sabrinarpt's little gif-making tutorial for those who have asked <3 placed under a read more to keep from cluttering dashboards.
step one: read all of lexiresources' tutorial. click here. download her action. that's what i did, and it's what you need to do if you want to make gifs as quickly as i do, too. please note that lexi uses a mac in her tutorial, but i have a windows pc and cannot help you if you have a mac. my tutorial will be of no use to you if you have a mac because i don't know how those computers work.
done? great, continue on to...
step two: download microsoft clipchamp. it's free! it doesn't require a subscription of any kind. when you open clipchamp, you'll meet this screen:
you can ignore basically all of it. click on 'create a new video' - it sounds daunting but it isn't. clicking on that, this is what you'll see then:
step three: you will want to click on 'import media' once you get here. you should already have your videos downloaded; i use 4k video downloader+, but you can use t*rrents for movies or tv shows. my specialty and what i prefer to work on are tiktoks or interviews from youtube, both of which you can download directly from 4kvd.
once you add your media, it will look like this:
completely random video btw. so, you're going to add that media to the timeline:
by default, it's going to show you the whole video. this video is 1 minute and 55 seconds long, but that's way too long. that brings us to...
step four: shorten the video. click on the very edge on either side of the video, and your mouse cursor will turn into a directional arrow pointing left and right. i like to shorten videos to about 30 seconds. i find this to be the easiest once i get into photoshop; it's not too long, and makes shortening the clips into gifs a lot simpler. once you shorten your video in clipchamp, it'll look something like this:
if you're happy with how it looks, click the 'export' button in the top right corner. then you can move on to photoshop. if you're not happy, stick around!
when i make gifs, i prefer for the person's face to take up as much of the gif as possible because they're going to be a lot smaller in gif form. so for me, the above image of meryl streep isn't zoomed in enough. clipchamp allows you to drag from any one of the corners and zoom in, like so:
so i'm going to zoom in until i like how meryl is framed:
i like the subject to be in the center as well. i just think this looks better in gifs, but you do what you want when you're making your own.
clipchamp also allows you to split videos into sections. unsplit:
split:
you do this by moving the white bar to any section on the timeline, then hitting the scissors right above the timeline. this allows you to clip videos into sections of only what you want to gif. so for this video, if i only wanted to gif meryl streep, i would split the video into sections of just her and remove the rest. also, if you split something and delete it, make sure to attach the video pieces back together. don't leave it looking like this when you export:
that will result in a section of black during your video. simply click on the clip to the right and drag it toward the clip on the left until they're touching. clip and drag as much as you want until you either have 30 seconds of footage or until there's no more footage left, then click 'export' in the top right corner.
now for the fun stuff: we can finally open photoshop!
step five: open photoshop. i'm using the 2017 version. i can't help you with any other version, but i imagine they all mostly work the same. this is what it looks like for me (don't make fun of the fact that i have the ui set to 200%, my eyesight is really bad lmao):
as you can see, lexi's atn is already loaded in. now i'm going to give you the step-by-step process. you MUST go in this order if you want to make gifs the way i do. deviating from the order is fine, but i can't guarantee success.
file > import > video frames to layers
pick your mp4 clip from clipchamp. it will look like this once you have chosen the one you want:
'make frame animation' MUST be checked. it should be checked by default, but double check just to be sure. after that, the little what arrows underneath the line are what you will use to choose the frames you want to make gifs of. it'll look like this:
click ok and this is what you will see:
it looks a lot scarier than it is, i promise.
don't touch anything, just click 'lexi's big bad gif action' and hit the triangle button below. this takes A LOT of the work out of making gifs
an option will pop up - hit close or the escape button; do not hit ok
it should look like this afterward:
see how layer 1 is already selected? leave it be; scroll up to the last layer, hold down the shift button, and click on it:
they should all be selected. after that, right click on any of the layers and then select 'convert to smart object'
you will then be left with only one layer:
at this point, click on the first smart sharpen option and press the triangle button:
hit enter or click okay TWICE. it should come up twice, if not, press control + z to start over and do it again. once you're done sharpening, it should look like this:
next, you're going to want to resize your gif. i use 268 by 151 as i personally like that size and think it looks good in tumblr posts, but you can do whatever size you like
click on image > image size
put in any dimensions you fancy
you can also turn this mode into an action, but let's save that for another time. resizing it will make it appear a lot smaller in ps:
step six: it's time to finally export that lovely gif we just made. you will want to save for web (legacy):
you'll then be met with this:
make sure that 'looping options' is set to FOREVER. otherwise, the gif won't loop like it's supposed to. if you've done everything correctly, you should have a gif...
and there you have it! from start to finish, making each individual gif takes about a minute. usually less than that, honestly. it's the repetition of pressing the buttons that gets tiring, and clipping the videos isn't always easy, but once you get the hang of it? it's not too hard at all.
i hope this tutorial was mostly easy to follow and if you have any questions about how i do things or if you need help at all, please don't hesitate to reach out and ask!
