#gifset tutorial

[theunmarkedtombstone]

Hi! So, I got bored and decided I’ll be teaching the basic techniques of how to achieve these two gifs from my Laura Palmer x A-Bunch-of-Things-Gifset!

✦ 1:

✦ 2:

Now, a lot of will be similar to my previous gif tutorial from here, but it's disctinct enough I decided to do another one. Let's go to the tutorial! [all tutorials] [all graphic edits]

Because I no longer have the same movie, I will be using this gif of Lawrence's photo from Saw, which has the same colors and vibe, for both my examples. Ignore the "group" layer on my example images, I did it all again before teaching to make sure it worked, and then grouped the layers so it'd be easier for me to showcase it.

Ok, so for the explosion shape: Open a new document, grab the line tool...

And… Draw. That's it. You can free hand this, you can also get an example off of the internet and trace on top of it. Either is fine. These are my settings and an example, half thing:

Make sure to draw the entire shape and close all lines so it is a contained thing. We'll be selecting the inside of the shape later on, so this is important for the magic wand to not select anything outside of it. Also, if you get any overlap, move the individual lines accordingly with the arrow keys until they align.

Then, select all lines, right click, merge all shapes into one big thing, like so:

This is it. Now you have an explosion effect. Now, open your gif. Take this shape and paste it on top of a new layer, on top of your frames like so.

It might look too big, so resize it until it looks good (it doesn't have to fit perfectly, mine don't).

Once you're satisfied, make a new layer over your previous frames. Paint bucket it whatever color you feel like (in my case it was red), the color is not important right now. From here on, it's basically the same as usual: Right click, resterize layer, and use the magic wand to select the middle of it, like so.

Then, select the layer underneath the resterized one and delete the middle so the gif will show through. Connceal the shape or delete it because you don't need it anymore (or keep it if you think it looks neater, cause it does lol, though the lines always look a little frayed, this isn't a perfect art). Et voila, a perfectly good explosion gifset.

For the lettering, I just used Arial Black, and flipped it slightly.

Then you can edit, add the colors you want. I didn't make mine as gritty as the original this time, but here is the full example:

Now, onto the second gif!

Open the gif as usual. Now go back to your capture folder (wherever that is) and open one of the frames used in the same gif as well. It could be any frame, but it's better if it's a middle frame so the gif meets it instead of starting with it, for a better effect. Take this static frame, resize it so it meets the original gif's height and weight, and paste it on top of the original gif, like so.

(I realize now that it doesn't translate, but know that this is the static image on top of the gif. Trust). Make sure the image is properly aligned, or the effect doesn't take (unless you're going for a more 3D thing). After you're satisfied, set it at 50% opacity:

You can then add a gradient map of whatever color you want. Since this was already a red gif, the effect was obvious right away, though I made the gif underneath the frame a little darker using levels. Doing this without a gradient map, on a regular gif makes it even more dizzying. It's also best to have this type of gif a little slowed, as to not cause nausea (but that's up to the creator, honestly). Anyway, edit, sharpen it, do all that good stuff. Then, use Arial Black again (though I think the original was Arial Bold Italic, but it can honestly be whatever you want), and here it is:

The only difference is that Laura's gif has a black border, but I taught how to do that in this tutorial already, so head there if you wanna find out (also, remember that photoshop already has a rounded rectangle tool, something I overlooked during my first tutorial lol).

Here are my drop shadow settings as well (these change all the time though):

Keep in mind, that finished and with the white to balance it, this gif is usually less heavy than the previous one, which is helpful in heavier edits in general (like my web weaving ones are).

Anyway, this is it! It couldn't be more simple. See ya!

[castlesbyrs]

Hiiii! Could i please ask your sharpen settings/what action you use?

Hello dear anon!! I’m soooo sorry for taking so long to reply, but i was away from my laptop for so long... anyway, I use an action but i downloaded it ages ago and i can’t remember now from where, so I’ll share with you my settings, hope they’re useful!

1. Smart sharpen

Amount: 450%

Radius: 0.4 px

Remove: Gaussian Blur

More accurate: Yes

2. Duplicate the layer. Set the first layer to 66% opacity

3. In your new layer, Gaussian Blur:

Radius: 1,0 pixels

4. In that same layer, Smart sharpen:

Amount: 500%

Radius: 0.4 px

Remove: Gaussian Blur

More accurate: Yes

5. Set the opacity to 50%. You can increase the opacity of the layer if you want it to be softer.

I hope this was useful, dear. Big hugs! 

[arianagrandre]

Can you make a gifset tutorial? I know the base of how to make gifs but I don’t know how to make a gifset (the adjustments, if we have to color each gif individually, etc) 💕

here’s how i usually make my gifsets + some gifset tips!

I’ll start with the coloring first since it’s what you asked for :)

The most important thing in making any gifset is to make it look like all the gifs belong and that they look the same (i.e. have a similar coloring). You don’t have to color each gif individually (you can if you want to) but I usually just apply one coloring to all my gifs and then adjust them according to the lighting. I’ll only make slight adjustments to them so that they all have a similar tone. I always have one gif that serves as an anchor (all the other gifs would then have to look similar to that gif). Here’s how I make sure my gifs look similar:

I’m using these scenes:

I’ll be using the gif on the left as my anchor gif so I’ll color that gif first. Once I’m happy with it, I’ll drag the same coloring onto the gif on the right. It looks like this now:

Clearly the gif on the right is far too bright and her skin looks way too yellow compared to our main/anchor gif. To fix this, adjust the levels layer until you achieve a similar lighting to the gif on the left. I’m adjusting the levels layer instead of decreasing the brightness because levels allows me to adjust the brightness & intensity of the shadows/contrast at the same time. I’m simply moving the middle triangle (on the levels bar thingy) to the right until the contrast & brightness of the gif looks the same as the gif on the right:

Her skin still looks yellow so we’ll need to adjust the yellows specifically. You can do this by adjusting the yellows in a Selective Color layer:

To make it even more similar to the anchor gif (which has a blue-ish tone), I’m adding a color balance layer to slightly increase BLUE. And here it is!

Not all scenes require heavy adjustments or any adjustments at all, it usually depends on the scene itself so you really have to experiment with the scenes you’ve chosen and see what works best! They key is to get them looking as similar as possible without overdoing your adjustments. The layers I usually adjust are Levels & Color Balance, although in cases like this whereby her skin tone needs adjustments, I’ll use Selective Color. Color balance is mostly for changing the color tone of the gif (e.g. when the lighting is too yellow, I’ll increase Blue to reduce the warm tone)

TIPS

Before I make any gifset, I usually have an idea of how it’ll look like or the aesthetic I’m going for so that I know what kind of scenes and coloring to use. There’s so many types of gifsets that you can make: text-based, color-based, aesthetic-based gifsets etc. There’s no right way to make a gifset because everyone does it differently but I’ve found it helpful to experiment and look at other users’ gifsets for inspiration.

1. A very important thing to remember when making gifsets (especially aesthetic ones) is to ensure balance. Balance plays a huge part in how the overall gifset looks. You can achieve balance in various ways:

Giffing an equal amount of light and dark scenes. This doesn’t mean that half the gifs have to be black and the other half white, but rather half of them should have a brighter lighting and the other half should have a darker lighting (this mostly applies to more aesthetic gifsets). When you arrange them, it should alternate so that it looks like this

If you’re aiming for a colorful gifset, try have an equal amount of gifs with a warm and cool color tone. Alternate them so that each warm tone gif is next to a cool tone gif

Alternating gifs with and without text

**regardless of any method you use, the coloring should still remain similar throughout so that it looks put together! these aren’t really guidelines to follow, just some things I’ve found helpful when making my gifsets

2. I usually have 8 gifs in a gifset [268 pixels x 160 pixels], although the height varies according to the type of gifset I’m making - if I’m including text on the gifs, I’ll need more space for the text so I usually crop the height to 170 or 180 pixels instead. For 3x3 gifsets, gifs in middle column are 1 extra pixel wider than the other columns (due to the 4px gutter). This means that the gifs on the left and right columns should be 177 pixels while gifs in the middle column should be 178 pixels for them to look clear on the dashboard. Here’s a link to dimension sizes.

3. Limit the amount of fonts you use in a gifset so that it doesn’t look too messy. I usually keep it to 3 fonts max. You can experiment with the weights of fonts like I did here (mixing heavier weights with lighter weights of the same font) or with the font sizes.

4. When making one color-based gifsets, try having scenes whereby the person is in/wearing that color instead of only choosing scenes with a background in that color so that it looks more interesting!  I did this in this purple-based gifset. Also try using 2/3 colors in a gifset rather than just sticking to one solid color!

5. Try using templates - if you’re comfortable with the dimensions, you can try and make your own templates instead of using the regular gifset layouts. Here are some fun templates to use

There’s countless of ways to make gifsets so you should experiment and find what you like best and have fun with it! Just send me an ask if there’s anything you need help with :)

[theunmarkedtombstone]

Hi! In this tutorial, I'll be teaching the more advanced techniques in my 'You are Jeff' x Christine graphic gifset! This is part 2, as you can see. Part 1 is here. Part 3 here. I'll be specifically teaching how to make these two gifs:

Cause they're basically the same. You'll see. (If anyone is curious as to how to make any other one of these graphic gifs, let me know and I'll make a separate tutorial for it!) [all tutorials]

Ok, basic steps done, how did I make this?

Step 1: Open a new document. This specific gif is 540x640, which makes it a hefty one. Considering I'll be basically remaking it from scratch, I'll use those dimensions too. Now, I'll be painting my canvas black for visibility, but there really is no need, as I'll be employing the same rectangle on top of black canvas on top of it.

Step 2: Convert this sole canvas to video timeline. Yep, same as if you were making a gif. Now, create frames. In this case, you'll only have 1 frame, like so:

So, from here, I actually made my rectangles before the gifset, but it's the same thing. Here, my squares were 160x158. I'm not super precious with things being PERFECT, as you can see, so long as the effect is there.

Now, I copied and pasted the rectangles until I had a line, like so:

Now, copy paste until you have three rows:

(ignore that layer on top of the original black canvas, that is from my original gifset lol. You should just have the three rows and the original layer. You can merge the three rows as well, it doesn't matter, as you will be deleting them as with the previous rectangles I taught how to make).

Step 3: Make your gif. I have not found the actual scene I used for the original gif, but I got a similar one from when Arnie and Dennis are speeding together. I won't be able to make it an infinite looking gif, but that was a stroke of luck anyway, so I couldn't teach you how to reproduce it perfectly other than by trial and error :( Now, this specific gif is 540x500. Step 4: Once done and re-sized, what you'll do here is select all the frames, and copy them, like so:

On the other canvas, you'll be pasting these frames over selection (the same way you copied them, you'll go there and select paste frames from the same menu)

Now, here I like to group the frames, like you would a regular PSD, because honestly it's a hassle to move them around all the time if they are ungrouped. Just click here with all frames selected:

And you'll have a neat little group. Take that group and place it UNDER the rectangles. Step 4.5: Now, if you get this:

Which is basically when the first frame doesn't match the rest. Now, I have no clue why this happens, even with propagate frame one selected, but all you have to do is duplicate the original first black layer. You'll still get this:

Just move the black layer to the side to cover the transparent layer. Now, click the eye icon to show your row of rectangles and then select both (duplicated layer 1 and the rectangles, ignoring the frame group). Then click here:

Great! Now, you should have this:

Step 5: Move the gif to the middle by selecting all frames and the group at the same time. Always make sure that both are selected when you're moving a gif on a bigger canvas! The gif will still be out of the rows, but it doesn't matter, cause we will be doing the very same steps I already taught in part one. Literally. Step 6: New layer under rectangles>paint bucket it black>use the magic wand tool to delete the resterized layer selection one by one (like I said, time consuming), because we want only part of the gif to show, so we will leave the back canvas on some parts, like so:

(I added a brightness and contrast layer for visibility). Now, delete the rectangles and you'll have your gif! Add text the same way I did and it looks like this:

Keep in mind this is the gif without sharpening. To sharpen it, you select all frames and the group (just those, no need to select anything else), convert to video timeline, then smart filters, basically like a regular gif, with just a bunch of stuff on top. As I explained in my gifset tutorial, I also sharpen the text. My settings nowadays are: 60, 0.3, 10. From this base, you can do whatever you want, add the text you like. Add a rectangle again underneath, like I did and it looks like this:

Ok. So how did I make the other one? That gif contains 2 gifs instead of one, after all. Step 1: Open your canvas and your gifs, same thing. Considering I'll be duplicating the second gif, I'll be using the same gifs, which are these:

You have to make sure both gifs have the same amount of frames. Cool! You'll do the same thing. Because the second gif is more of a square-ish rectangle (540x493), you only need four rectangles instead of six, because then it would be a bit excessive. Here they are 200x187. Step 2: Basically do all I taught before: Canvas>black layer>make the squares>make the first gif (in this case, the main gif is Arnie walking away, which in this case was also 540x500)>add it to the other canvas. Now, what if you need to redimension the gif? It's too big atp. Select the group (if you grouped the layers)>select all layers in the timeline>use the free transform tool until you adjust the gif to the position you want

make a new black layer>cut the rectangles with the magic wand>blah blah. After coloring, you should land on this (no sharpening or anything):

Step 3: Now, cut your other gif. Because the two images you want are in the same gif, you basically have to cut the gif into squares two separate times. I cut Arnie's mom:

Redimension the gif, resize it to fit the other canvas, copy frames, paste it on the other one, then I ctrl+z everything and cut Dennis.

Make sure that every time you paste a new set of frames onto your canvas, you have ALL FRAMES AND ALL FRAME GROUPS SELECTED, EVEN WHEN YOU MOVE IT. After putting all groups under the black layer on top and moving them accordingly, this is the gif you'll end up with, without coloring (apart from the B&W psd), or sharpening:

(I did a better job at positioning Arnie on the first one I made, but because this is a tutorial, I decided to let it slide. You'll be able to position the gif underneath however you want or like in the redimensioning step). Step 4: Add the text and sharpen it by selecting all group frames, all frames in timeline, and doing your usual steps 'til it's sharpened and beautiful. Like I said, it's deceptively difficult, just VERY time consuming. On part 3, I'll be going over how I made this gif here:

Part 1.

[theunmarkedtombstone]

Hi! In this tutorial, I'll be teaching the most advanced technique in my 'You are Jeff' x Christine graphic gifset! This is part 3, as you can see. Part 1 is here. Part 2 here. This tutorial assumes you read ALL PARTS, as they are part of a whole. I'll be specifically teaching how to make this gif:

I won't sugarcoat it, this was a piece of shit to make start to finish, but since I know how to do it now, I'll be making it as easy as possible for you! Hope it makes sense! (If anyone is curious as to how to make any other one of these graphic gifs, let me know and I'll make a separate tutorial for it!) [all tutorials]

Step 1: Open your gifs. This gifset contains three gifs, and then its identical twin siblings (but you only need to open the original three for now). This gifset has extremely few frames (44) due to the way it is colored and how heavy it is. You also have to have made all gifs separately (even if you don't sharpen them) before you start this gifset. More on that later.

Step 2: Make your canvas. The canvas was 540x908 in this case, with gifs that are natively 540x304. Yeah, this gif was sort of an insane gamble, glad it worked, though! Now, make sure the sole layer before you paste is black this time (and duplicate it, like I showed before):

This is crucial, because you will be making the top, duplicated gifs transparent. Basically from here, you will throw all your gifs, already done, onto the canvas in the order you want, the same way I taught before. There will be transparent lines appearing between the gifs and on the borders:

This usually happens because gifs that are saved for web naturally have this border to them. I'll be fixing this later, but for now, here's what you're working with:

Then you can position it accordingly, on top of its counterpart. Make sure you DON'T have the auto select feature on for any of this, otherwise it'll just move the first frame of each group. That done for all 3 gifs, you take the gif on top, and set it to 'screen' on the menu:

Step 3: Now you have to create the duplicated effect, and here is the piece of shit part. Usually, you would just duplicate the groups, but it doesn't work like that. For some reason, Photoshop doesn't read the group as another gif, just takes the first frame and propagates it and makes it static. This is why you have to make sure you have all gifs made separately. Take the same gifs you opened before and paste them on top of the canvas.

Once screened, you can move the gif in the direction you want (making sure all frames on the timeline are selected), like so:

Step 4: This would be perfect apart from the obvious lines. So how to fix them? Basically, you have to turn the gif you just added on top into an editable layer mask, by clicking here while the group is selected:

It'll turn it into this:

Now, with all frames selected, plus the group, you take the eraser tool and erase the line:

You can also erase the adjacent lines you don't want by making a rectangular selection and erasing it, like so:

You have to make sure your erasing is REALLY neat on this part, because otherwise it shows. Here's an example:

There is a clear, lighter line where the gifs connect. Use a soft round brush eraser and go at it until it's as close to perfect as possible, like so:

Then, you'll also have to turn the original gif (the one underneath) into a layer mask to get rid of its own gross line:

Because you'll be carefully fixing and erasing, the canvas size will change. It's ok, just make sure all of them are neatly positioned and 540 in width, and you'll be good. Because I told you to make the layer underneath it all black, you will be able to see the 'screened' gif even if you move the one underneath it. In case it was white, this is all you'd see:

Now, the way I made the last one was by moving the gif underneath the one on top, until the line the top gif made was in the night sky portion, like so:

Then I erased it.

Step 5: After this, I added a gradient map:

And then a brightness and contrast layer to make it brighter. As it is, though, this gif is 11,85mb. How do I fix this? This is a segue into...

Step 6: Two things. First, I add the insane wall of text I added on the original. The white will help counterbalance the incredible amount of reds and make it a little lighter, but still probably 10 mb+. To fix it further, I lower the color count from 256, to 128, like so:

Because this gifset is colored in an almost monochromatic way, this will work to help lower mb, without losing TOO MUCH quality. A gifset like this is always a gamble, though, which is why it was the hardest one to make. It's a lot of positioning, erasing, screening and praying. I hope I made these tutorials as concise as possible! As it is, this is it. Thank you for reading! <3

[sersh]

what font and size do u recommend for captioned gifs? i'm just starting out making them and i see everyone typically using a similar font but i cant seem to figure out what it is. thank you!

I’m by no means a good person to ask this so thank you! To answer that directly at the moment/recently I’ve been using Calibri at 12pt for my subtitled gifsets.

I’m going to be using the term subtitle here to differentiate from captions in general (e.g. on my birthdayedit gifsets). Most gif subtitles tend to be in Calibri, Arial or Myriad Pro, both of which I’ve used a few times too in addition to Helvetica. Font size used varies by gif size (500/540px, 245/268px, 160/177px) and what the content is - I’d use something in say the 10-18pt range for most subtitling. Assuming you’re using Photoshop or something similar also use the Layer Style options for Stroke and Drop Shadow which give the black outline and shadows around the lettering respectively which you can set as you like, although I recommend something low and not too high. Don’t forget to toggle character and line spacing as well if needed which can be easy to forget. There’s also usually standard colours to remember (white, gold, aqua) but again, you can mix things up to suit you!

If you haven’t seen this guide yet that’s what I read when I was starting to add text to gifs which might be of use. I totally get where you’re coming from in trying to emulate the popular style, I’m still not sure if I’ve got the hang of it but good luck! Remember it’s totally okay to do your own thing, just make sure it’s spelt correctly and legible!

[jainaymadden]

One thing I have a problem with are all the "3D"-gifs we see now, They're cool, I reblog them, but people, having to click on it first doesn't make it look like a gifset, it makes it look like a singular picture which ISN'T the case with these, you wanna see it and then SUDENLY OH SHIT THERE'S THINGS OUT OF IT HOW.

By having it just as one picture when posting, you're gonna have to click to maximize it. This can be fixed by adding a second picture to your gifset, just a 500px wide x 1px tall blank picture, or even just 1x1 pixel. Whatever you choose, just, please do it. Makes it look a lot better at first impression.

[toddsfall]

Tutorial

Before you start: think of text you want to use and then search for pictures that go with it. First of all: the text above the gifs is optional (500x45) so you want to have all 9 pictures ready, coloured and cropped (160x160)

I'm going to take my picture:

  and my text (text-layer -> flatten image)

  Go to File -> new:

  and drag your photo and text in this new file:

  now go click this little icon and click 'make frames from layers' (= basic gif making)

    now we're going to tween the frames:

click on that little button and this pops up:

  make sure that your layer (from the frame you're tweening) is selected:

  now what I do is copy the 2 new frames you made by clicking on that duplicate frame button and drag them after the original frame

and now I click the same button and dupclicate the white frame and do the same 'tween process' for the text frame and after those tween frames I add another white frame:

(as you can see: 3 white frames, 8 tween frames a pic frame and a text frame)

okay, so basically what will change for every new gif you make is the first and last 'white' frame (the timings) all the rest will stay the same:

all 'tween frames' + middle white frame = 0.1 sec and your picture frame = 0.9 sec, your text frame =  1.2 sec

(basically, between the first and last frame it should be 3 sec and your first and last frame combined should be 21 sec in total)

you can change these timings by clicking on the little arrow you see in the corner of your frame:

  this will pop up:

  click on 'other' and just give in the timing you need.

now here are the timings for all your white frames for all the gifs in the gifset:

first gif:

first frame: 0 last frame: 21 

second gif:

first frame: 3 last frame: 18

third gif:

first frame: 6 last frame: 15

4th & 5th gif:

first frame: 9 last frame: 12

6th gif:

first frame: 12 last frame: 9

7th gif: 

first frame: 15 last frame: 6

8th gif:

first frame: 18 last frame: 3

middle gif:

(a bit different than the rest, you only have one white frame)

first frame: 21 text frame: 2.6 (and all 4 tween gifs: 0.1)

have fun with it! :D Hope this helped, you can always ask question, but please come off-anon so I'll be able to help you better!