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So you want to make gifs but have no idea where to start? I'm here to help!

In this guide I'll go over how to get videos, what software I use, the basics of gifmaking and editing, and how to post your sets to get the maximum interaction. This is an incredibly detailed guide that might all seem really intimidating but I promise with a little patience and practice you'll soon be making all the gifs you want!

A few things before I start:

Everything in this guide is based on my own style of gifmaking and what I personally use to make them. I will include some other options here and there but this guide will be primarily focused on what I do/use. Feel free to explore programs and styles to find what fits you best

I'm by no means a gifmaking expert. I still have lots to learn and I welcome imput from other gifmakers.

All gifmakers do things a little differently. There's no wrong way to make a gif. Feel free to experiment and find the ways that work best for you. This guide is just the ways that work best for me.

I wanted to add more photos to help illustrate my points but I am hindered by tumblr's stupid 30 image limit. Annoying

I'm happy to answer questions. If you're trying to make a gifset and get stuck and need help feel free to shoot me a message. If I can help, I will.

Table of Contents:

What you need

Getting your videos

Taking screencaps

Making the gif

Editing the gif

Saving the gif

Uploading gifset to tumblr

As this got very long it is all underneath the cut

1. What Do I Need?

There are three things you need to make gifs. You need a way to download videos, a screencapping software, and Photoshop (or an online program that's similar).

Video Downloader - There are several ways you can download your videos such as torrents, direct downloads from streaming sites, downloading using a computer program, downloading from a website using an browser extension, etc.

Torrenting. I dislike using torrents because my internet connection is unreliable and can't sustain a VPN and I can't afford to pay for a good VPN anyway so I don't use torrents. Torrenting is, however, the most popular way to download videos so that's definitely a good option if you have a quality internet connection and a good VPN

If you're like me and can't torrent, try online direct downloading. Some websites I use have a direct download button that can be pretty reliable but be wary as they can contain malware. Otherwise I use a third party extension/program to download a video directly from a website

I use the chrome browser extension Cococut to download videos off of streaming sites. I don't know if this is available on other browsers or not but I'm sure there are other video downloaders on them you can use too. Cococut downloads in high quality. It can be a bit slow but totally worth it in my opinion. Cococut also has a youtube downloader

Downloads programs are also an option.

4K Video Downloader is a good computer program option to download 4K youtube videos.

DVDs are also a great option

KMPlayer - a video player that will easily allow you to take consecutive screencaps

I love this video player because it plays a variety of formats like mp4, mkv, wmv, avi and more.

Free to download

Very easy to make screencaps with very few steps

Photoshop - I use Photoshop CC 2014 on a Windows laptop to make all my gifs.

You can get it directly from Adobe by paying for it or...

You can be like me and get it through a little 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

There are tons of links to download photoshop throughout tumblr. The one I used is no longer working but if you do a search on tumblr you can find links for a variety of versions like this post here or this blog.

It doesn't really matter what version you download so long as it has video timeline available.)

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2. Getting Your Videos

First of all, to make a good quality gif, you need a good quality video. Nothing less than 720p unless you really really can't find anything in higher quality. I prefer 1080p or higher but 720p is acceptable.

Note: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE AN ADBLOCKER WHEN DOWNLOADING FROM STREAMING SITES!!!

So where do I find videos?

DVDs

Dvds are always good if you already have what you want to gif in dvd. Check your local library if you don't. If you don't have a dvd of the video you need then you've got other options.

2. Torrents

Now I don't torrent so I can't speak to this much and I know the big torrent site is gone now. I'm not sure where the new places are. Torrenting is the easiest way to get super high quality videos to gif from and is the go to way for a lot of gifmakers. But it does require another program to use as well as the need to have a VPN.

To learn more about torrenting click here. or read this guide

3. Screen Recording

Screen recording is my last option to get my videos because it often results in lower quality, choppy, inconsistent videos if your internet isn't that great and that makes giffing harder. But if you can't download in any other way this is an option for you.

You can use VLC to record your screen. See this tutorial for that.

I use a browser extension called REC - high quality screen video Recorder which is super simple and does a pretty good job.

4. Direct Downloading

Your other option is to download from either youtube or a streaming site.

The streaming websites I use changes all the time as they get shut down (rip soap2day i miss you) but the ones I'm currently using (as of november 2023) are sflix.to, fmoviesz.to, goojara.to, bstsrs.one, and 123movies (literally lost the site that I use all the time while i typed this jeezus). Reddit is a good place to look for new sites if these aren't working for you.

Okay so my go to for downloading videos is either direct from the website or Cococut. Let me show how I do that.

Bstsrs.one is a websites that provides links to watch your episode/movie. Mixdrop is my favorite link to use because you can right click and save or use the download link provided safely. I've never had a problem with mixdrop

The other sites are streaming with a few server options to choose from. I tend to go to one of those and cococut to download the video.

So let's do this!

We'll go to sflix.to and I feel like making some Leverage gifs so we'll do a search for Leverage and find the episode I want. We'll go with The Tap Out Job (good ole beaten up Eliot)

Once you've chosen a server (the first one is usually just fine) and clicked the play button, click the cococut downloader extension button. A little window will pop up with options to choose. On the first link click the first button:

This will open the page for the downloader. Now you just have to wait for it to finish downloading. As you download you'll see a progress bar and a pause and resume button. When the download is done those two buttons will change to a green save button. Click that button to download the file to your computer

And tada! You've downloaded your video!

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3. Screencapping

So when using photoshop to make a gif you have two options which is either A) import video frames to layers which is when you upload a video and select the portion of the video which photoshop will then turn into frames for you or B) load files into stacks which is when you load screencap images of the scene you want to gif. In my opinion loading files into stacks/screencapping is so much easier. When you try importing a video and the video is huge it can be really really hard to narrow down the specific scene you want and then it can take forever to upload the frames. Screencapping makes it much easier to narrow your focus on just what you want to gif and doesn't take as long to upload.

So we are going to learn how to screencap our video.This is where KMPlayer comes in.

Open your video in KMPlayer and pause it while we get all of our settings ready.

Right click --> Capture --> Frame Extract (or you can hit Ctrl G for a shortcut)

This box is all your screencapping settings. Feel free to just imitate mine. Select your destination file where the screencaps will be saved, give a name to the individual files, make sure it's set to every frame and original size. I often use the "every # frame" option as well if I domt want every si gle frame giffed which can take up a lot of space. Feel free to do this option too just set the number to 2 and it'll take every other frame instead of every frame. There's really no difference in gif quality but I find it can be better for storage space and for uploading frames to photoshop.

Once all that is set up click outside the box to make that go away (Don't hit the close button cause then you'll have to start over when you open the box again) and find the location of the scene you want to cap keeping the video paused once you've found it. When you've got the video set to where you want to start capping reopen the box using Ctrl G and hit the start button. Then go ahead and start playing your video. Your box will go away when you hit play but it's okay it's taking the screen caps. You can open it at any time using CTRL G to see it. When you've reach the end of the scene you want giffed pause your video, reopen the box again, and hit the stop button.

Double check that it worked by opening up the file location

Congrats! You've just made screencaps!

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4. Making A Gif

There are few different programs you can use to make a gif. I will be going over how to use Photoshop because I think that's the best way to get a quality gif. However if you don't have photoshop and are uncomfortable downloading it I do have a few alternate websites you can take a look at.

Photopea is like a web version of photoshop and you can find a tutorial on how to make gifs on it here

ezgif.com, giphy.com, imgflip.com, and makeagif.com are all super easy to use gifmaking websites that let you use either a video or screencaps. The only thing about these sites are that they are very limited when it comes editing and there will be a watermark of the website somewhere on the gif. It decreases your quality a bit but all are are wonderful, quick, easy ways of getting started in gifmaking. I made my start with ezgifs before I got photoshop.

Now I use Photoshop CC 2014 to make all of my gifs so this guide is gonna focus on using that program.

Loading Screencaps

Open photoshop and select File --> Scripts --> Load files into stacks

2. Click "Browse" and navigate to the location your screencaps are saved in. Select all the frames you need and click open. I try to keep each gif between 30 and 80 frames. 50 would be ideal. Anything more than 80 increases your chances that the gif will be too large to upload to tumblr. Sometimes 80 is even pushing it depending on the coloring and editing layers. This is why I tend to cap every other frame. Helps keep it all in one gif. So shoot for around 50 images.

Click okay when you've got all your screencaps in the box

3. Wait for all the images to load. This can take some time depending on how many you've selected. You can see them all uploading in this box here

Turning Files into Frames

1. Next up we need to make this stack of images into something that will move. So click the button that says Create Frame Animation.

If your version of photoshop started in video timeline you'll need to switch it to frames first and then switch it back to video timeline. Let me show you how to do that just in case. Click the button of the timeline area on the left (circled in red) which will switch it to frame animation.

You could also use the drop down arrow next to the Create Video Timeline button and switch it to Create Frame Animation

Continue to the next step.

2. To get all our frames showing hit the menu button on the upper right corner of the timeline area which is the bottom portion of your screen (it's got a bunch of horizontal lines and is next to your layers box) and then click on Make Frames From Layers.

Now we can see all of our frames!

3. But uh oh! it's backwards! So click the menu button again and then click Reverse Frames to put everything back the right way

Much better

Setting Speed

1. Next up we are gonna set our speed. I always do this early because it's super important and doing it now is much easier than attempting to do it after we've edited the whole gif. Select the first frame then click the menu button and click Select All Frames

2. Next click on the drop down arrow on one of the frames. The one next to the "0 sec".

3. Select the Other option. Here you have a little leeway to do what you like best when it comes to the speed of the gif. I usually go with .1sec if I screencapped every other frame. The norm for a lot of gifmakers, especially if you've capped every frame, is either .05 or .07 secs. You can try all 3 and see how the speed works for you. To change the speed set the delay to either ".05", ".07", or ".1" and hit okay.

To see how the speed works click the play button. If you like your speed great. If not go ahead and repeat the previous step to try another. Try any number between 0.0 and 0.1 to find a speed you like. .05 is the closest to actual normal speed which is why so many of us use it but sometimes it just inst right. So trial and error it until you've found one you like.

Save your File

This is a great place to save your working file. This is important in case Photoshop crashes or something happens and you need to recover your file. Go to File --> Save As

Pick a location, give your file a name, make sure the file type is PSD and click save. Now your file is saved just in case.

Be sure to periodically go in and click File --> Save to keep your progress safe from Photoshop/Computer crashes! It will not auto save. You have to be sure to save it every once and a while.

Cropping and Resizing

Now it's time to resize our gif. Let's start with how to crop. Sometimes you'll have a gif that you want to cut down to reduce the amount of empty space or because there's black bars around it, or because you have a certain style in mind and need just part of the image. That's when we crop.

First thing to do is make sure you're using the select tool. That's the tool on the side that looks like a dotted line square box. Click and drag around the portion of your image you want to keep to mark where you want to crop your gif. Everything inside the dotted lines will be what gets kept. Everything outside is getting cut.

Be sure to check the whole gif to make sure you're not going to crop something important out. Don't hit the play button for this because then you'll lose the crop marks. Just select various individual frames to look.

When you are satisfied go to Image --> Crop and your gif will be cut down to your outline.

Now our gif is still huge and tumblr won't like that. In fact, tumblr has very specific dimensions when it comes to photosets that will maintain the quality of the image. These are the current dimensions to follow.

These numbers are the width of the individual images. The height does not matter. You can have any heigt you'd like. So for one image the width is 540px. For two images next to one another each gif would be 268px wide. Three images are each 177px wide. Of course you can have every single image 540px wide if you'd like. That's what I do. Then each gif is big and can be enlarged if you click on it. Just try not to go over 540px wide.

It is important to note that if you're going to put two or three images next to each other, make sure they are the same dimensions as each other. Otherwise tumblr will crop the larger image in the preview to match the smaller one and we don't want that. So keep the gifs the same size

Okay so to resize your gif to fit tumblr's dimensions click Image --> Image Size and this box will open.

Make sure that little chain link to the left of "width" and "height" is selected. That keeps the proportions of your image. If you only change one size it'll automatically change the other to match the current proportions if that is selected. We want that.

Make sure the box next to the "width" and "length" numbers is on "Pixels" and nothing else. That's important.

Change your width to 540 pixels and click okay.

Turn Frames into Animation

All right our gif has now been resized. This next step will prepare it for editing. We need to turn our frames into a video timeline. Timeline mode allows us to easily sharpen and add adjustment layers to our gif. It also makes it easier to add text and gives a lot more freedom to decide when things like text and certain coloring editing layers show up. Timeline mode gives us a lot of versatility and saves time which I love.

Click the button on the bottom left of the timeline. Just under the first frame. This will turn it into a video timeline for us.

Next up we need to turn all of our layers into a smart object so that our edits will affect every layer. To do this click Select-->All Layers then click Filter-->Convert for Smart Filters. Click okay if another window pops up.

Don't skip this step! It's very important to ensure all the future editing works properly!

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5. Editing the Gif

This is where we can really get creative and which I find to be both the most fun and frustrating part of gifmaking. Editing!

Sharpening

First step is to make our gif a bit more sharp. I know a lot of people use Smart Sharpen here but I have not quite gotten the hang of that myself so I stick with the preset Sharpen. It's not failed me yet and does a good job at sharpening my image for me with no work on my end. So go to Filter-->Sharpen-->Sharpen

Next I like to add a little bit of Surface Blur. To me, this just smooths out the gif a little bit and I like the look. You can skip this one if you like.

Coloring

This is the hardest part of gifmaking in my opinion. But it's also the most creative part. Coloring. For this we are going to utilize the adjustment layers. There's tons of different options here to adjust brightness, colors, and more. The adjustment layers can be found under Layer---> New Adjustment Layer. Or in the quick box on the right hand side of the screen under the Adjustments tab. Hover over each symbol to see which one is which.

The very first thing I do is to brighten up my gif because every scene is always so darn dark and dingy. So let's brighten it up.

Next I use the Curves layer. The curves layer will allow you to isolate the white point and black point (what you want to be the darkest and lightest values).

Start with the Exposure layer. Go under Layer ---> New Adjustment Layer ---> Exposure (repeat for all other adjustment layers). Or you can use the shortcuts in the block to the right under the Adjustments tab. Use the sliders and just a tiny bit up the exposure so it makes everything a bit brighter.

Click on the eyedropper on the left. The bottom one is your white point, the top one is for the dark point. I usually start with the white point. Once you've clicked the white point eyedropper click on the brightest part of you image. In this case I chose the white spot on the ice pack. Next click the black eyedropper and then click on the darkest part of your image. I chose the part of Eliot's hair right next to the left side of his face.

The next adjustment layer I do is the Levels layer. This is also to brighten my gif. This one just takes some experimenting so slide the little arrows until you like how it all looks. It's gonna be different with each gif you make.

After this I add a layer of Brightness/Contrast. I don't always need more brightness but I tend to at least add a little bit of brightness. Then I add always add some contrast to darken the darks a little more and even out the coloring some.

Next up is the adjustments in the colors. I always like to add a Vibrance layer to make my colors really pop. But the downside is it also brings out colors I do not want to pop. That's when I add a Selective Colors layer.

Selective Colors allows you to adjust specific colors in your image. The idea behind selective color is that each color has its counterpart: cyan-red, magenta-green, yellow-blue. Adjusting them will help isolate certain colors in your image. In this case I want to reduce the red in Eliots face so I'm gonna go to the Red section and adjust those settings. Add as many layers for as many colors as you'd like to get the result you want. Also, doing them in separate layers helps if you need to go find the layer and make changes.

Finally I added a layer of Color Balance. This lets me adjust the colors in the highlights, midtones, and shadows. With a little experimenting you can smooth out or completely change the colors in your gif. It's really useful.

Once your done coloring select all your adjustment layers and add them into a folder. This is also a step you can skip but it makes it easier to copy all your coloring if you want to replicate it in another gif. To do this hold down Ctrl and click on each layer. Then click the little folder button at the bottom of the screen. I have it circled in this image. After you click the folder all your adjustment layers you've selected will be grouped together and look like this:

Text/Subtitles

So your gif is looking beautiful but what do you do of you want to add some dialogue or other text to you gif? I can help!

Click on the text box (the one on the left side that looks like an T) and drag the dotted lines in the area you want your text to be.

Typey type everything you want

Font, size, color can all be chosen in the circled areas below. Just highlight the text and change your font type, size and color to fit your liking. My go to font when I'm making subtitles for a 540px gif is Calibri Italic and I go with a size between 18 to 21.

Once your satisfied with the text, the size, the color, the placement and all that double click on the text layer in your layer box on the right hand side of the screen (circled in red in the image above). Make sure you are double clicking in the blank space and not in the text area of the box. You want this box to open:

Check the box next Stroke and match my settings. This will put an outline around your lettering and make it pop a bit which in turn makes it easier to read. Click okay.

Make sure your text layer lines up with your gif layer in the timeline. So you're going to see this:

Your gif layer is the very bottom layer. The editing layers, all grouped together, is above that. The text layer(s) are at the top. Double check that all the layers are the same length and that your text layers aren't going past your gif layer. If you only want the text to show up for part of the gif you can control the length of the layer on the timeline. Just grab one of the ends and move it to your start and end points. For example, if I only wanted one of my text boxes to show up in the middle of the gif I would move both sides until it looked like this:

Another good thing to know about timeline mode: There are two brackets, one on either side of the layers, that tell you this is the beginning and the end of the gif. Anything outside of that will not show up when you save the gif. You can move those to cut your gif rather than trying to cut frames. You can also move those to cut off hanging portions of your text.

One final note for adding text, in your layers section on the far right side of your screen, put the Text Layer at top of all your other layers so it's unaffected by your coloring edits. Just click and drag it up to the top.

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6. Saving the Gif

Exporting Gif

Now you're ready to save all your hard work!! Congrats!

Go to File-->Save for Web

A new window will pop up. The first thing you should do is check the size of your gif. Tumblr images cannot be over 10mbs. So check to make sure that size is less than that. That can be found on the left hand side just below the image of your gif. I've circled it in read in the next image.

If your gif is too big (bigger than 10mb) there are a few things you can do. You can get ride of a few frames by move the beginning/ending brackets in the timeline. That usually does it. If you absolutely have to, you can resize the gif down but I don't recommend this because once you get out of the 540px things in the photoset get funky. But it is an option if you need it. You could also crop your image some.

The next important thing to make sure you do is to ensure that your gif loops forever. In the bottom right, circled in red, you'll see looping options. It's going to be set to once. We don't want that. Click it and change it to Forever so your gif never ends.

Also make sure you are set to "gif" rather than a jpg, png, or wbmp. We want gif. See the final red circle at the top for where that is.

Feel free to copy my settings here. I tend to keep it at Adaptive and Diffusion and no dither.

You can click the play button beneath the looping options to check the final version of your gif. Make sure everything runs smoothly, the text (if you added any) is visible when you want it to be visible, and that the end isn't blank or anything weird. If you have any problems just hit cancel and go back and fix things.

Once that's all done click save, choose your save destination, and give your new gif a name!

Congratulations! You've just made a gif!!! WOO!!

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7. Uploading a Gifset on Tumblr

Okay now that we've got our gif (or gifs) we are ready to upload them to tumblr!

Select the photo icon, click the upload from computer, find and select your gif(s).

Wait until they're all loaded then click, hold, and drag your gifs so they're in the right order for your photoset whether that's all stack on top of one another or side by side. This can be tricky because tumblr sucks and changed things so now the post box jumps around as you try and move images. Just be patient and move slow and pay attention to where you are in the post. Or you could upload each gif one at a time.

Don't forget to add a caption! The caption is the perfect place to put what it is we're seeing. You can add a quote or a description but be sure to add the name of the TV Show and the episode or the Movie title so everyone can easily see what this is from.

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