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!
i personally think gifmaking should be a paid marketing strategy and gifmakers should be given special hd files through legal channels by networks in order to ensure proper promotion of their show with minimum effort on their part
gifmakers on tumblr put a lot of effort into their gifs, and understandably get quite annoyed when someone steals them and reposts them without credit. it's especially frustrating when the stolen gifs get a ton of notes. we look at it and we go wtf how did this get so many notes when it's all stolen????
then i realised the average tumblr user, especially if they're new, or they've never created gifs or posted anything, or they don't understand how tumblr even works... well how are they gonna know?
this post will cover some of the most obvious signs that a gifset is stolen, including:
gif sizing + placement
gifset colouring, sharpening and style
the tags of the poster
if this post is helpful to you, please reblog to spread awareness!
1. gifset sizing
when a gifmaker is making a gifset, they Generally will make all of the gifs the same size. by "size" i mean dimensions in pixels. all the gifs will generally be uniform in size, and laid out intentionally to fit tumblr's recommended dimensions.
here is an example of one of my gifsets with uniform dimensions:
all of the gifs are the same size, laid out correctly for the recommended dimensions, and are fully visible with no cut-offs, blurriness, etc.
many times when a gifset is stolen, it'll be made up of a random assortment of gifs, stolen from multiple gifsets. the gifs might be all different sizes, and not laid out correctly, with parts cut off at the top or bottom. they might be blurry, compressed or just not "look" right.
here is an example of a gifset with inconsistent dimensions:
now, i used inspect element to see the dimensions, but how can you spot a incorrectly sized gif or inconsistently sized gifset at a glance if you're on mobile?
well, see that gif of sam? see how it's cut off mid-forehead, and just under his collar?
well, when you click on the gif and view it in its entirety, you can see that parts of the gif were cut off by the incorrect placement of a 540px gif in a 268px layout:
generally speaking, a gifmaker is not going to make a 540px gif and then put it side by side with another gif. gifset placement is not accidental. gifmakers know and use the recommended dimensions to ensure their gifsets are high quality and viewed on the dashboard the way they intended.
this is sign #1 that these gifs were not made by the person who posted them.
2. colouring and subtitles
gifmakers will generally try to make all of their gifs similar in colouring, sharpening and style. gifs will be (to the best of our abilities) similar in brightness, vibrance, tone and sharpness. basically, they will be visually consistent.
a stolen gifset will not. for example:
aside from the inconsistent sizing, these gifs are all sharpened and coloured in vastly different ways. this is admittedly something a gifmaker is more likely to notice, given our experience, but anyone can take a second to just look and see if the gifs look like they were all made by the same person. if they don't, it's likely a stolen gifset.
sidenote: subtitles are also another tell. i generally use the same font, font size, boldness, subtitle colour etc across all of my individual gifs and in all of my gifsets. if one gif has yellow subtitles in arial font, and the other has white subtitles in times new roman, chances are those are stolen gifs.
3. the tags of the poster
this is probably the FASTEST and EASIEST way to tell if a gifset is stolen, and requires some understanding of what tags are and why we use them on tumblr. here is a brief guide for tagging if you need one!
what you need to know is this:
gifmakers often use [media]edit tags to make it easier for people to find their gifsets in a sea of xreader fanfic and text posts, as well as user[tags] to increase reach
gifmakers will usually have a tag specifically for their gifsets (mine is #originals, some people use a #*, some people use their name like #[name]gifs or #mygifs). the purpose of that tag is to make it easy to find the gifsets we've made on our blogs
here is an example of a genuine gifmaker's tags:
people who steal gifs generally aren't aware of the tagging conventions gifmakers use to catalogue their gifs & increase reach, so they won't include them. they might even say outright that the gifs are stolen.
some examples of stolen gifset tags:
this one isn't an exact science. a lot of newer gifmakers aren't aware of the [media]edit tags, or other well-established tagging conventions, and sometimes gifmakers don't have a unique gifmaker tag. HOWEVER, most do and, when paired with looking at the sizing, colouring, sharpening and overall consistency of the gifs, this is usually a good way to sus out if a gifset you aren't sure about is stolen/reposted.
that's it! i hope this was helpful, and that you are better equipped now to figure out if a gifset was actually made by the person posting it!
if this was helpful to you in any way PLEASE reblog, so more people can learn how to pick a genuine gifset from a stolen one. plus i spent a lot of time on this and i would appreciate it okay thanks byeeee
actually making a full post about it instead of just putting it in the tags.
if you've never done it before: try making gifs. work your way through tumblr tutorials, find a photoshop clone or crack the original, pirate the thing you're making a gif of, figure out how to color, how to sharpen, how to export, and then despair as you realise that your gif is way too big for tumblr's mb limit.
I mean this genuinely.
trying your hand at a creative process you do not understand or have simply never had much interest of your own in will do leagues to help you gain further insight in and appreciation for the craft, the artwork, and the people behind it.
this goes for everything; try drawing art. try writing fic. hell, try writing a fan song! you might be surprised by how hard it is – you might be surprised to find that you enjoy the challenge.
and this doesn't just apply to fandom: art as a whole is a labour of love. and once you see the labour behind the pieces of art you enjoy, you will feel the love instilled in them even more.
