With the Windows recall shit rolling around, I'm going to be That Girl and put it out there that Linux is, indeed, still a thing, and a thing that has come a long way with regards to user experience and gaming. And a thing that runs 75% of the internet but anyways Saying, "Linux isn't just for nerds and enthusiasts anymore!" wouldn't be an entirely truthful statement, but if all you do is play games, go on socials, and hang in discord... It'll work? I'm speaking to a target audience here, posting from an FFXIV-focused blog, so let me dive into it a little for that target audience, with the assumption that none of you are out there being sweaty over Apex, Overwatch, Fortnite, or whatever zoomers play these days.
Basically anything you play through Steam will run flawlessly* on Linux. Valve have baked the Proton compatibility layer into Steam for a while, and since Valve's Steam Deck runs on Linux, they are on point with updates for it. This means that Steam will do the work of making Windows games run on Linux for you without any additional software or tinkering. This includes the Steam version of FFXIV**.
Now, I can't speak to or ensure that reshade or any 3rd party plugin will work. In my case (details below the cut) reshade was more or less intact but all the presets broke so I just kinda said fuck it and removed the remnants. But thats ok, right? You want to try out the 7.0 graphical updates without instagram filters, right? Don't you..?
Mods and other plugins? Don't know, don't care, frankly don't like that they exist outside the narrow window of seeing people's fun screenshots. Sorry not sorry. That said, I have seen some things on the googles.
There are obviously various things that work differently/don't work on Linux like they do on Windows. I can't account for every case, so google is your friend here. The one particularly notable case I ran into was screenshare with Discord being unable to deliver audio, which makes group watching things like netflix a bit of a problem. There are technically workarounds but again, Target Audience.
Sooo... Yeah? If you're mildly tech savvy, go get Ubuntu, install it on a second drive, external drive, or even just try it out from the usb you put the install media on for an hour. If you wanna get spicy with it, do some looking around to see what distribution of Linux might suit you better. Pop_OS is also pretty beginner friendly. Yes, there are some adjustments and some things to learn, but if you have the energy to be mad at what Microsoft is doing, you have the energy to learn a few new things to get away from it. As with anything related to messing with your operating system; back up your important things, just in case!
The Notable Caveats:
*I can't speak to all multiplayer games, since some use anti-cheat or DRM that may not work on Linux. But frankly, a quick google of "will [game] run on Linux" can get you a quick yes or no on if this will be a problem for you. In my case, I mostly care about Helldivers 2 with its nProtect, and it works fine. BG3 has no problems either.
**You might be thinking, "But Basement Witch Noone Knows, I don't use the Steam version of FFXIV!" And yes, that does complicate matters. My brief tutorial is below the cut, should you find yourself committed to this notion, or just have a morbid curiosity.
Ok, so I don't have the Steam version of FFXIV either. There are two ways around this that I am aware of.
The first, which I would not recommend, is to get a 3rd party Linux launcher. If you care about this Windows recall thing, you probably fully understand why I would advise against using a 3rd party app to put your username and password into. If you are willing to do some research into the providers of these tools to determine their trustworthiness, I can't stop you, but I wasn't interested.
The second is Steam! Again! A fun fact about FFXIV is that it runs pretty self-contained in its folder. I have shit internet, so I have been just copying the whole ass SquareEnix folder off my drive and onto other drives to save myself two days of downloading for years now.
If you have Linux installed and familiarize yourself with the Home folder where your usual Documents/Pictures/Videos folders are, I just copy pasted my whole SquareEnix folder in there, to the cries and lamentations of Linux nerds everywhere that would insist I put it somewhere proper. Anyway. Once it's there, all you need to do is add it to Steam. In the Steam Library there is a button to Add a Game in the bottom right corner. When you click that there is an option to Add Non-Steam Game. When you click that, you will get a prompt to locate and select the game. Here you want to hit Browse, navigate to your Home folder, SquareEnix, FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn, boot. in the boot folder you will need to select ffxivboot.exe. Once you have selected it and clocked Open, it will return you to the Add Non-Steam Game list and you should see ffxivboot.exe selected. Hit Add Selected Programs, and that's it! You can now launch your bodged-in copy of FFXIV through steam, and it will apply the necessary Proton layer to make the launcher and the game work as normal. Yay Linux!
I hope you don’t mind I took this to a post but I can’t post pictures on the replies and there’s a character limit.
It actually took me a long time to get comfortable with knitting. I wasn’t able to purl for the longest time and that’s because the books I was teaching myself from weren’t very clear on where the working yarn should be so I was essentially just knitting half my stitches in a really awkward way because I wasn’t moving my yarn to the front to purl or the back to knit. That was before YouTube so it was dark times.
So knit stitches are when the working yarn is in the back behind the needles and you insert the needle at the back from the bottom up:
Purl is backwards knitting so you move the working yarn to the front, and then insert the needle at the front from the top down.
That’s how I think of it anyway? Some people do it differently I guess, but my stitches always look like they should at the end of the day and I’ve been doing it this way for years so I’m doing alright I suppose.
The best way to get comfortable is to find some easy projects that are good for beginners on circular needles. Christmas ornament balls are great for this because you get used to circular needles, increasing, decreasing and working in the round. If you do Julekuler you also learn about multi-stranded knitting and carrying yarn (I love making them).
Hopefully this will make sense, but if you want to start on non-rectangular projects like hats or balls or socks or birds you’ll need some DPNs (double pointed needles). I use some cheapo bamboo ones I got on amazon. A full set of like 20 sizes is like 8 bucks but most projects use smaller ones. They break easy but it’s taught me to not be so tight and they are so cheap I just buy multiple sets.
I find this an easier way to knit in the round than circular needles. I don’t know why, I just do. You might like circular needles better, I just find the cord and getting the stitches off the cord and onto the actual needles to work really cumbersome. I have never had a success with circular needles but I make tons of shit on DPNs with no issue at all.
Which brings me to my first tip. Wood is less slippy than metal needles. I used to drop stitches like whoa on metal because they just kind fly off. This might be a controversial opinion but I’ve had way more luck with wood/bamboo needles personally. If they are a bit rough or snag you just sand them down a bit.
My second tip is Use Stitch Markers. It’s really important to know with circular knitting where your row/round begins. With DPNS, depending on the pattern, it’s more which needle starts the row. I don’t go crazy, I just stick it in on the side somewhere so I know “This is the start”
Double pointed needles seem really awkward at first but once you realize you just need to forget about the other needles it’s a lot easier.
Basically, you have stitches distributed across 4 needles (or less spending on pattern) and you have one needle with no stitches that you use to knit with. The stitches get transferred to this “blank” needle as you work and when you reach the end of your working needle it is then free of stitches and becomes your new blank needle (hopefully that’s not too confusing).
I hold mine in a diamond shape like so:
So in the 2nd pic above my working yarn is on the needle on the right (the yellow string kind of at the back) and the needle I’ll be knitting on is the needle on the left (under my thumb) and it’s the first needle of stitches for the row because my pink maker indicates that this side of the “diamond” is the start of my work.
I recommend watching some videos of people knitting on DPNs. That helps me with knitting/crochet in general to see how they move their hands to do certain things. I like Arne and Carlos they are the makers of the pattern I use for my birds and my Christmas ornaments and they taught me short row heels. They are also adorable. But there are other people with clearer videos and closer tutorials as well. I always watch multiple videos when perfecting a skill to get as many viewpoints as possible and everyone has different tips.
Next tip: With DPNS you should “lock” your stitches on the needles you aren’t using my sliding them to the middle. You get kind of in the flow of:
1. Slide stitches to the front for the needle you’re working on. Knit/Purl the pattern as necessary.
2. Push stitches to middle when finished to lock them.
3. Turn the work slightly, a quarter turn, to the work on the next needle.
4. Slide stitches to the front of that needle to work on them.
5. Knit and purl as necessary.
6. Slide stitches to middle to lock them when done with that needle.
7. Quarter turn to work on the next needle.
5. Repeat all the way around.
I hold my work like this in my left hand:
I use my thumb to push the needle I don’t care about out of the way, and ignore the needles that are kinda poking out on the side. and then I just work on the stitches on one needle and knit like I would if I was only using two needles. The rest of them don’t exist as far as I’m concerned.
I also keep my pointer finger of that same hand at the top or near the top of the needle with my stitches on it, to keep from pulling them off. It’s a bit slower but it helps with dropped stitches until you can get faster because you are literally holding the stitches you don’t want to move. Like this:
I’m kind of exaggerating it, but I keep my finger/nail pressed to the stitches I’m not working, knit/purl the stitch I am, pull it off the needle and then slide my finger down to let the next stitch up to be worked. Like a conveyor belt of stitches I guess. Or like, one of those gates that keep cows orderly at the slaughter house? Or turnstiles. I dunno.
This probably isn’t the best way to do it. It’s just how I taught myself and how I keep from dropping stitches.
I dunno. I love circular knitting, it’s all I do really. I can’t remember the last time I had a project on straight single pointed needles. I make a lot of birds and socks and hexapuffs and ball shaped things.
Hopefully this was helpful and not confusing. Sorry it was long. Let know if I can help!
So, I’m doodling Bubba right now and, I mean I’m not perfect, but I’ve seen a few people fall into some pitfalls when drawing the Bubs, so I wanted to make a post because I’m procrastinating.
Now this is not exhaustive, and I’ll probably add to it later, and it is also not singling out any one artist. It’s just something I’ve noticed happens sometimes.
1. He’s too thin.
Bubba Sawyer is thick. He is a very large man with a very large belly and broad shoulders and this is why we love him. I know it can be scary to learn how to draw different body types, but it will really help your art to attempt to draw fat characters. There are plenty of tutorials out there. Look at references of fat bodies. Watch people in public and study their shapes (as creepy as that sounds, people watching has helped me study how bodies move and how fat distributes differently on different people.)
Look at that belly. That is a big belly and it is good. Please respect it.
2. His mask is the same shape as his own face.
This is something that I have trouble with sometimes, but it really makes no sense lmao. His masks are not prosthesis, they are flaps of skin sewn together that do not match his same face shape and jawline! As you can see in the image above, the Pretty Woman mask has its own shape. It doesn’t have a defined jawline, and is shaped differently than Grandma or his Killing Mask. Since the latter is the most widely drawn, I’ll be using that as an example.
You can see in the image below, the skin is by no means flush against his skin. You can see his jawline, which is soft and not clearly defined, and the skin sags and is stretched around his chin. You can see where it is hanging off of his skin because it is a mask, not his skin.
While this can be difficult to achieve when you’re a beginner, studying the tones in a grayscale image can really help you better understand and play around with depth. His own eyes and mouth are more hidden in shadow because they are being hidden.
Of course, it’s not necessary to draw because we all want to see Bubba’s beautiful eyes. I’m just trying to hammer the idea home that it is not the same shape of his face, and just like you draw clothes hanging over a body, his mask also hangs off his face!
3. His neck is too thin.
This ties in with #1 and is my personal pet peeve, but a really easy way to add weight to your characters is to change the neck width!!
I’m going to actually illustrate this one. This effect is really simply achieved by changing your position of where the body connects to the head in relation to the jawline. I can’t remember where I originally saw this, but it really helped me when designing characters.
So, we have Skinny Jim, Average Joe, Swole Steve, and Roadhog. Although this obviously also changes from person to person and can look differently depending on muscle mass as well, but you can see the difference in weight through these four characters.
The jawline also becomes softer the heavier a character is, but that isn’t illustrated well in this image (with the exception of the last one because it looked really funny with that jawline.) Again, reference is really helpful in this aspect!
4. HE’S ATTRACTIVE???
Fucking....stop that. Obviously that’s like, your prerogative, but honestly ask yourself why you want him to be pretty. Look at the rest of his family. He’s not wearing a mask because he’s gorgeous with high cheekbones and a well defined jawline and a cute speckle of freckles and vaguely crooked teeth. Which brings me to my next point in a second but,
Originally, in the 1974 film there was going to be a scene where Bubba was unmasked and you would see his deformities (not to be confused with Thomas Hewitt’s unnamed skin disease)--but Tobe Hooper wanted it to be left a mystery so this was edited out. I think it is much more interesting and creative to come up with designs for his possible deformities than it is to make him cute.
5. His teeth aren’t jank.
The Sawyers have never been to a dentist before and Bubba’s teeth are Janked Up.
I’m not sure how well you can see in this photo, but the scene where he’s contemplating what to do now that hippies are breaking into his house, you can see his teeth very clearly. They’re crooked, and have jagged edges cut into them. Of course your personal preference of how jacked up they should be are up to you, but give him his jacked up teeth.
NOW.
Again, this isn’t meant to attack anybody or their artistic freedom, or whatever. Ignore this if you want to, I do not care. These are just some things I’ve observed from the fandom as a whole. Bubba is my second favorite slasher and it is my personal pet peeve that when people take away the “ugly” aspects of characters, you’re really only robbing yourself.
I think it’s really important that artists especially embrace these aspects of characters, because not only does it do better for your character designing skills and widen your abilities, but it also adds to the normalization of these things.
It’s important to draw fat characters. It’s important to draw ugly characters. It’s important to draw crooked and missing and janked up teeth. Because real people are like that, and because of society’s stance that we have to be thin, beautiful, and have perfect teeth, people are ashamed of those aspects of themselves when they shouldn’t be!
And while a cannibal serial killer is probably not the best representation for any of those things, a lot of people do relate to Bubba Sawyer, and I don’t think any aspect of him should be erased--the good, the bad, or the ugly.
Changing the way you observe the world around you and your own artistic habits is difficult, but vital to your improvement as an artist.
This got stupid long but I hope this short list is able to help at least one person. If you have any art questions or need advice, feel free to send me a message! I want to help.
December 11, 2019 at 05:30AMSEO Tips to Improve Organic Traffic in Under 15 Minutes -Ahrefs
SEO Tips to Improve Organic Traffic in Under 15 Minutes
Don't forget to share rhis post titled SEO Tips to Improve Organic Traffic in Under 15 Minutes if you have liked it.
Want to improve SEO for your site? In this video, you will learn some low-hanging SEO tips that will give you a boost in the search engines. Subscribe ► https://www.youtube.com/AhrefsCom?sub_confirmation=1 *************************************** Additional SEO Resources How to Get Backlinks with Negotiation and Persuasion ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxusD0K-IYA Simple SEO Strategy: The “Middleman” Method ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=433XlvMl508 How to Increase Organic Traffic with a Content Audit ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWNvAGwiVqo How to use Google Search Console to Improve Your SEO ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXVEb_eklhk *************************************** SEO can take a long time to get any kind of meaningful results. While you can’t “force” Google to rank you faster, there are actually a number of quick things you can do to improve SEO for your website. One of the easiest things you can do is improve page speed with lazy load. When you implement lazy loading, things like images or videos will only load when they’re visible on the page. This will reduce initial page load time, initial page weight, and system resource usage, all of which should positively impact performance. Find out what tools you’ll need to enable lazy loading in the video. Next, improve clickthrough rate for pages ranking on page one. It’s widely accepted in the SEO community that pages with a higher clickthrough rate can help increase rankings. And since 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results, it’s better to focus on improving CTR for your first page rankings. Learn how to do this in the video. Third, send emails to everyone you link to. This 10-minute outreach strategy is a great way to passively earn links and grow your network. You will learn how to do this in the video. Fourth, add internal links to your new pages. Internal linking helps to improve crawlability, gets your pages indexed faster, improves topical relevance, and distributes PageRank to other pages so you can rank higher in Google. To learn how to find relevant pages to add internal links from, watch the video. The next tip is to become a power skimmer of HARO using Gmail filters. HARO stands for help a reporter out. It’s a free service where journalists can ask questions, and anyone can respond and be a source for mega publications like The New York Times and Forbes. The thing with this service is that they usually send 3 emails per day which can be quite overwhelming, considering 90% of the queries probably won’t be relevant to you. So, a quick hack to make sure opportunities don’t get missed is to lighten the load with Gmail filters. How do you do this? Watch the video. Sixth, perform an annual content audit. A content audit is where you analyze the performance of all content on your site to determine whether it should be kept as-is, updated, deleted, consolidated, or redirected. You’ll find out how to perform a content audit in the video. Lastly, repurpose your best-performing blog posts to videos, and your best videos to blog posts. You’ll learn how to do this in the video. Timestamps: 0:39 - Boost page speed with lazy load 1:25 - Improve clickthrough for pages ranking on page one 4:02 - Send e-mails to everyone you link to 5:47 - Add internal links to your new pages 7:09 - Become a power skimmer of HARO using Gmail filters 8:30 - Perform an annual content audit 9:28 - Repurpose best-performing blog posts to videos, and vice versa #seotips #improveseo #seo Be sure to subscribe for more actionable marketing and SEO tutorials. https://www.youtube.com/AhrefsCom?sub_confirmation=1 STAY TUNED: Ahrefs ► https://ahrefs.com/ YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/AhrefsCom?sub_confirmation=1 Facebook ►https://ift.tt/1ghgAkr Twitter ►https://twitter.com/ahrefs
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Hi! I'm looking to start making my own clothes, mostly because I recently purchased and then subsequently ruined (bleached) the perfect tunic/ kurti and it's no longer being sold. I want to make a replacement. Do you have any advice for getting started? Where can I find cloth? What measurements do I need to take of myself? How much do I add to the cloth in addition to those measurements to allow for seams? Other advice for a beginner?(And maybe a primer on putting pockets in pants and dresses?)
Alright. I’ll see what I can do to help you. In order of asking:
Where to find cloth: I mostly buy my cloth either at Joann’s fabric or at fabric booths at SCA events. I don’t like buying cloth online unless I have to. I would recommend doing an internet search for fabric stores in your area and checking them out. Of course, you can order fabric online but I don’t recommend it if you’re just getting started.
You don’t need to know as much about fabric if you can touch it when you buy it, because if you know you’re looking for 100% cotton chintz with a chevron pattern you can search for that online. But if you only know that you want something soft, not fuzzy, and green, you’re much better off going through a store and looking at the stock.
What measurements do you need: This depends on what you’re going to be making. Here’s a generic illustration covering most measurements you might need.
(Source)
You probably won’t need all of these measurements for any one garment. Getting your back measurement is hard to do on your own, so it helps to have someone measure that for you. For a tunic, the important measurements are shoulder to shoulder, bust, waist, hips, arm length, and neck to wherever you want the tunic to stop.
If, heaven forbid, you don’t even have a measuring tape, you can wrap a ribbon or a piece of string around yourself and then measure that with a ruler.
How much cloth do you need: This depends on how much seam allowance you’re going to need. In most cases, I use a rolled seam, so I need about three quarters of an inch more than the actual size of the finished garment.
If the cloth is a type that tends to fray, cut the pieces about half an inch to an inch larger than you normally would, then put in a French seam. Whenever I buy cloth, I tend to buy an extra half a yard to a yard in case something goes wrong with the piecing.
But in general, try laying out a garment with the same amount of fabric on a table, get an idea of how much you’d need to duplicate it, and then add half a yard.
Advice for getting started: Do not be afraid of patterns. It isn’t cheating, it isn’t tracing, it’s using the same resources used by the entire industry from professionals to beginners.
Especially if you want to make trousers. Trousers are some of the hardest garments to make and the easiest garments to become terrifically uncomfortable if made wrong.
As with most creative endeavours, the first few projects are going to be a lot more impressive to yourself before you get used to it. Unlike many other creative endeavours, the first fruits of your labour are more likely to stick around and keep being used long after you start getting good at it.
Also, this applies to most things, but especially sewing: when you make a mistake, pay attention to how you made it. Once I sewed a sleeve into the neckhole twice because I was tired. Now I always pin the sleeves on and then hold up the garment and look at it to make sure I’m not doing anything quite that stupid. And sometimes, I was about to, because no matter how long you’ve been sewing you can do something stupid if you aren’t paying attention.
Basic pocketing:
If you’re making trousers, I really recommend buying a pattern with pockets. if the pockets in the pattern are too small, just make them longer. Sadly, you cannot make the pockets wider than the leg of the trousers because we are not timelords. This tutorial on extending pockets in jeans can easily be applied to making your own pants, just skip the step of making pockets that aren’t large enough in the first place.
But if you’re making a skirt, things get much easier.
Let us say you’ve cut out a basic panel skirt, which is three to six trapezoids attached to a waistband. (the waistband could be a tube covering elastic, or a folded over piece of fabric with a fastening like a hook and eye or a button)
This pattern can be used on any fabric that does not have a pattern with a distinct top and bottom, and is easily adjusted to make it fit pretty much anyone.
Fold your fabric neatly in half (it’s folded badly in the picture just so you can tell it’s folded).
Fold over the large rectangles cut out at the bottom. These will be your pockets.
The narrow rectangles at the top will become your waistband and can be any width you like. If your waist is smaller around than the fabric is wide, you’ll only need to cut one, but be sure to cut it twice as wide as you want the waistband to be (plus seam allowance) because it’s going to be folded over.
Cut the rest of the fabric into trapezoids as long as you want your skirt to be. Of course, the trapezoids will only form on the fold, and across from them you’ll get two triangles. Sew two of them together, bam. You’ve got another trapezoid. I recommend putting the panels with a seam down the middle on the sides and the big trapezoids you cut in the front and back, this makes it look intentional.
Add the pockets to the sides of the front panel, then attach the rest of the panels to each other. Then you attach the waistband. And finally, the hard part. Put on your skirt, with is more or less finished except for the hem. Stand on a chair and get someone to trim the bottom with the scissors parallel to the ground. The bottom of the skirt is now slightly curved, meaning it will look like it’s a flat line. Now you can hem it.
You can cut a curve onto the bottom of the skirt while not wearing it, of course, but if you do this it will not take into account your hips and bum, and unless you are a perfect cylinder this means that the back of the skirt will be higher than the back of the skirt. So find someone to help you trim the bottom.
Now here’s the tips that will work with any skirt pattern: To help distribute the weight of the contents of your pockets, attach the top of the pocket to the waistband of your skirt and make the pockets wide enough to be attached to the seams of the skirt. This distributes the weight across the waistband and makes it more comfortable to wear when you’ve stuck a couple loaves of bread, your wallet, your cell phone, and the dead sea scrolls in there.
It’s been a while since I made a coloring tutorial, and I thought it would be useful if I made a full tutorial on how I make my gifs. I will go over:
how to screencap
making your gif in ps
sharpening
coloring that gif
putting subtitles on a gif
saving that gif
you will need
a hd copy of the episode/movie you want to gif
potplayer (or kmplayer)
a version of photoshop (I use CC)
a sharpening action
A psd or patience to color your own gif
end result:
Everything will be under the cut. Warning: this will be picture heavy and text heavy. English is my third language so there will probably be some mistakes in here.
If this is the first time using photoshop, your startpage will look pretty blank. I’ll show you what you need to make visible to gif.
Click on “window”. The screencap I made of the settings is pretty big so click here if you need to see it.
Not seen in the picture but useful: actions, properties, character, paragraph
STEP 1: THE FILE
Okay first of all, you’ll need your file. I recommend downloading µtorrent, then going to a torrent site (like rarbg.to) and searching for your episode or movie. ALWAYS choose 1080p and web dl if possible (web dl means logoless) Example: wynonna earp s01e01, then in your search results, look for one that has both 1080p and web dl in the title. 720p is also good.
You can also find twitters that post logoless episodes and movies, this is better if you don’t like using torrents or if you live in a country that gives you fines for torrenting (I’m lucky, Belgium doesn’t care). If you want a list of a bunch of twitters that share logoless episodes and movies, message me off anon so I can link you privately.
STEP 2: CAPPING
When you have your file, download potplayer (or kmplayer). Open the program and open the file you want to cap.
Search for the moment you want to gif. Tip: hover over the playline thing to see what scene is at what time. Normally it looks somthing like this:
Press ctrl + g when you have the moment you want This window opens:
Change your settings to mine ^^. I made a new folder in my Pictures folder where all my caps go bc it’s easier to go to. It’s up to you where you save all of them, but I suggest you pick one you can easily access. Click start.
Click escape and start your video. Pause again when you have what you wanted (this can be a whole scene or a moment, depends on what kind of gifset your making). Press ctrl+g again and click “stop”, then close.
Now go to the folder where you saved your caps. I always make another new folder inside that one, put all the captures in there (unless I’m doing a scene, then I’ll make 6-8 new folders and distribute all the captures in those folders. Note that with the 3mb limit you’ll be able to use about 60-120 captures per gif, sometimes more. You can always delete layers of your gif in case it goes over 3mb)
Tip: make all your screencaps before opening photoshop. If you’re making a general character/ship gifset, that can take a while, but it’ll save you time if you seperate the two actions.
After you have taken all your caps, open photoshop. You can download it on any photoshop tumblr like yeahps or itsphotoshop. I cannot give you the link to mine because it doesn’t exist anymore, but I got it from kickass (rip).
STEP 3: OPENING AND MAKING THE GIF IN PS
We have our caps and our ps open, but now we have to open those captures in photoshop. Do not use ‘open’, but Files > Scripts > Load multiple DICOM files
I know a lot of people choose ‘Load Files into Stack’ but Load Multiple DICOM files is SO much faster.
This window will open
Now you go to the folder where you saved all your caps, choose the file with the screencaps for 1 gif and open it.
It might take a little bit for everything to load, especially if there’s a lot of screencaps, so just wait.
When you have everything, click on “Create video timeline”. It might be called something different if you have another version of PS, but whatever it says here:
(I know I know, I make pretty arrows lmao)
Then click those 3 boxes on the left side
Next step is ‘make frames from layers’, after that click “flatten frames into layers”
STEP 4: CROPPING
Obviously our gif doesn’t have to be as big as it is in ps right now, so we’ll crop to make it smaller. For this, you need to know the dimensions Tumblr uses:
540px for 1 gif in a row
268px for 2 gifs next to each other
177px - 178px - 177px for 3 gifs in a row (this is something annoying à la tumblr, and because it’s hard to predict which gifs you’ll put in the middle when cropping, I make them all 178px in width and then crop the ones I won’t use in the middle to be 177px after)
You can choose to use the old dimensions which are 500px, 245px and 160px.
These are the widths, you can choose the heights yourself. For this gif I’ll be cropping 268 x 150
This is the cropping tool
click it and you’ll see this on the topbar of your screen. Type in your dimensions
Then crop as you wish. This is my result.
STEP 5: CHANGING YOUR IMAGE SIZE + SHARPENING
The gif is way too big at this moment, so go to image > image size, this window opens:
Click “okay” and your gif will be a lot smaller. Use ctrl + “+” to make it bigger
This is what our photoshop looks like right now
These steps look like A LOT of work but as soon as you’re used to the steps, it’ll take you about a minute to do all of this.
Next is sharpening. I use a sharpening action made by ilanawexler but it’s pretty complicated, so I do not recommend it if you’re a beginner. I will however explain it fully here. Note: I had to do something different than the directions the blogger gave, so what I get might not work for others and you might have a different outcome
Select all your frames (from 1 -)
then click “convert to videotimeline” (it’s possible it’s called differently in your ps)
when you did that, add two layers on top of your other layers
Select all your frames (frame 1 to layer 2), right click and click “convert to smart object”
Then, go to your actions. If you just downloaded your action, you have to add it.
When that’s done, open the bobbiesdraper sharpen and click “action 2″. Thn click the play icon
It’ll a LOT of stuff, but just let it be.
Warning: if you changed anything to the frames in the timeline section, this won’t work. I noticed that if I delete frames or change the delay, ... before sharpening, it won’t work.
If it worked, you now have this
I’m not sure if it’s normal, but I now have twice the frames I had before, but only the SECOND amount is sharpened. So I delete frame 1-35 now in the timeline section.
This is my gif after sharpening (you can use this to practice coloring or to follow along with my coloring tutorial below)
this psd automatically sets the delay for your gif to 0,05, I always change it to 0,06 (sometimes 0,07). Just select all your frames, then click on the 0,05, ‘other’ and choose whatever you like. The max I would go is 0,08 (0,07-0,08 is the speed the episodes go btw when you watch them)
STEP 6: COLORING
Now the fun part!! You can either choose to use a psd (here are my psds) or you can color it yourself.
For this tutorial, I’ll be doing a basic coloring. (that means: steps I always use to start my colorings).
We start with curves. For this gif, these are the settings: (this is a pretty bright gif so for darker scenes you’ll have to use more, but don’t start with too much, build it up)
then some levels to give the gif more depth
I usually enter 10 for the black (unless it’s a very dark gif) and I’ll move the arrow of the white to where the little line starts.
Some brightness
Some black selective color (I always enter 10, unless it’s a dark gif)
Color balance (also usually start with this, unless it’s a blue gif, then I’ll move the arrows to red, magenta and yellow). If the gif is VERY yellow, I’ll add more in cyan and blue.
Then I’ll add a vibrance layer, +100 vibrance.
This is what I have now (with a pretty watermark). These are the layers I will always start with.
You can stop here, but I like to add some more to my gif so I’m continueing
I like adding more blues so I’ll add a selective color layer: (you can also decrease magentas is the “blue” ones to make the blues more cyan)
For blondes, I like making their hair stand out more so I’ll add a selective color layer for the yellows:
Of course, there’s a lot of yellow in the skintone so chances are the skin will look very yellow now, I add a color balance layer and change the highlights. (In darker gifs you might need to change the midtones instead)
Some magentas to make the lips stand out
and some contrast
That’s all for coloring. This is what my gif looks like right now:
STEP 7: SUBTITLES
If you want to add text, click this icon
these are the settings for my text
Then we’ll add some other adjustments to make the text more visible:
click on the fx icon
then click ‘stroke’
click okay, and click on the FX icon again, then click “drop shadow”
when you added all your adjustments, duplicate the textlayer and delete the first one (if not, your adjustments will only show on 1 layer instead of the whole gif)
If your text isn’t in the middle of your gif. Click your text layer, then click this icon
then in your topbar, adjust with these tools
this is what the text looks like now:
here is the psd for the text
STEP 8: SAVING
Of course, you have to save your gifs. Go to File > Save for web and this window will open
Make sure your settings look like these:
Make sure this number isn’t above 3 mb
That’s all!!! If you have any questions, you can always come ask me. I’m sorry if this wasn’t clear, but I hope it made atleast a bit sense.