I always wanted to make a giffing + colouring tutorial.
So, Welcome to my long and somewhat helpful guide that no one asked for <3
For starters, i use VaporSynth (links for installation compiled by @soonhoonsol <hi bestie3 which has a guide ). Photoshop 2021 version for making the gif and colouring it . Install PS from this site. it’s free and cracked ver ;)
STEP 1 : the video for giffing
i don’t need .ts files cause my gifs can be made with normal .mp4 file which i either download from a 4k downloader or screen record on my laptop (windows key + alt + R), which is actually pretty convenient since it allows you to record even 4K resolution videos with perfect quality. the only downside it that, it take a lot more space than a normal downloaded video. but you can always delete the videos after you’re done giffing.
STEP 2: using VS to make & sharpen your gif
(i will be giffing and colouring Dongmyeong from ONEWE since their mv's are very monotonous but not fully black and white. We need to have some colours present in the video/gif so that we have some colours to manipulate in the first place.)
After you decide what part you want to gif, note down the timestamps. After installing and setting up VS, you’ll have a .bat file on which you have to drag your .ts or .mp4 file which will open a timestamp window which looks like this :
And will open a resizing tab in your default search engine after you press enter after entering the timestamp and gif duration. Use settings: qtgmc 60p cause it saves it at a better quality and has 60 frames per second so it’s smoother and small gif size.
Simultaneously, a vapousynth script will open. Remove whatever there is from line #17 to #26. paste what you copied from the resizer on line #17. Enter your sharpening settings on line #24 and your denoise settings on line #22. After entering your numbers, remove the # before cache size command so it doesn’t hang your laptop. Mine does when I don’t do that. Save that setting, file > save script. Then you won’t have to remove it everytime you make a gif. Your final script before encoding should look like this (refer to the script in the 3rd photo of the collage):
after that, follow these steps:
i personally like to use PNG SEQUENCE for my gifs cause one, it’s compatible; two, the quality of the gif turns out good. For me, normal gif output is pretty dithered which i don’t like.
you can close the script after you see green bar in encode window that says '100%. video has finished encoding'
STEP 3: accessing your output png frames / gif
after you close all the vs .html windows, you’ll find your gif/png fames under your VaporSynth folder that you have extracted under VapourSynth64Portable(200722)> gifs>output. i have separate folder where i cut and paste these frames so that they’re easily accessible later.
imp!!!(this may only be my problem): either rename or change the location of the output PNGs before you start with a new one. if not, they will get replaced with the new one since vs automatic name system is 'output00001' for each new batch of encode. Same goes if you decide to encode to gif cause it will be saved as 'output' and be replaced by new one.
after you're done with accessing your output PNGs, close all the windows and repeat the same for a new set of PNGs for another gif.
STEP 4: loading your frames into Photoshop
if you have made an output gif, then you can just open it. File > Open and select all from where you saved it and it’ll load in frames.
after you’ve opened your PS, make sure your Timeline mode is on (window > timeline) then go to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack. click Browse and it’ll open your file manager; select where you’ve pasted your output frames. select them all and press enter, let them load and press okay.
After PS is done loading your frames, it’ll look something like this. After that click create frame animation. It’s show only one frame so you have to click this ≡ symbol on the top right of the timeline. Then click Create Frames from layers and it’ll make all frames. Then click ≡ again and click “reverse frames” because ps loads frames in reverse so you have to un-reverse it.
then click bottom left Switch to Video Timeline.
Then select all your layers from the side panel and convert it into a smart object so that you can sharpen it and add other filters.
STEP 5: Colouring. Turning dull/monotone gifs into natural colour (not total b&w gifs)
again, we need to have some colour in the gif that we can manipulate. this tutorial won’t be helpful for b&w gifs.
without colouring you can see some faint reds and blues there.
Here’s the colouring tutorial !
A TIP : If you want to dull out a certain colour, use the opposite colour of it. For example of red you can use green/cyan. For blue you can use orange.
A TIP: If you want to add more colour to the skin, you can use gradient map (taught by @scoupsy <33) esp for pale skin. here is her awesome tutorial !
A TIP: direct output gif from vs will be faster than a png sequence created gif. png sequence loads in 0.02 sec delay between each frame but that you can change by selecting all frames in timeline and right clicking them and change it to “no delay”
idk why there are bigass pixels on the monotonous gifs on mobile, ignore that pls
i read tags on my cc game and saw many of you wondered how i coloured this, so:
adjustments layers used for this:
Brightness / Contrast
Vibrance / Saturation
Colour Balance
Photo Filter (Sepia)
Selective Colour 1 (red, blue, magenta, white, neutrals, blacks)
Selective Colour 2 ( red, yellow, green)
Curves
i hope this tutorial was little helpful ! for any problem, you can always reach out to me <3 i tried my best with all the things i know about giffing.
