real talk photoshop can be an incredibly daunting program but here are some quick resources that seriously helped me out when I was getting started.
(working) photoshop downloads
basics and fundamentals from adobe
completeresources tutorial page
dear-indies tutorial tag
i highly recommend looking up youtube videos for specific things if youāre more of a visual learner and if ps just isnāt your jam then photoscape is my recommendation! (itās got a ton of handy things like a batch editor and collage maker for those nice icons and moodboards while maintaining a pretty friendly interfaceš)
so a lot of people really like my aesthetics and itās really easy to make so i thought i might as well show people how i do mine. photoshop isnāt required.
1. find some pictures to fit the feel youāre going for. pinterest is a great place to look and you can save them to find them again later. itās good to have a balance of scenery / objects / people / clothes / words so itās not too heavy on just one (unless thatās what youāre trying to capture)
2. put them in a collage. you could probably use a psd in photoshop, but i just use befunky since itās a bit easier for me to maneuver. it doesnāt really matter what kinda grid you choose, but i either use a 2x4 or a 3x3 most times. so put in all your pictures and get them arranged (my generic pattern is to do faceless pics on the top and bottom opposite corners and then two words pictures on the inner two opposite corners and then fill the rest with whatever)
like i said in 1, it really helps to have a mix of pictures of different subjects so it doesnāt look too busy and a similar color scheme also helps it mesh (but if they donāt exactly, thatās why you edit.) you can adjust the border by going to where it says spacing and the automatic size for pics is 3988x3988 which is probably bigger than youāll ever need so just go ahead and shrink that down as much as you need. tumblr canāt open files that big anyway. pngs preserve more quality without the fuzzy effect you sometimes see on mobile images
3. edit (optional) this helps make it look real snazzy and you can either plop that sucker in photoshop and slap a nice psd on it or you can use a website like befunky or pixlr to adjust the saturation and brightness and colors and filters and all that stuff.
donāt whitewash though! iām not an expert on coloring to avoid that but thatās what tutorials are for so here are a few i found. x xĀ also check out the poc friendly psd tag.Ā
anyway, i only made slight alterations to the saturation and brightness and such in photoshop which can easily be done in the websites i mentioned earlier and now it looks a bit more dramatic and matchy
clearly you can make more drastic changes when you edit but sometimes simple works too.
anyway if you have any more questions or suggestions you can hit up my ask or my edit/ooc blog @sofiaherzen
Hey there kiddos, Iāve had a couple people ask me how I get my gif packs lined up with the gifs side by side/how I load them them into pages/how I managed to load all my gifs without screaming because there are way too damn many on one post to load properly. So hereās a nice easy guide on how to load your gifs quickly and transfer them to a sidepage where they are loaded side by side. Below the cut is a bit of a picture heavy tutorial but I assure you itās easy, even if you donāt know a thing about HTML.
READ THE UPDATED TUTORIAL HERE
STEP ONE:Ā
Load all of your gifs into a post as you usually would (I keep a few packs in my drafts when theyāre in progress). I usually wait until I have around 50 gifs, then I get ready to move them. Today weāll be working with my Michael B. Jordan pack. MAKE SURE YOU SAVE THE DRAFT
STEP TWO:
Hit the gear button on the top of your page and change the Text Editor from Rich Text to Markdown
Next, change the editor from Markdown to HTML (this step is necessary because it removes the <image> tags that made the images appear in a line. removing this allows the gifs to load side by side)
STEP THREE:
Now youāre going to copy/paste your HTML. Make sure to only copy the code for the images, not any text or the read more (I use a read more to keep my drafts neat and so that itās easier to work with).
STEP FOUR:Ā
Now you can create your new page. You can do so by going to Customize and then clickingĀ āAdd a pageā (I have a separate blog for this @fakegifs because I make like... a lot of packs and this would have clogged up my rph)
STEP FIVE:
Now the moment weāve all been waiting for! Click the HTML button (this is very important! If you accidentally paste your code into the regular text editor, only the urls will show up on the page instead of the images) and paste your code into the box below.
To make sure youāve done it correctly, click the HTML button again and the images should appear.
Now that everything looks okay, add a url and hit save. (I usually go with the initials of the FC and then the acronym of the show or movie, so eventually this will be found at /mbj/tam when the pack is complete)
ALL DONE!
Now you just go to the page that you made and add /mobile to the end of the url, this will load the page as if you were on mobile, this removes all the other code on your blog and allows the gifs to be loaded more quickly and downloaded easier as well.
9/18/18 EDIT:Ā
Hey there! So I didnāt like how plain sidepages forced people to go to /mobile so instead Iāve started making the pages on custom pages rather than the regular sidepages. You do this by going to the drop down menu and selecting Custom Layout instead of Standard Layout.
After that I added some basic HTML that allowed me to change the size and font of the title, but thatās it because the point of the page is to allow the gifs to load quickly and bogging it down with fancy HTML to make it pretty defeats that purpose (to me, at least). Itās literally the shortest most useless code ever lmao but itās here if you want it.
OTHER TIPS:Ā
UPLOADING WITHOUT TAKING FIVE YEARS: So I usually upload my gifs as I make them, not when Iām done with the pack. I will usually make about five or ten gifs, then open up my drafts, save them in a post, and go make more gifs. I keep adding to the post until I have around 50 gifs or have finished an episode/clip/etc. before I move them to the page. By doing so, I keep the page code light so it doesnāt constantly have to load hundreds of gifs every time I add to the post. This also ensures that I donāt accidentally skip any gifs or have the gifs load out of order (which is a pet peeve of mine but not necessarily a necessity).
HOW TO MAKE GIFS SAVE SIDE BY SIDE IN A POST: If you just want to make your gifs load side by side without having to make a side page, then just complete steps One and Two. After changing your editor to Markdown, change it back to Rich Text. From here, you can add your little blurb above the gifs and add in a Read More.Ā
- basic formatting knowledge (hereās a tutorial with shortcuts)
-Ā this website
- a lil bit of patience
if you find this helpful consider buying me a coffee!āØā
just start off with the very basics. Or however you write your replies. I donāt know your life. This is just an example post.
now you format it! add icons, bold/italicize words, add links, headers, etc. I guarantee it will be easier to do this now than in HTML (which will be next).
spicy, right? Now for the HTML bit. If you donāt know how to get to that, no worries, itās right here!
sweet. now once you are in HTML format itās going to look like this which unless you know code (which i dont lmao) is going to look like a fucking mess. Fear not! just locate the part you want to color in (and if itās a lot of text try ctrl+f) and copy it. Then you take it to THIS SITE
pick the colors you want here
and then hit the RUN button to make it work.
then you simply COPY the bottom part, and PASTE from where the original text was.
Hit preview to make sure it worked
And boom, you got some fancy colored text with only basic knowledge of code!
Under the cut is a tutorial on how to save instagram, keek, and vine videos to your computer without having to use any outside programs.
Iām going to be using google chrome throughout the tutorial just because thatās the browser I already use and can easily explain. For safari, firefox, etc. there will probably only be a few minor differences. If the screencaps are too blurry in the post, Iāve linked more HQ versions of them in the punctuation before the pictures :)
1) Instagram
First, itās important to remember that you want to be using the permalink, or the exact link, for saving videos. Donāt try to do it straight from their instagram profile or itās not going to work correctly.
Iāll be using thisĀ instavideo for my example.
Right click basically anywhere on the page except for the video
This is the golden ticket youāre looking for:
After youāve clicked that, you should get a page that looks like this:
Youāre that much closer. What I find easiest to do next is to search forĀ ā.mp4ā³ using command + f on the keyboard.
Both of those are working links to the video. So youāll want to highlight the link and go to it. Itāll bring you to the video thatās separate from instagram and if you right click on the video, youāll notice that the save video as option is there. Once you click that, youāre all set to save it!
2) Keek
Keek is a little different than Instagram when it comes to saving videos, but not by too much. Again, you donāt want to do this from their profile, but from the exact page where the video is located.
Iāll be using this video for my example.
Youāll be doing the same thing as you did with instagram, right click anywhere except on the video and clickĀ āView Page Sourceā
This page will look a lot more hectic than instagramās, but itās not a problem. Again youāll search but instead of puttingĀ ā.mp4ā³ youāll be searching forĀ āmp4ā³.
Now hereās where it gets a little tricky.Ā
Despite all that mumbo jumbo, all you need is to follow the link that appears before where it says data-video-type=āmp4ā³ and it will take you to the video separate from Keekās website. Then just like with instagram, youāll right click the video and the save video as option will be there.
3) Vine
Not much different than the other two.Ā
Iāll be using this vine as my example.
Go to the video itself, right click and select view page source. Once there, youāll search forĀ ā.mp4ā³Ā
For vine, itās pretty easy. Itās always going to be the second .mp4 on the page. The first one will take you to a photo which isnāt much use.Ā
So highlight and follow that second link, itāll take you to the video away from the vine website and youāll be able to right click and save the video as.
If you found this tutorial helpful please like and/or reblog. If you have any questions, feel free to message me and Iāll try to help as much as I can. Thank you!
HOW TO CREATE MULTIPLE TUMBLR ACCOUNTS WITH ONE EMAIL
One of the most tiresome parts of roleplaying (for me, anyways) is making new character accounts. Iāve gone with manually creating them on Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc. with names like āyobiscuitdogā and 10-minute emails, which are simpler and take less time but areĀ veryĀ hard to remember. I usually end up copy/pasting them into a drafts of my main Tumblr to keep track of them all! But guess what: thereĀ is a way around making a new email for each new Tumblr account. In fact, you only need one email! To be more specific, you only need oneĀ Gmail.Ā This is super easy, and super useful! If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Links to screenshots areĀ bolded.
Create a Gmail account.
Already have a Gmail account you want to use? Awesome! Feel free to skip this step.Donāt have a Gmail? Just as awesome! Head over to Gmail and create one, easy peasy!Ā Sometimes, it does ask you to give your phone number to send a verification code to after you submit the form. It doesnāt always ask you for your phone number, though, and oftentimes, it shows up for awhile, and then goes away. You can get the verification code immediately and start going from there, or you can wait awhile and keep checking back to see if itās working - the choice is yours!
Create an account on Tumblr.
For the sake of this tutorial, I created two accounts: one with the Gmail I created for character accounts, and one with the same Gmail, to show you that it works! Sign up for a Tumblr account using your email, like this. Go check your email and look for the email from Tumblr support (it should show up under the Social tab), click the verification link, and set up the account. This should be easy peasy. I hope you know how to register for Tumblr by now if youāre reading this! If not, it is easy peasy lemon squeezy and very self-explanatory. But if you have questions, donāt hesitate to ask! See, this is the Tumblr dashboard of redandblueguy after itās all set up.Ā
Sign up for aĀ second account on Tumblr - using the same email.
Like I said, you can use the same email. But that sounds weird, right? That doesnāt sound possible! Hereās the trick: letās say the email you used is [email protected]. Now you want to make a second blog with the same email, but you do have to makeĀ some modifications. So, you add a plus sign (+) after the username, and then add an identifier that makes it easy to remember which account is for which. So if my second blog is a Tumblr for a character named Myriam, I would probably use [email protected], so I remember that the account is Myriamās! When youāre signing up, it should look like this.
Verify the Tumblr blog - with the same email!
The verification email will be sent to the same email you used for the first account! If Iām continuing my previous example, the email would go to [email protected], like this. When I clicked on the email, it showed up like this, with the strange rectangle with three dots inside of it! Just click on that little button and you should get to this.
And enjoy!
Here is the dashboard of the new Tumblr account I just made! Voila! See, itās that easy. I hope this was helpful, and I know this is going to save my life, and I hope it saves yours! Have a great day!