, the Isagi we have right now hasn’t quite yet achieved that glow in the dark effect I wanted. I also want to give Isagi that techy Matrix vibe by really emphasizing his green aura, so for that, we’re gonna add Color Balance for the finishing touches.
I think the midtones of the image look okay, so I’ll just tweak with the shadows and highlights. Here are my settings:
....And with that, we are done!
Before and after:
Compared to pre-coloring, the gif is now more vivid and not at all muddy. We also made his green aura brighter without making him look like Shrek uwu.
I actually also went to all of the 104 frames of this gif and manually reduced the noise for each one so we can have a more HD-looking gif. That’s outside the scope of coloring, though, so I won’t be including it in this guide. I’ve also reached the 30-image limit for posts, so I couldn’t include it even if I wanted to 😩
Anyways, I hoped this guide helped! There are many more Adjustment Layers that were not covered in this guide, but they should be easy to learn once you get the hang of working with multiple adjustment layers. You’ll probably never even need to use every single Adjustment Layer out there, anyway. The ones I mentioned in this post are often more than enough.
Now tagging the mutuals who may be interested in this: @usagi-yoichi and @gachagon
what's the correct curves for when im making a gif for POCs without whitewashing them? because i did the tutorial without putting any curves but i was wondering if there's correct numbers lol
You can refer to this tutorial. https://dekaythepunk.tumblr.com/post/169794057395/im-a-little-late-on-this-requested-tutorial-but
There are no specific numbers cuz it all depends on your gif and how much you have to lighten or darken it. But the main trick is to bring back the reds. And to do that, you have to go on G'MIC and go to Colors > Mixer [CMYK]. Bringing down the cyan would mean bringing up the reds. Then you can also adjust the magenta and yellow to make it look right. Try not to increase the magenta too much as this will make the skin pinkish/purplish which is not really the correct skin undertone for POCs.
coloring tutorial/tips for gifs by @ewan-mcgregor
i have no idea what i’m doing as i’ve never done a tutorial but here goes nothing!
what you need:
photoshop (i used cc 2018 for this tutorial but anything above cs4 should work fine)
how to make basic gifs
like/reblog if you found this useful!
p.s: my photoshop is french, so i apologise if i don’t use the right photoshop vocabulary 😔
if you have any question, feel free to ask me anything!
let’s start with our basic gif. i cropped it, sharpened it and put in on 0.05 speed because this is the way :)
i always start with brightness. i always add a little brightness because usually movies and tv shows are dark. but my favorite thing is contrast, it gives a sort of glow(?) idk how to explain it, i feel like it gives a small depth to your gif
then i play with levels. the automatic button can be useful but sometimes it will give you something crazy so you can play around with the basic photoshop’s predefined settings. i like to use contrast number 1 or 2
remember, you can always play with the percentage of the layer, if it’s too much you can always change it. here, i only put the opacity to 15%. you can also play with the fill content percentage which is right bellow the opacity percentage (”fond” in my screenshot)
then let’s hit up one of the best parts: curves. curves have a lot of different sexy features. you can either use the predefined settings like we did for the levels but there’s also a very interesting feature which is setting the white point in curves (it’s the last one in the screenshot below). it’s super easy to use it, what i do is a basically click around the gif until i find something i think looks good lmao (yes i have no idea what i do 99% percent of the time)
bam look at this! din’s skin color looks better already! you’re almost good to go!
now i play with the colors. selective color is a great little tool. it allows you to play around with the colors of your gifs and basically have power over the colors in your gif. here i wanted to remove the nasty green behind din so i selected the color green and put cyan to -100. i also changed the cyan color to put some magenta spin and emphasise the yellow
you can have control on almost the colors. what i do is play around with them until i’m satisfied
i usually play with the red, yellow and cyan colors but it really depends on your gif. sometimes you have to touch up green or even magenta so it’s up to you to play with the colors!
and finally, i like to go with color balance. you can play with 3 different shadows/highlights. i tend to play with all of them but i don’t go crazy with them because it can ruin your gif easily. i went a little more red/blue here!
and voilà! din had a little glow up even though he doesn’t need it because he’s amazing just the way he is
i hope this helped a little! it’s not a universal coloring for all the gifs but i feel like it’s a good base. i know a lot of people don’t do that but i like to save PSDs when i’m happy with one of my colorings. it can help you as it can be a sort of base and then, you just have to improve/ass additional layers to your gifs 😌
since i was asked how do i color the magicians gifs, in this tutorial i’ll show how to color this gif
into this
1. levels adjustment layer helps me the most when i want to get rid of “haze”. settings are always different and depend on lighting of a scene so i suggest you to play with it and see which settings will fit a scene that you color more
2. curves adjustment layer always helps to make a gif brighter
3. brightness/contrast adjustment layer also helps to make a gif brighter and more contrast but everyone knows it anyway
4. vibrance adjustment layer is always tricky because it’s too easy to mess up and make a gif too vibrant so again you need to play with settings and see does it help you or not
5. color balance adjustment layer is always a good helper when your gif is too yellowish or greenish/blueish (like mine) and etc and you want to make it look more natural
so here you can see the final result!! and this is the order of all adjustment layers (coloring always looks different if you switch the order!!)
i’ve never made tutorials before so i hope it will actually help someone and makes at least any sense!!
