just. please know. that giffing scenes like that is a fucking nightmare labor of love.
to wit:
bottom's the raw capture, middle's just flat curve correction to make the footage visible, top is the final coloring with /counts seven adjustment layers to add back in Literally Anything But Yellow
every giffer i know does it out of love for the game, but for the record it's not... easy. it's not just slapping the footage in a cap grabber and posting whatever it spits out. "professional" lighting and color grading has only gotten waaay murkier and flatter in the fifteen years i've been giffing on here, so uh. don't repost gifs, please!
My GIF Making process: Screen capturing using MPV player, Organizing files, 3 Sharpening settings, Basic Coloring PSD + Actions set
This is a very long post so heads up.
I’ll try to be as thorough and true as much as possible to the way I make my gifs (I already use Photoshop Actions which I’ve long since set up but now for this tutorial I’m reviewing them to show you the exact steps I’ve learned to create my gifs 😃) and present them to you in a semi-coherent way. Also, please bear with me since English is my second language.
First things first. Below are the things and tools we need to do this:
Downloaded 4K or 1080p quality videos (let’s all assume we know where to get these—especially for high definition movies and tv series—so this post doesn’t get removed, okay? 😛)
Adobe Photoshop CC or the CS versions can work as well, but full disclosure I haven’t created gifs using the CS versions since 2020. I’m currently using Adobe Photoshop 2024.
mpv player. Use mpv player to get those frames/screenshots or any other video player that has a screen grabber feature. I’ve used adapter for the longest time but I’ve switched to mpv because the press to screenshot feature while the video is playing has been a game changer not to mention ultimate time saver for me. For adapter you need to play it in another video player (like VLC player), to get the start and end timestamps of the scene you want to gif which takes me ages before I can even open Photoshop.
Anyway! Please stop reading this post for a moment and head over to this amazing tutorial by kylos. She perfectly tells you how to install and use mpv player, both for Mac and Windows users.
One thing I have to share though, I had a tough time when I updated my MacOS to Sonoma since MPV is suddenly either duplicating frames or when I delete the duplicates the player seems to be skipping frames :/ I searched and found a solution here, though it didn’t work for me lol. My workaround for this in the meantime is decreasing the speed down to 0.70 then start screenshotting—it’s not the same pre Sonoma update but it works so I’ll have to accept it rather than have jumpy looking gifs.
Now, after this part of kylos’ tutorial:
you can continue reading the following sections of my gif tutorial below.
I want to share this little tip (sorry, this will only cater to Mac users) that I hope will be helpful for organizing the screenshots that MPV saved to the folder you have selected. Because believe me you don’t want to go through 1k+ of screenshots to select just 42-50 frames for your gif.
The Control + Command + N shortcut
This shortcut allows you to create a new folder from files you have pre-selected. As you can see below I have already created a couple of folders, and inside each folder I have selected screenshots that I want to include in one single gif. It's up to you how you want to divide yours, assuming you intend to create and post a Tumblr gifset rather than just one gif.
Another tip is making use of tags. Most of, if not all the time, I make supercorp gifs so I tag blue for Kara and red (or green) for Lena—just being ridiculously on brand and all that.
Before we finally open Photoshop, there's one more thing I want to say—I know, please bear with me for the third? fourth? time 😅
It's helpful to organize everything into their respective folders so you know the total number of items/frames you have. This way, you can add or delete excess or unnecessary shots before uploading them in Photoshop.
For example below there are 80 screenshots of Kara inside this folder and for a 1:1 (540 x 540 px) Tumblr gif, Photoshop can just work around with 42-50 max number of frames with color adjustments applied before it exceeds the 10 MB file size limit of Tumblr.
Sometimes I skip this step because it can be exhausting (haha) and include everything so I can decide visually which frames to keep later on. You'll understand what I mean later on. But it's important to keep the Tumblr 10 MB file size limit in mind. Fewer frames, or just the right amount of frames, is better.
So, with the screenshot organization out of the way, let's finally head over to Photoshop.
Giffing in Photoshop, yay!
Let’s begin by navigating to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack…
The Load Layers window will appear. Click the Browse button next.
Find your chosen screenshots folder, press Command + A to select all files from that folder then click Open. Then click OK.
After importing and stacking your files, Photoshop should display the following view:
By the way, I'll be providing the clip I've used in this tutorial so if want to use them to follow along be my guest :)
If you haven't already opened your Timeline panel, navigate to Windows > Timeline.
Now, let's focus on the Timeline panel for the next couple of steps.
Click Create Video Timeline, then you’ll have this:
Now click the menu icon on the top right corner then go to Convert Frames > Make Frames from Clips
Still working on the Timeline panel, click the bottom left icon this time—the icon with the three tiny boxes—to Convert to Frame Animation
Select Make Frames From Layers from the top right corner menu button.
So now you have this:
Go and click the top right menu icon again to Select All Frames
Then click the small dropdown icon to set another value for Frame Delay. Select Other…
The best for me and for most is 0.05 but you can always play around and see what you think works for you.
Click the top right menu icon again to Reverse Frames.
I think Photoshop has long since fixed this issue but usually the first animation frame is empty so I just delete it but now going through all these steps there seems to be none of that but anyways, the delete icon is the last one among the line of feature buttons at the bottom part of the Timeline panel.
Yay, now we can have our first proper GIF preview of a thirsty Lena 😜
Press spacebar to watch your gif play for the very first time! After an hour and half of selecting and cutting off screenshots! 😛 Play it some more. No really, I’m serious. I do this so even as early (lol) as this part in the gif making process, I can see which frames I can/should delete to be within the 10 MB file size limit. You can also do it at the end of course 🙂
Now, let’s go to the next important steps of this tutorial post which I’ve numbered below.
Crop and resize to meet Tumblr's required dimensions. The width value should be either 540px, 268px, or 177px.
Convert the gif to a Smart Object for sharpening.
Apply lighting and basic color adjustments before the heavy coloring. I will be sharing the base adjustments layers I use for my gifs 😃.
1. Crop and Resize
Click on the Crop tool (shortcut: the C key)
I like my GIFs big so I always set this to 1:1 ratio if the scene allows it. Press the Enter key after selecting the area of the frame that you want to keep.
Side note: If you find that after cropping, you want to adjust the image to the left or another direction, simply unselect the Delete Cropped Pixels option. This way, you will still have the whole frame area available to crop again as needed and as you prefer.
Now we need to resize our gif and the shortcut for that is Command + Opt + I. Type in 540 as the width measurement, then the height will automatically change to follow the ratio you’ve set while cropping.
540 x 540 px for 1:1
540 x 405 px for 4:3
540 x 304 px for 16:9
For the Resample value I prefer Bilinear—but you can always select the other options to see what you like best.
Click OK. Then Command + 0 and Command + - to properly view the those 540 pixels.
Now we get to the exciting part :) the sharpen settings!
2. Sharpen
First we need to have all these layers “compressed” intro a single smart object from which we can apply filters to.
Select this little button on the the bottom left corner of the Timeline panel.
Select > All Layers
Then go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters
Just click OK when a pop-up shows up.
Now you should have this view on the Layers panel:
Now I have 3 sharpen settings to share but I’ll have download links to the Action packs at the end of this long ass tutorial so if you want to skip ahead, feel free to do so.
Sharpen v1
Go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen…
Below are my settings. I don’t adjust anything under Shadows/Highlights.
Amount: 500
Radius: 0.4
Click OK then do another Smart Sharpen but this time with the below adjustments.
Amount: 12
Radius: 10.0
As you can see Lena’s beautiful eyes are “popping out” now with these filters applied. Click OK.
Now we need to Convert to Frame Animation. Follow the steps below.
Click on the menu icon at the top right corner of the Timeline panel, then click Convert Frames > Flatten Frames into Clips
Then Convert Frames > Convert to Frame Animation
One more click to Make Frames From Layers
Delete the first frame then Select All then Set Frame Delay to 0.05
and there you have it! Play your GIF and make sure it’s just around 42-50 frames. This is the time to select and delete.
To preview and save your GIF go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)…
Below are my Export settings. Make sure to have the file size around 9.2 MB to 9.4 MB max and not exactly 10 MB.
This time I got away with 55 frames but this is because I haven’t applied lighting and color adjustments yet and not to mention the smart sharpen settings aren't to heavy so let’s take that into consideration.
Sharpen v1 preview:
Sharpen v2
Go back to this part of the tutorial and apply the v2 settings.
Smart Sharpen 1:
Amount: 500
Radius: 0.3
Smart Sharpen 2:
Amount: 20
Radius: 0.5
We’re adding a new type of Filter which is Reduce Noise (Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise...) with the below settings.
Then one last Smart Sharpen:
Amount: 500
Radius: 0.3
Your Layers panel should look like this:
Then do the Convert to Frames Animation section again and see below preview.
Sharpen v2 preview:
Sharpen v3:
Smart Sharpen 1:
Amount: 500
Radius: 0.4
Smart Sharpen 2:
Amount: 12
Radius: 10.0
Reduce Noise:
Strength: 5
Preserve Details: 50%
Reduce Color Noise: 0%
Sharpen Details: 50%
Sharpen v3 preview:
And here they are next to each other with coloring applied:
v1
v2
v3
Congratulations, you've made it to the end of the post 😂
As promised, here is the download link to all the files I used in this tutorial which include:
supercorp 2.05 Crossfire clip
3 PSD files with sharpen settings and basic coloring PSD
Actions set
As always, if you're feeling generous here's my Ko-fi link :) Thank you guys and I hope this tutorial will help you and make you love gif making.
P.S. In the next post I'll be sharing more references I found helpful especially with coloring. I just have to search and gather them all.
I've made these two from existing frames.
Choose one and save the image as PNG.
⚠️BEFORE YOU START⚠️
This method relies on the overlay color being very distinctly different from colors found in the the gif itself.
That means you might have to hue-shift or recolor your overlay.
Usually pure neons (such as red #ff0000, green #00ff00, blue #0000ff, yellow #ffff00, cyan #00ffff, or magenta #ff00ff) work well, but if you love bright eyestrain you're better off using pure black (#000000) or white (#ffffff).
Now is the time to adjust this if needed.
I personally use FireAlpaca for pixel art and image editing.
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The internal dimensions of these are 99x55px (left) and 93x52px (right).
Meaning that's as small as your gif can be with the overlay still properly overlapping.
These frames are made with a 2px margin of error, so it's still possible to fully cover a 103x59px/97x56px gif (2px on each side).
3. Open Ezgif and upload your gif to be resized
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I'll be using the 99x55px template, so I'll enter those dimensions here:
HOWEVER.
I recommend leaving the height blank.
The gif I'm using (like most gifs out there) has an aspect ratio that's incompatible with the overlay, so it will have to be altered.
I prefer doing this as a separate step because it gives me more control over the final product.
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Otherwise you can just enter both values and choose a resizing method here:
If you do this, you can skip step 4.
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Okay, let's get back on track.
Click the "Resize image!" button underneath.
4. Make further adjustments (optional)
As you can see, the resulting gif doesn't fully match the needed dimensions (99x55px), so it needs to be cropped.
Select the "Crop" button below.
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Here I'm inputting the needed dimensions, making sure to leave the width alone because it's already correct.
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Once you do this, a dotted frame will appear inside your gif:
Drag it until you're satisfied with the cropping and click "Crop image!" at the bottom
Pro tip: If available, use your touchpad to zoom in on the Ezgif website. This makes it much easier to see small details.
"Ctrl +" also works but not nearly as well.
Here comes the fun part!
5. Add your overlay
Select "Add image":
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Click the 'Extend canvas size' button:
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Once it loads, drag and drop your overlay into the upload files box:
Click "Upload image!".
Pro tip: if you want to make several versions of this stamp or otherwise experiment with it later, you can save the extended canvas version of it to your device now.
That way you won't have to waste time remaking it up to this point.
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You'll see the overlay appearing as a frame in the top left corner of your gif like this:
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Zoom in on it, and drag the green frame until it covers all edges of the gif evenly. Like so:
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It helps to use the Top and Left adjustments to help position the overlay
(this is its distance from the top left corner of the canvas, in pixels)
Only adjust the overlay on the first frame of your gif! All following frames are affected by changes to the previous.
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Once you're happy with it, scroll aaaaaaall the way down and click "Create animation!"
We're almost done now.
6. Convert overlay to transparency
After you've applied your overlay, select "Effects":
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Find the "Replace color with transparency" panel.
Tick "custom (HEX)" and un-tick "clean up edges":
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Click on the white box next to "custom (HEX)" and select the color of your overlay:
I made my overlays pure green (#00ff00 or RGB 0, 255, 0), because it's easily visible and not present in the rest of my gif.
Your overlay may be a different color.
Do not eyeball this!
You need to input the exact shade.
Go into your drawing or image editing software of choice, open the frame and find the color with the eyedropper tool if you need to.
Or use an online 'color from image' tool.
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Once you're done, click "Apply selected!".
Your gif should look something like this:
Sharp edges! Yay!
Last thing we need to do is crop all the extra stuff, so let's-
7. Crop leftover transparency
Select the "Crop" button, like in step 4.
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Tick "trim transparent pixels around the image" and click "Crop image!"
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Now just save the gif to your device.
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Done!
Here's the finished stamp:
I'm sure there are probably easier/faster/cleaner ways of doing this but I enjoyed developing my own method and figured it might come in handy for someone out there.
Enjoy :)
