#giffing help

[boyd-stevens]

Which subtitle fonts do you think looks the best? All of them look similar I know, but they're styled differently from each other. What would your top picks be?

[imtheiliad]

heated rivalry gifset is awesome! Would you please consider a tutorial for the second gif blending and coloring.

https://www.tumblr.com/imtheiliad/805404684120653824/so-hard-to-believe-i-have-to-grow-up-this-way

hi! thank you so much <3 so I don't have the PSDs for that set anymore so the examples might look slightly different just like placement, exact frames, and colors. I use Photoshop 2026 to edit and will assume basic giffing (with video timeline) and sharpening/coloring knowledge, but if you need more details, I use this action pack + high pass as described here for sharpening and a tweaked version of this tutorial for my base coloring. Everything under the cut!

First Gif Make your first gif and sharpen it like usual! Add base coloring and a gradient map with the color of your choosing, in this case a nice soft light blue. Usually gradient maps need to be reversed to come out right.

I usually put all of this in one group/folder just for organizations sake.

Second Gif 1. Repeat the steps above, but leave the gradient map as black and white.

2. Use the Marquee tool to make a rectangle around the area of the gif you would like to see in the final product

3. Press select and mask. I use the feather and shift edge sliders until it looks about right. Make sure that the output is set to Layer Mask.

4. Drag the mask from the Video Group Layer to the folder

Combine the gifs 1. Duplicate the second gif group to the first gif canvas

2. Set the second gif group blend mode to screen, lighten also works.

Add text (i just didn't redo the text for this lol) and save. And voila!

If anything doesn't make sense please do not hesitate to ask, I never know if my explanations make any sense to other people

[redbelles]

hello! I just found your blog via your recent titanic gifset with hozier lyrics and it truly is the most gorgeous thing I have seen on this site in recent times... so so amazing! could you talk about the fonts you used and a bit about the coloring/blending process? thanks so much and hope you have a wonderful week. - A

hello! this is such a sweet ask— thank you so much! i'm so thrilled to hear that you love my silly little titanic gifset 🤍

i spent,,,,,, way too much time on it as a way to try and distract myself from a) politics and b) the bomb cyclone. we live in a time.

anyway! it's probably the most labor-intensive set i've ever made: lots of frame by frame coloring, layer masks, etc., and honestly i would love to talk about it!

all of the gifs were challenging to some degree, but i'd be here for another two weeks if i went through the whole set, so i'm going to narrow the focus to just the second gif. info on how i made this guy below the cut!

i tried out probably six different scenes before i settled on the two that i used: rose wading through the corridor (top blend gif) and jack and rose embracing (base gif). i went with them because even though there's a lot of motion in each gif, they lined up more neatly than any of the other options— rose sort of wades through the embrace while staying pretty much centered in the gif

so, scenes selected! however, the color and lighting situation was... well. it was this:

dingy! dark! the hallway lights are a problem! me @ me girl what are you doing!

basic coloring/lightening on both gifs took me from here:

to here:

a good start, but i needed to drastically reduce the brightness behind rose in the top gif and manufacture some blue tones for the base gif to match general color scheme of the set. to that end, i turned each gif + coloring into a smart object, converted to frames, and sat down to do so much goddamn frame by frame coloring

for rose, i used a black color fill layer, normal, 65% opacity

for the embrace, i went with a custom blue gradient map, soft light, 100% opacity

once each gif was back in smart object form, i got to work fine tuning the color: amping up the blues, doing a little bit of lightening, making sure rose's hair really popped. after that, i did some final layer masking to make sure the blend was nice and soft

don't worry about how long the scroll bar is! everything is fine! yes there are multiple copies of both smart objects! it’s all good! <— actively lying.

the before vs. after is pretty great though:

on to text! i wanted to use a different (but complementary!) font for the large text on the gifs that didn't have orpheus/eurydice. i went with against— a little rounder, but still in the same vein as sunroll. the small text on all the gifs is tw cen mt std

to get the fancy color effect on the large text, i slapped a color overlay (bright blue, multiply, 61%) on a white text layer set to difference. to make sure the blue stayed blue, below that text layer, i duplicated the layer, cleared the layer style, and set the blend mode to color. as a final step, i went back to the top text layer with the color overlay and added a drop shadow (pale pink, normal, 29%)

the small text got the same color overlay + base color layer treatment, except the overlay (pale pink, linear burn, 100%) was different

there you have it! one (1) gif from the set that consumed two wholeass weeks of my life!

if you'd like more technical information on my personal giffing/coloring process, i have an absolutely massive tutorial that covers everything from start to finish. for blending, becca @nataliescatorccio (one of tumblr's undisputed giffing queens!) has a great tutorial that goes into more depth than i did here

all that said, blending/coloring/giffing in general really are just a matter of trial and error; practice and patience are your best friends

thank you again for the very sweet ask! i really had fun breaking down the work that went into the set 💕

[superrman]

So what’s everyone using to screencap these days? KMplayer is hella annoying now.......

[nataliealynlind]

i learned how to gif under my current method from a tutorial by user @cvmpbell-deactivated20200616​ and um, well, as the mention says, they’ve deactivated. that said, i thought i’d share the information here for anyone who’d like to learn. i’m on photoshop cc 2020 for mac, but tbh as long as you have the timeline function you’re fine. 

you will not require any screencaps or any software other than photoshop for this. (while i personally run my footage through iMovie first to cut out anything i don’t want this is very much not necessary to this process, it just may take longer to get through stuff if you have a huge video file. let’s get started!

just a warning this has a lot of large images in it, you are forewarned. 

so to start you’ve got your video, i don't know what all of the photoshop accepted video formats are, i’m ngl, but i know it’ll take both a .mov and a .mp4. it will not take a .mkv file, but i have recently learned that if you’re also a mac user, you can convert that with vlc player. i think i read that conversion is a lot easier on a pc... but i have no clue so i’m not gonna pretend to know much about that. 

EDIT: if you’re wondering how i get my video, check out THIS sweet anon i answered!

you open photoshop, and once you’ve got your software open you simply go file > open > and select your video footage. open it right up like you would any other document. it takes a few moments depending on your computer speed and how big of a file it is, but once you’ve opened it up, you should have your timeline at the bottom. 

if you don’t see the timeline, you can go up to the menu bar, go to window, then select timeline. you want a video timeline, do not convert it to a frame animation.

now that you have your timeline open, you want to shift your focus over to your layers. you see that little “video group one” folder looking thing, you’re going to go ahead and select that folder. 

and then right click it, and go ahead and hit convert to smart object. 

now it looks like this! it’s a smart object now! 

you can now go ahead and do your cropping for your first gif. go to image > canvas size 

and then you should be able to put in whatever dimensions you want that gif to be. these are mine! yours can be whatever you please

now i’ve got myself a canvas size that i want my gif to be, so i just select my video layer, and utilize control t to move it around and resize the footage so it’s in frame how i want it to be. you can move it around just like any still image. 

now that your image is in the right spot (you can move it later if need be just for now this is done), you can go focus on your timeline to make your gif. 

you’re going to use the blue curser (or whatever color it is for you) to move to the beginning of your gif in the footage. then, you right click the blue part, and in that menu, select ‘set start of work area’.

and then you repeat this step, moving your blue curser to the end of the footage for your desired gif, but this time select ‘set end of work area’. 

now you should have the ‘work area’ selected to only include footage you want for your gif. here’s mine!

now i’d go shift focus into the layer menu, and do whatever sharpening / coloring you’d want for this gif. you can also move the image layer around to make sure you’ve got everything in frame still now that you’ve seen what the whole length of the gif is. (you can use the blue curser to scan through the footage which will become your gif, or use the play triangle but... that moves too slowly for my taste)

note: the coloring doesn’t need to be in a folder, i just like to have mine that way so it stays out of my way in the timeline more. (folders appear smaller than layers in the timeline and every existing layer appears in the timeline)

now you’ve got to go to file > export > save for web. 

make sure you’re exporting as a gif and not as a png!

now just check the size, make sure it’s under 2M for best results to make sure you can use the gif in a post without problems. 

now you hit save and save it as whatever file name you want, wherever you want!

the best part is, now you just go through the rest of your footage, moving the start and end of the work area as described above and exporting the exact same way. just make sure you give each gif a different name of course! 

but yeah anyway, now i have my little gif right here of olivia as elle aka my precious ballerina. 

i hope this was helpful! 

it may have been rather... excessively detailed but i do like to err on the side of over explaining rather than under explaining. feel free to let me know if you have any questions!

[capitae]

hey there, thanks for all you do for the community. i was wondering if you’d be so kind to post a tutorial on how you making your theme preview gifs?

hello !! thank you so much for your kind words !! 💌 i’m sure there’s an easier way to go around this , but i personally like to make a preview gif out of screenshots rather than screenrecording ! click the read more for a tutorial with pictures 🍯

tip: add “ /mobile “ behind the url to have a better view of the graphs ! 

1.   take a screenshot of your page   (   how to   ),   open it in photoshop   (   just open a new file   &   press ctrl+v !!   ),   &   cut the image to your desired size   (   i don’t really look at tumblr’s official post sizing when making previews,   but if you’d like to follow it click here !!   )

( image description: paste the screenshot in photoshop ) 

( image description: click your selection tool ) 

( image description: select your desired area, aka the theme container that you want to gif. afterwards you click on image > cut )

tip: press ctrl+d to deselect the dotted lines around the image !!

you should end up with this !! ( make sure your timeline is there, though, we’ll need it later ! ) 

2. now paste other screenshots you want to include in your gif, make sure you align them properly !! 

tip: you can align them easily by lowering the opacity of your newest layer ! 

( image description: i added two more screenshots on top of the first first layer ! ) 

3. now you have to click the ‘ create video timeline ’ button 

which should give you this ! just click the 3 squares in the bottom left corner !! 

4. make sure to select all your layers on the right side, you can do so by selecting layer 1, press Shift while selecting your last layer !! 

5. once you’ve done that, click the settings of your video timeline and click ‘ create frames from layers ’ 

6. now you can edit the speed of your gif !! go to the settings button of your timeline once again, press ‘ select all layers ’. 

afterwards you have to click the arrow pointing down under your first layer ( on the timeline, aka the bottom part ). you can decide your own desired speed for the gif, i usually go for anything between 1,00 sec to 1,20 sec ! 

( image description: select the settings button, then click on ‘ select all layers ’ )

( image description: click the arrow pointing down, select the ‘ other ’ button ) 

( image description: set your time from anywhere between 1,00 seconds to 1,20 seconds ! ) 

once that’s done, you should end up with something that looks like this !! 

7. we’re nearly done ! convert your timeline by pressing the bottom left symbol, afterwards you go to filter > convert for smart filters ( make sure all your layers are still selected !! ) 

( image description: select the bottom left symbol ) 

( image description: press filter > convert for smart filters ) 

8. all there’s left to do is save the gif !! you can do so by pressing ctrl + alt + shift + s which should redirect you to this popup ! before saving, make sure your gif repeats itself ‘ forever ’ and not just once ! 

there you have it ! here is your theme preview ! if you have any more questions, please let me know !! 🍯

[imtheiliad]

I really the colouring for those gifset 💛 would you please teach me how did you do the colouring for the third gif.

https://www.tumblr.com/imtheiliad/790368548831838208/juliet-ohara-psych-2006-2014-pscentral-event?source=share

Happy to share! i have never done a tutorial before so sorry if this is rough. I don't even know if the way I executed this is the best or most efficient.

I use Photoshop 2025 to edit and will assume basic giffing (with video timeline) and sharpening/coloring knowledge, but if you need more details I use this action pack + high pass as described here for sharpening and a tweaked version of this tutorial for my base coloring. (shout out to @eddiediaaz who has been my go to for giffing advice and tutorials<3)

Everything under the cut, let me know if you need anything cleared up!

First Gif Make your first gif and sharpen it like usual! Don't add the base coloring yet. In this case I shifted the gif over a little bit to make things fit together better.

Second Gif

Make your second gif, same as above

2. Using the Marquee tool make a rectangle around the area of the gif you would like to see in the final product

3. Press select and mask. I use the feather and shift edge sliders until it looks about right. make sure that the output is set to Layer Mask.

4. Duplicate the second gif to your first gif canvas. Use the move tool to adjust the placement of the gifs so that everything you would like is visible.

5. Add a black and white adjustment layer (layer>new adjustment layer> black & white) and create a Group/Folder. Put the second gif and the b&w layer into the group

6. move the layer mask so that it is placed on the group

7. add base coloring

Color and Text

Add a gradient fill layer (layer>new fill layer>gradient...) these are the settings that i used

(I am not sure if you wanted anything about the text, it's pretty basic but here are the steps)

2. Figure out the fonts and arrangement that works for your gif. I decided to leave the secondary text in white.

3. In blending options for both sets of text I added drop shadow

4. for 'Juliet' I added gradient overlay

Save your gif!

And voila!

[redbelles]

a while ago I saw someone say that we didn’t have to make the middle gif in sets of three gifs in a row 178px anymore (because tumblr had fixed that, according to them). and today I saw a tutorial mentioning a different width for big gifs (bigger than 540px). thanks for answering!!

ah okay! i haven't heard anything about sets of three changing, but i haven't made one recently, so i can't speak to that. however, i can confirm for you that 540px is still the recommended width, per tumblr:

you can absolutely make wider gifs, but the larger dimensions will only be displayed correctly when the individual gifs are clicked on. i've never posted anything wider than 540px so i can't say for sure, but you might run into quality/loading issues. i'd actually say that's pretty likely, given that tumblr is a) held together with duct tape and b) actively warning against going beyond 540px

UPDATE: some other gifmakers chimed in down in the replies (thank you @madeline-kahn and @withered-rose-with-thorns!) and while it appears tumblr will add a 1px column of padding to the right side of your post if you upload three 177px gifs in a single row, it will also make one of the gifs blurry. i'd recommend sticking with 177 x 178 x 177 to make sure everything is as crisp and clear as possible

good luck with your giffing ✨