#giffing stuff

[booasaur]

Hey! I’ve been following you for a while and I love your blog!! I was just wondering what programs you use to make your gifs? I’ve been trying to create some lately but they haven’t turned out the best 😅 Hope you have a great day ☺️

Ah, thanks so much!

First, awesome that you're trying to make your own! I'm not gonna say mine are great now but oof, you don't want to see what they looked like at the start. So anyone can improve!

I think, as everyone will say, for the best quality in gifs, first try to get good quality source video. Other people try to go for 1080p always but I personally am okay with 720p.

After that, some people will take screenshots? I actually just clip the scene I want, I use Xilisoft (any video editor would do, Handbrake is free) and make sure the bit rate is fairly proportional to the source vid, so for example, I have a 720p quality ep with a bit rate of 4.5k (which is on the lower side, I've seen bit rates go up to 6k, but this isn't a thing you can really control, unless you're ripping the episode yourself, most of us make do with what we can download), so I get a short mp4 clip of the moment I want, using around the same bit rate for the output. Some video editors will output just that slice from the original video without any conversion, that's fine too, as long as Photoshop can recognize it.

Then I import to Photoshop (File -> Video Frame to Layers) and I didn't used to but now I do a quick sharpen on every frame (helped by this script) and then resize, use Curves and sometimes Levels to brighten and color and then add the text captions and save for web, with basically full settings for whatever modes and algorithms you choose, full colors, best algorithm, etc.

The thing you'll really not want to do because that's where you take a hit in quality is lower the original video's quality (not just the resolution but the bit rate as well) or the settings when you save it. In both cases, you can get a smaller filesize, for the video and gif respectively, but at what cost, if it makes the gif look bad. :x

[hearttoshu]

no coloring vs. with coloring

[naazyalensky]

I’m gonna keep it real with you I have never in my life deserved a cookie more than in this moment

[gyeheoni]

no coloring vs. coloring (2/?)

[scottstiles]

someone’s never seen proper brightening on a gif before... lsdkjfkdsfgdag

[londoncallingsigh]

stupid tumblr gif things...

in case anyone is bored wants to give me input about this, I’m really curious. the last frame of this gif set (my favorite frame, of course) never displays on my ipad - just a blank white frame :(  It displays fine on my laptop and my iphone. Wtf?   If you’re tumbling on an ipad (or see this behavior elsewhere) I’d appreciate knowing!

[booasaur]

Hi! I need your help. I want to make gifs for this web series I've been watching but I'm not sure how to do it. Do you have any suggestions?

Sure, what part are you stuck on? If you’re looking at it from the very start, there are three major steps, I’d say:

1. Obtain the episodes: You mind find rips of it online, if you know where to look, possibly with 720p/1080p or mp4/mkv in your search terms, or you could try to download it directly, using various tools.

2. Clip the part you want: I actually use Xilisoft’s free trial to get the part I want, since the only limitation on the free version is length and I never need more than three minutes, but there’s Handbrake and VLC Player and a variety of free tools out there.

3. Actually creating the gif: I use Photoshop CS5, import the clip, do whatever modifying with Curves and add text if necessary, and then Save for Web. 

There are a variety of gif tutorials out there, everyone has different methods for literally each of these parts, so you may want to try different approaches, or come off anon and I could help you more specifically.

[booasaur]

What dimensions do you make your gifs?

I use the current Tumblr widths, so 540px for full and 268px for half (I rarely do thirds but if so, 178px). In terms of heights, I tend to go for 268px for the full just because I like the symmetry, but I might go higher or lower depending on the source, and same for half width gifs.