#maylovelies

[dokidoki-tae]

maylovelies replied to your photo “( •̀ᄇ• ́)ﻭ✧ a successful trip”

omg y'all look so cute

thank you ;u;

[toboldlyblahblahblah]

Your gifs are beautiful and so clear! Have you ever done a tutorial on how you get them so flawless and well lit? Like esp DS9 and TNG gifsets! I love your work so much!

 @maylovelies

Wow! Okay, for starters: Thank you so much! I really, REALLY appreciate the kind words and the time you took to send this! I really enjoy making gif sets and I’m always so glad to hear that people like how I edit mine. 

To answer your question, yes, I have made a tutorial post in the past, but the method I used back then I’ve strayed from a bit, recently. Some of it I still use, but in reference to lighting and getting them to look a little more high quality, there are some other techniques I’ve been working with lately and really enjoying the results…

I can walk you through with a new example. 

Here’s a quick gif from a scene of DS9:

and I’ll do a rundown on how I got it to look like this:

Going to put the rest of this below the cut, though, because it’s significantly longer than my last tutorial-based answer…

So! One trick is to not be afraid to stack up a few adjustment layers of the same variety, sometimes even duplicates of the exact same layer, on top of each other. The reason I do this is because wild adjustments on a single adjustment layer are a lot less controlled and will often effect the wrong parts of the scene’s lighting (by that I mostly mean shadows v highlights).

I edit for light first, personally. Here’s where I am after doing those corrections

Already looking a lot better and clearer. This was done using three adjustment layers.

The curves layer is just a basic “lighter” preset that you can find from the drop down menu once you open a new curves layer

The levels layer I start by using the preset “lighten shadows”

at that point the image looks very washed out and grainy

(still image)

so from there i just messed with the layer a bit until I liked it a little more, added some contrast and adjusted the distribution of light, etc.

which got the image looking like this

(still image)

But I still thought that looked kind of washed out and flat, so, lastly, I added a completely custom exposure adjustment layer where I pushed up the gamma correction and exposure settings (you can also push the offset into the negative to get a secondary effect similar to gamma correction, but it’s very harsh and temperamental, at times. I wouldn’t recommend it for first-time use) 

that gets us back to this lightness corrected gifset, which I’ll post again now

You can actually get a similar look by using just curves adjustments and their presets. Here’s what happens if you take three (3) layers with the same curves “lighter” preset (see above) and then one (1) curves layer with the “medium contrast” preset.

and the results are pretty similar

Each technique lends itself better to different scenes. And obviously with either method (or a combination of both as tends to be the case on super dark scenes - cough, mirror-universe episodes, cough) you can customize a lot from these presets to get the desired effect. They just give you a good jumping-off point…

Now the first thing I always notice about adding brightness to these scenes is that the tones get very warm and muddy, so from there I usually like to color correct next. 

I like to bump my vibrance and saturation sliders up before color correcting, but I know a lot of people do it after. That’s really just a matter of personal preference. 

There are a handful of ways to color correct, and, just like with the lighting methods above, I tend to mix and match the various adjustment layers. I’ll use Color Balance (as illustrated in my previous tutorial) and I’ll also now use Hue/Saturation layers and Selective Colors layers. 

Honestly, color correcting / color grading alone could be its own tutorial so I won’t go very in-depth on that here. But just play around with the settings and find a method that works for you. (If you feel like you’d want a specific run through on that, just shoot me an ask and I can cover it some other time in more detail.) 

My one recommendation to help you avoid the big rookie mistake I made when I first started doing this is that with the hue/saturation layers, never use the Master slider option; instead, click the drop down menu and work on each color individually. 

So here’s where we’re at once I bumped up the saturation and then did my color corrected. 

You may notice how sometimes color correction darkens an image and undoes some of the work you did earlier (in my experience, this usually happens when you have to add a lot of blue in the color balance layer) You’ve got two options here. Either go back in to the previous brightness adjustment layers and lighten up some of the contrasts, or put a new layer over top of latest color edits to add brightness back in over top. Again, this comes down to personal preference. Experiment with either version and do whichever works best for you. 

Here’s after I brightened it back up a little again. 

Subtle difference, but it’s how I prefer it for this scene. Plenty of times scenes don’t end up needing it at all.

So the gif is looking pretty solid from there. In some cases, I’d actually stop right here and just add the quote text to the bottom and call it a day. But if you really want to make it look HQ, there’s a few additional steps…

Firstly, it helps to keep the images smaller (a retread of something I said in that other tutorial too, I believe) but after that, there’s a way to sharpen all the layers and frames at once while also reducing “noise,” both of which improve the quality of a gif. 

To do that, take your frames timeline at the bottom of photoshop and click the little icon that looks sort of like a funnel going through a bar graph… 

If you have history window open, it’ll say “Convert to Timeline” after you’ve done this, and instead of frames you’ll see a bunch of short purple lines instead of the gif’s individual frames. Don’t panic! That’s supposed to happen. 

From this point, go to your layers window and select all of the layers that are frames of your gifs, which you can do by clicking the first layer - holding shift - then scrolling up to click the final layer - then releasing shift. They should all have the little eyeball icon on next to them, indicating that they’re all active. Then, right click the top layer and from the pop-up menu click “convert to smart object”

When you do this, all of the layers compress into one Smart Object with the name of the top layer. 

Again, don’t panic!, you didn’t lose the other layers they’re just now all going to be affected by the sharpen filter instead of having to be edited one at a time.

Now, go to the top ribbon in Photoshop and in the drop down menus, go “Filter” > “Sharpen” > “Smart Sharpen…” and click that. 

A little window will pop up that gives you a preview of how this filter will impact your image. 

**notice that the smart sharpen preview does not show color and lighting corrections; that’s fine & because we are not applying this smart filter to any of our adjustment layers.

And what you do from here is again a matter of personal preference. Raise the sharpening amount too much and the image starts to look crinkly, have the noise reduction too high and all the detail gets smudged away. 

Here’s an example of what happens if youwere to crank both the sharpness and the noise reduction all the way up:

(still image)

And I guess there’s maybe a place and time where something with this aesthetic would work for a particular scene or edit, but generally, I like to keep the settings pretty low. Sometimes, less really is more…

For a 268x200px gif of an 80′s or 90′s Trek show, I keep Reduce Noise at 10% and have the sharpening anywhere from like 85-150, depending on how much I’ve cropped in on the original camera crop. But for this gif, where I didn’t zoom in very much at all and pretty much kept it how the original videography framed her, keeping it around 95-115 works nicely. 

When you’re done, click OK. 

Now that Smart Object looks like this

And that’s pretty much it! Now, when you export your gif from Photoshop, it’ll look something like this:

The one thing you have to remember about this technique (and this is something that still trips me up from time to time, myself) is that when you export, it doesn’t automatically set the gif to loop forever. Instead, it’s set to “Once.” To fix that, when you click through “Export” > “Save to Web (Legacy)” and the Web window pops up, go to the bottom right corner and above the “Save” button there’s a drop down menu in the “Animation” section. Click there and switch from Once to Forever. 

And there you have it! Start to finish, that’s how I make my HQ gif sets!

I know it seems like a ton of work for one lousy gif and super overwhelming at first and hard to remember, but once you get into the swing of things it all becomes very second nature.

So thanks for asking and thanks for reading. Hopefully this was helpful, please let me know if you got anything out of it. 

And, of course, feel free to reach out with any other questions or requests. I’ll always try to do the best I can and answer. ♥

[dokidoki-tae]

Hey! I saw your post and just want you to know that you're an amazing person and an awesome friend. I am glad you're feeling better now and i hope you know that you're not only an extremely talented person but a kind and loving person as well. You are worth so much and are so intelligent. 😁❤

Thank you, Avery. We’ve been supporting each other for years now! I’m glad I got to meet you and we continue to remain in contact. We may not talk a lot because of different fandoms, but I’m glad we managed to continue to be friends regardless of the fandom change. Youre amazing. Thank you for leaving this message for me.

[dokidoki-tae]

maylovelies replied to your post “y’all ever feel stressed because you feel guilty for not being...”

I KNOW THIS FEELING WAY TOO MUCH

we’ll end up finishing school and stress out even more!

[dokidoki-tae]

maylovelies replied to your post “Well, follow my twitter it’s about as unorganized and inconsistent as...”

i followed u <3

I followed you too :D

[commanderscody]

omg. i read all you had written about mirell AND i was wondering abt he and gree. does gree still die when they are together. like i know mirell can't magically save him but still lmao. also i love the fact that he is an activist for the zabraks on dathomir--that is so cool and freaking amazing. do people listen to him? does he gain supporters or does the republic ignore him? i love him and his relationship with gree and jazz. <3

i’m so sorry that this came out so late !! i’ve been busy with classes & the such. i figure that in canon that gree still dies unfortunately & mirell still ears both of their rings on a necklace on his neck in remembrance of him. he would have done everything he could have to save gree if he was not in the hospital, and he puts up memorials for both him and jazz. he remains very critical of the empire and is a very loud voice, and seeing that the empire is quite effective dealing with dissidents… i don’t think he will be killed, but rather he would be injured in an ‘accident’

in an au i have, he insists on accompanying gree to kashyyyk because he knows the wookies will be mistreated by the republic and he wants to be there to defend them. he has amazing reflexes & manages to shoot yoda before he could kill gree and jazz. the three of them flee, managing to pick up a couple of orphan wookies on the way. they find themselves a forested, isolated planet to settle on (somewhere similar to kashyyyk, best for the two orphans). the three of them take in orphans from the war, providing them with a warm and safe home.

people do listen to him and they agree with his sentiments, however it is the fear of retaliation that prevents a strong movement of supporters. once the night sisters are all killed, he definitely gains more supporters in his movement, though not nearly enough to present a real ‘challenge’ to the republic. but mirell is stubborn and determined to have his people free and back on their feet. so yeah, the republic mostly ignores him for the most part.

ahh thank you so much for the questions, they are very much appreciated !! i wish that mirell could magically save gree & jazz in canon. glad you like their relationship !!

[prettyrex]

OMG i saw your old post about ocs. so for a couple of your ocs , sunbeam and kirk; 1 , 11 , 28, 29, 32 :D

thank you so much for the ask !! i’m so glad to have the opportunity to write about two of my sons !! i hope the answers aren’t too short, they’re just general ideas at the moment.

sunbeam

i. i don’t know much about star wars foods, but he loves anything that is spicy & warm !! far different from the bland food of kamino, he just loves the intense tastes of the different spices. he once had a pepper eating contest with rex & cody, naturally he won.

xi. not really, he’s more of the ‘you make your own luck’ kind of guy. of the three close brothers, himself, cody, and rex, he was most likely to believe in luck, but with cody’s influence, he doesn’t believe in it. not that it is a bad thing, but rather i think they much prefer to think in concrete terms that they can actually change themselves.

xxviii. he wishes that he could have more time with his brothers because although he works closely with them, it’s different from the old days where they could joke around and talk freely. it is not that he misses kamino per se, but rather the time that he spent with rex and cody that he wants back.

xxix. sunbeam would love to have kids!! he absolutely adores children and really enjoyed taking care of his much little brothers back on kamino. as much as he wants kids, he doubts it would ever happen (even through adoption), since this war is his life.

xxxii. he is quite confident in the mask that he presents to the world, but inside of himself he is very insecure and anxious. he does make a very good commander, but the loss of his brothers and risky battle strategy (mainly the fault of skywalker tbh), makes him deeply anxious inside. so while he does get stressed easily, he keeps it bottled up inside of himself, because he doesn’t need anyone else worrying about him.

kirk

i. ice pops. they’re such a simple and delectable treat, what is there not to love about them??? they’re also very useful after a very hot, long day and not too fulfilling either, so he has room for real food.

xi. he definitely believes in luck !! he was nearly assigned to serve under pong krell & he believes it was a stroke of luck that he did not. however, he thinks he is unlucky because he is stuck by the side of grumpy pyro now.

xviii. he wishes that he could become an arc trooper like fives, so that he could impress pyro and actually show him that he is a very competent soldier. kirk has a lot of confidence in his abilities, and pyro is very protective of his little brothers so it’s like ‘you think you can do these things but you just can’t kirk’ and he wants to prove him otherwise.

xxix. kirk still has the maturity of a very young adult (like 18-20), so it really hasn’t crossed his mind about his children. however, when he sees the children that have been affected by the war, he just wants to take them into his arms and steal them away to a better place. he is very friendly with children and often when not in battle, he provides them with entertainment and distraction from battle (which helps him too).

xxxii. as much as there are high expectations set by his commander and himself, kirk does not stress easily !! mostly because pyro taught him healthy coping mechanisms to handle stress, because the older man knows how important it is not to be stressed on the battlefield. 

[dokidoki-tae]

Wait!! Tokyo Ghoul ended???

In three chapters it’s expected to end :/