#res: colour tutorial

[richardmaddan]

Over the past decade, I have gone through a lot of ups and downs with the way I create my gifs but just recently, with the help of multiple tutorials, I have found a way to make gifs that I am proud to post. So to celebrate my birthday I have decided to share how I make my gifs with you all ^-^. enjoy. p.s. this tutorial is very image-heavy as I cover everything.

In this tutorial, I will show you how I get this...

to this

BEFORE we start you will need

Photoshop

I use CC but as long as you have timeline you should be fine.

download link (I haven’t used this link so I’m not 100% sure it works)

Handbrake

This is something I discovered very recently and it makes gif making so much easier, imo

It’s free software that will convert mkv to mp4.

download link

Some Photoshop knowledge and pacience, not everything works out the first time.

Step 1: Finding a clip and using Handbrake

The first thing we need to do is find the scene we want to gif. Open the video in whatever software that you use to watch your movies/tv series, I’m currently using GOM Player. Once you find the scene you want to gif make a note of the start time of the clip and the end time of the clip. for example, my clip starts at 00:51:21 and ends at 00:51:26 (if you are over its fine we’ll edit that later)

Now open Handbreak. Open a single video file. Click on Chapters and change it to Seconds. Then enter the times that you took note of earlier. Name the video where it says Save As at the bottom left and click Browse to select the file you want it to be saved. here are my final settings. Click Start Encode.

Step 2: Opening File in Photoshop

Open your clip in Photoshop; File -> Open. Now we can edit the clip if it is too long. Move the little blue arrow to where you want to cut the clip, click on the scissors to cut. To delete the clips, highlight the layers and delete them. 

Step 3: Cropping

To crop your gif select the crop icon. I’m using a ratio of 268 - 180. Resize the image. ctrl + alt + i (image). *if a message comes up saying something about converting the image click convert*

Step 4: Sharpening

Filter -> Sharpen -> Smart Sharpen. here are my settings. Before I would leave it just like that but now I like to add a blur to my gifs. Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur (my settings). Don’t worry I know it looks super blurry. Now we are going to double click on the double line double arrow icon next to Gaussian Blur in our layers. change the opacity to 20%. (you can play around with the opacity to your liking)

Step 5: Colouring

This is the step that takes the longest. Every show/movie is different, some are dull, some have a yellow filter, and others have blue. No show is the same, unfortunately. 

Now there are a million colouring tutorials out there but I’ll give you a little run down on how I coloured this clip.

The first thing we are going to do is brighten our gif using curves. Using the White Eyedropper select the whitest part of the gif. Now do the same with the Black Eyedropper selecting the black of the gif.

Now let's add some levels and a little brightness. You can always come back and play around with the settings later if it is too bright.

The Witcher is one of those shows that are quite dull so we need to add some colour with Selective Colour.

For me, this is the most time-consuming park in gif making. Play around with the colours. here are the settings I used, red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta. Select a new Selective Colour layer for the Whites and Neutrals. Lastly, to make the gif look more HD I’m going to add another Selective Colour layer for Black with these settings. even after making this tutorial I’m not 100% happy with this colouring.

Add some Vibrance and lower the opacity to 60%. Add another black Selective Colour layer with these settings and lower the opacity until the blacks of your gif are completely black. here is the final psd.

Step 6: Saving

To save. ctrl+alt+shift+s. A window will pop up. here are my settings.

Step 7: Gif Speed

My gifs save at a very fast speed so to change that I open my gif once I have saved it. Select all the frames by selecting the four-line icon above the timeline. Click Select all Frames and change the speed to your liking. I’m going to go with 0.06. Save your gif again,  ctrl+alt+shift+s.

You are done and ready to upload your gif.

If you have any questions please drop me an ask I would love to help you out :)

[richardmaddan]

We all know that colouring 911 Lone Star is a huge mission and since I have decided to stop making gifs on this site, for reasons, I thought it would be nice to share how I coloured this show. 

**This is a colouring tutorial. I will not be showing you how I make my gifs, you can find that tutorial here. Now let's get to it.

You will need;

Photoshop

Basic knowledge of Photoshop

Patience

Step 1: Curves

Once you have cropped, resized and sharpened your gif we can start with the fun part...

Select curves from your Adjustments table. Select the White eyedropper and click on the whitest part of your gif, then select the black eyedropper and click in the most black part of your gif. I know it doesn’t look like much in this gif but some gifs have a big difference.

Step 2: Levels and Brightness

This part I usually just play around with it. Since this scene is pretty bright I’ll only add a little more brightness and some levels. here are my settings for levels and brightness.

Step 3: Vibrance

The one thing that this show is missing is bright colours! Why is everything so dull and grey?!? So let's add some Vibrance and my some I mean A LOT. Vibrance: 100% Saturation: -10% Opacity: 80% (You don’t have to lower the saturation or opacity, I do cause I add more colour in later.)

Now doesn’t that look a little better? You can see the green in the trees and TK shirt has more pink but... still looks dull.

Step 4: Selective Colouring

This is that part where you will have to play around for a bit. The FIRST thing I can see is that their skin has no colour so lets add some red. Then I’ll play around with the yellow and green. If needed play around with the other colours.  I never use to touch the White but lately, I’ve noticed that it makes a difference with this show sometimes. You can see that the White part of the gifs looks sort of blue and magenta so let’s make it more white.

Step 5: Add more Brightness.

This step is optional. I just added +10, nothing much.

Step 6: Selective Colour (Black)

This is something that I saw in a colouring tutorial a few months ago and I find it makes my gifs look just that little more HD. Create a new Selective Colour layer and put the Black Black to +30 and drop the Opacity to about 40% or until the black is BLACK in your gif.

add a little brightness or levels if you think it’s a little bit too dark but I’m happy with how it looks.

We are done! YAY! Indoor scenes are a little bit harder, especially if they are dark scenes or have that orange overlay. ugh! Now go and make some gorgeous gifs.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask ^-^