A lot of giffing tutorials on Tumblr make use of Photoshop, which is a bummer if you're trying to cut Adobe out of your life. I've spent so much time searching for a way to make quality gifs in a desktop app without touching any adobe programs, and thankfully, I was able to find one!
I landed on a program called Krita. Krita is 100% free and open source, and while it's far from perfect it's a HUGE step up from any adobe software.
I'll be outlining my workflow in this post. This does require some steps outside of Krita that I will not explain too detailed, but I'll link a tutorial to get you started.
If there are any questions, drop them in the repies and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability!
So, step 1: gather materials
What you need is as follows:
Digital file of the movie/show/etc you want to make a gif of
Potplayer, free software to play said video
As mentioned before, Krita
And because Krita is far from perfect, install ffmpeg following this tutorial. If you have problems, try to get version 6.6.1 as there seems to be a bug with later versions.
That should be the basics to get you started!
I'm not going to tell you where to get your video files, that's entirely up to you. As long as Potplayer can play them you're good to go!
step 2: get screencaps
For this step I'm going to link this tutorial, as it should describe the basics of getting the screencaps from a video clearly :) You need Potplayer for this step. You can adjust the settings to something that works for you.
NOTE: I have found that Krita can mess up the order of images when imported. What fixed this issue for me is setting the filename suffix to capture index.
step 3: import into Krita
If you have your screencaps, you can open Krita and create a new file. I personally set it to the size I want the gif to be beforehand, because resizing in this program is... not always reliable. My default gif size is 540x290px.
Then, you're going to go to File > Import Animation Frames...
This will open a little screen:
Click on Add Images... and navigate to your folder. Select all the images you need and click OK.
This should make a new layer (by default called Paint Layer) with animation frames on it. Before I continue, it's important to check that the following checkmark for Animation Timeline is checked under Settings > Dockers
You need the timeline specifically because it shows you your animation frame by frame - which is what we like!
I like to dock the Animation Timeline at the bottom of my screen, but you can put it wherever works for you. When you have the layer with animation frames selected, it should look something like this:
step 4: resizing your gif
We're gonna start by resizing the animation frames to the size of your canvas. You need to go to Layer > Transform > Scale Layer to new size... It should work if you set the new width to the width of your canvas. I had some issues using the % option, so I'd advice to always use hard pixels.
After scaling, your image might disappear, but fear not! This can be solved with a Transform Mask. You can add this to your animation layer by selecting it in the layers docker like so:
It should add the mask attached to your layer like this:
Then you can use the move tool to move all animation frames to the right spot. As long as you have the Transform Mask selected you only have to do this once for all of them to go to the right position :)
step 5: editing the animation frames
By default, Krita sets the timeline to have 100 frames. That's probably too much. Look at how many frames are loaded in and set that to be the new Clip End.
So I'm changing 100 to 33 here! For some gifs, you want to play around with the frame rate, you can decrease that number to slow down the motion a bit (I set mine to 18 after this). You can also set Clip Start to a higher number to crop off any number of frames from the start of the clip if you end up liking that better.
step 6: editing your gif
As for editing... I want to keep this tutorial as basic as possible, so I'm not going to go into much detail. I can write another post for this if necessary. For now, let me say that Filter Layers and Filter Masks are your friend. Both of these can be added in the same place as the Transform Mask.
step 7: export!
Go to File > Render Animation...
This opens up the export panel. What you want is Export as video selected, NOT as image! Then change Render as to GIF image, set the desired save location and filename, and you're good to go!
NOTE: Make sure FFmpeg location is not empty here! If it is, you may not have installed the FFmpeg codec correctly, and your gif might not export. See step 1 for a simple instruction video on how to install the codec.
When everything is set, click OK to export! If you browse to the location you chose, the gif should be there in all its glory :3
NOTE: Krita does create a log file of every gif you render. As far as I know, you can delete these afterwards.
And that's how I do it! This workflow is not ideal, but once you get used to it it's simple enough. If you find things that work even better, do reblog or comment so others can find it too! There's also a lot still to say about editing or even gif length and file size that I'm choosing not to go into for this little guide. Perhaps someone else has a good guide on this!
I always wanted to make a giffing + colouring tutorial.
So, Welcome to my long and somewhat helpful guide that no one asked for <3
For starters, i use VaporSynth (links for installation compiled by @soonhoonsol <hi bestie3 which has a guide ). Photoshop 2021 version for making the gif and colouring it . Install PS from this site. it’s free and cracked ver ;)
STEP 1 : the video for giffing
i don’t need .ts files cause my gifs can be made with normal .mp4 file which i either download from a 4k downloader or screen record on my laptop (windows key + alt + R), which is actually pretty convenient since it allows you to record even 4K resolution videos with perfect quality. the only downside it that, it take a lot more space than a normal downloaded video. but you can always delete the videos after you’re done giffing.
STEP 2: using VS to make & sharpen your gif
(i will be giffing and colouring Dongmyeong from ONEWE since their mv's are very monotonous but not fully black and white. We need to have some colours present in the video/gif so that we have some colours to manipulate in the first place.)
After you decide what part you want to gif, note down the timestamps. After installing and setting up VS, you’ll have a .bat file on which you have to drag your .ts or .mp4 file which will open a timestamp window which looks like this :
And will open a resizing tab in your default search engine after you press enter after entering the timestamp and gif duration. Use settings: qtgmc 60p cause it saves it at a better quality and has 60 frames per second so it’s smoother and small gif size.
Simultaneously, a vapousynth script will open. Remove whatever there is from line #17 to #26. paste what you copied from the resizer on line #17. Enter your sharpening settings on line #24 and your denoise settings on line #22. After entering your numbers, remove the # before cache size command so it doesn’t hang your laptop. Mine does when I don’t do that. Save that setting, file > save script. Then you won’t have to remove it everytime you make a gif. Your final script before encoding should look like this (refer to the script in the 3rd photo of the collage):
after that, follow these steps:
i personally like to use PNG SEQUENCE for my gifs cause one, it’s compatible; two, the quality of the gif turns out good. For me, normal gif output is pretty dithered which i don’t like.
you can close the script after you see green bar in encode window that says '100%. video has finished encoding'
STEP 3: accessing your output png frames / gif
after you close all the vs .html windows, you’ll find your gif/png fames under your VaporSynth folder that you have extracted under VapourSynth64Portable(200722)> gifs>output. i have separate folder where i cut and paste these frames so that they’re easily accessible later.
imp!!!(this may only be my problem): either rename or change the location of the output PNGs before you start with a new one. if not, they will get replaced with the new one since vs automatic name system is 'output00001' for each new batch of encode. Same goes if you decide to encode to gif cause it will be saved as 'output' and be replaced by new one.
after you're done with accessing your output PNGs, close all the windows and repeat the same for a new set of PNGs for another gif.
STEP 4: loading your frames into Photoshop
if you have made an output gif, then you can just open it. File > Open and select all from where you saved it and it’ll load in frames.
after you’ve opened your PS, make sure your Timeline mode is on (window > timeline) then go to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack. click Browse and it’ll open your file manager; select where you’ve pasted your output frames. select them all and press enter, let them load and press okay.
After PS is done loading your frames, it’ll look something like this. After that click create frame animation. It’s show only one frame so you have to click this ≡ symbol on the top right of the timeline. Then click Create Frames from layers and it’ll make all frames. Then click ≡ again and click “reverse frames” because ps loads frames in reverse so you have to un-reverse it.
then click bottom left Switch to Video Timeline.
Then select all your layers from the side panel and convert it into a smart object so that you can sharpen it and add other filters.
STEP 5: Colouring. Turning dull/monotone gifs into natural colour (not total b&w gifs)
again, we need to have some colour in the gif that we can manipulate. this tutorial won’t be helpful for b&w gifs.
without colouring you can see some faint reds and blues there.
Here’s the colouring tutorial !
A TIP : If you want to dull out a certain colour, use the opposite colour of it. For example of red you can use green/cyan. For blue you can use orange.
A TIP: If you want to add more colour to the skin, you can use gradient map (taught by @scoupsy <33) esp for pale skin. here is her awesome tutorial !
A TIP: direct output gif from vs will be faster than a png sequence created gif. png sequence loads in 0.02 sec delay between each frame but that you can change by selecting all frames in timeline and right clicking them and change it to “no delay”
idk why there are bigass pixels on the monotonous gifs on mobile, ignore that pls
i read tags on my cc game and saw many of you wondered how i coloured this, so:
Hiiii thank you so much for your gif guide! I've been having fun ^^
Can I bother you further with a guide for static images and fun things like transitioning to another scene in the same gif?
hello, anon. I'm definitely a piece of garbage for not replying sooner. haven't really been on my gif game recently, BUT I did make a gifset just tonight that has the static image effect on it. so I can go over that really quickly - it's quite easy, which is nice. the transitioning with gifs is gonna be a little complicated, so I'll try to answer that question a little later. I hope you don't mind.
here's part 1 of the gif guide I made for others reading this. please refer to that guide first before reading this one.
okay, so you've made your gif and resized it to the appropriate size, usually no wider than 500 px for tumblr; and you've also ensured the gif file is small enough to avoid compression on tumblr, if you don't want that, of course. photoshop should look something like this.
in the case of what I want to do for this gif, I'm going to do a palette-inspired gif. so I want to use the shape feature in photoshop to make squares and then color those squares accordingly. I'll click this guy.
mine is preset to a rectangle, but you could do whatever shape. I just create the shape and place it over the gif. it should be the top-most layer.
now's the time to do whatever you want - change the color, the size, etc. - but you can also put whatever you want on top of the gif. so I could paste a photo on it as well. whatever you want to be static on top of the gif, you just throw it there. like james mcavoy.
however, I'll go back to the palette I had - just made five different squares and changed their colors.
you may think you are done but not quite - one more step. you have to change the length of the static images/shapes on top of your gif. if you don't change how long they are on the gif, then the shapes will persist after your gif is finished; and we don't want that.
if you expand the timeline at the bottom of photoshop, you'll see something like this:
notice how the layers at the bottom that are the gif are "shorter" than the layers that have the color adjustments as well as the squares. we just have to shorten the length of those extra layers to make them the same number of frames as our gif. you do that simply by dragging each of the layers from the right. you'll have to do it for each layer (sometimes they will group though and auto-shorten).
it should look like this when you've shortened/adjusted everything:
then, you are good to save your gif!
hope this helped! I'll come up with something for the transition gifs, but be warned - my method isn't very clean, so I'll probably take some time to make it easier/faster.
I wasn't the anon but I would LOVE to see your set up on that "how you gif so fast." Please and thank you!
ok! under the cut is how i gif so fast. this has minimal photos, as it is unique to the user and it just my methodology.
to start off, i am simply thirty hamsters in a trench coat. this helps my productivity tremendously.
you need a few things to “gif fast.” these are in order of when you acquire them:
a show you want to gif that is on netflix or another streaming service
a way to screen record
a capping program of your choice
a mac (where you can automatically make a new folder for many caps) or File2Folder, a shell program for windows that will make a new, labeled folder for the caps you sort
photoshop
a giffing action you like
some time
i would like to point out this workflow was not invented by me, nor is it mine. some little bits have been taken from other gif makers i am friends with after they told me techniques that work for them. or i made some mistakes, made other, better, mistakes, then kept it as my workflow.
STEP ONE: THE SHOW
i like to screen record the individual clips from netflix. this makes my life easier, as i don’t have to sort through parts of a show that doesn’t have my fcs in it
screen record only the clips where your fc is in it. this makes it fast. as things are recording, go do the things you’ve been putting off for weeks
this is legitimately, how my laundry gets done
STEP TWO: THE CLIPS
i load the clips into a screen capper and set it to 25 frames. sometimes i make the size smaller (usually to 1280x720) to save space on my computer
this is because i am a fossil who does not use kmplayer and is not interested enough to learn
let them puppies go. depending on how many clips you have, this’ll take like half an hour, tops
go make yourself some food. maybe take a shower. do your replies.
STEP THREE: THE SORTING
now that your caps have been made, each clip is a folder containing them from that clip
within each folder, i group them into sub-folders that can be loaded into ps
i group caps from 30 to 100 frames at a time into folder. because i use a pc, i use File2Folder to put them into individual folders and i number them as i go. this is so i can see how many gifs i have in total, since we’re capping by clip so they’re all in different folders
when i’m done sorting a folder, i change the folder name to a number as i go through the different clips that have been capped.
for example: i had 60 total clips i screen recorded for luna nera. here’s what that looks like
and here’s what the sub folders look like within one of these folders
this is just for organization’s sake.
STEP FOUR: THE GIFFING
i have recorded an action to play my giffing action five times. someone told me this once to help speed up my workflow
so my gif folders process five at a time
this can be annoying if you want to do something when you’re on gif 3 of 5, but i find it pretty nice compared to doing one at a time
i also have my ps set up in a split screen like this
my psd is on the right and the gif being made is on the left
STEP FIVE: THE SECRET
okay, so you have your gifs running in the background. they’re doing their thing
you want to have sorted maybe 100 gifs so you can get that started
then, i sort the rest of the caps into folders, as the folders i’ve already sorted are processing
so like, two things are happening at once and it makes it look like i’m really fast, when i’m just not doing it in order
EXAMPLE WORKFLOW
version one: screen record -> process caps -> sort 100ish caps -> begin gif processing -> sort remaining caps as they process
so you flip back and forth between colouring/saving the gifs and sorting caps of the show
version two: screen record -> process caps -> sort all the caps as you do zoom lectures -> begin gif processing -> repeat the beginning of this process for a NEW show -> sort caps of second show as you process gifs from first show
slightly more advanced version of workflow version one that completes two shows at once.
i tend to sort caps while i am in zoom class or listening to a youtube video that’s really long and take breaks based on how long the video/class is
i also have the giffing process going throughout the day so i periodically click on photoshop, crop a few gifs, then go back to whatever i’m doing.
essentially, it’s something running in the background of both my mind and computer, which makes it easier to do because it doesn’t burn me out because i don’t focus on it too hard.
For your binge reading pleasure (and to make up for all the times I didn’t post chapters on this blog), here’s your gif/image guide for Good Blue Hunting Chapters 31-40. Also see the gif guides for Ch. 1-10, Ch. 11-20, and Ch. 21-30. Guide for Ch. 41+ coming soon! (when I’m done writing...)
Chapter 31: Into the Void
(image source: polygon.com)
Chapter 32: An Interminable Wait
(gif source: pinterest.cl)
Chapter 33: Off the Record
Chapter 34: Interlude
Chapter 35: A Synth, a Ghoul, and a Super Mutant Walk into a Bar...
Hey Vault Dwellers, I’m just about ready to post Chapter 41 for Good Blue Hunting! Coming this weekend...
In the meantime, I’m catching up on some shameless self-promotion. Here for your enjoyment is a long-overdue GIF/image guide for Chapters 21–30, soon to be followed by a Ch. 31-40 guide and a Ch. 41+ guide. (Also see the gif guides for Chapters 1-10 and Chapters 11-20.)
Whoa, I just realized that I posted the 10th chapter of my F!SS/Piper Wright fanfic Good Blue Hunting! Just for fun, here’s a chapter-by-chapter GIF & image guide to the first 10 chapters. Which works out since tumblr now has a limit of 10 photos. More to come, yeeeah.
Valuable Tips to Help Your Social Marketing 67 – Interesting Articles This Week
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