So I've been making a lot of graphics for Winterlocked recently and, rather than clog up my character blogs, I decided to make a quick side blog. Links to the main roleplay and my characters below.
How To Optimize & Color Your Gifs || Another Guide That Hopefully Doesn't Suck
Now that you've made your gif, it probably sucks. If you're anything like me in your video choice, its probably massive, dull and unuploadable [which is totally a word and you can't tell me otherwise. Now I shall teach you my technique to optimizing and coloring.
Step 1:
Open up Photoshop CS6 [portable]. That might take a bit the first time. Open up your gif the same way you open any file. It should show up like this:
Step 2:
Resize your gif. Go to image>image size. A box should pop up like this:
My personal preference is to have "Constrain Proportions" checked and set the width to 300 pixels. Its a nice size for a gif and keeps the file size fairly good. Then hit okay.
Step 3:
Check the file size. Now, I'm sure there are easier ways to do this but this is the way I know. Go to file>save for web... The same box from when we saved earlier should pop up. Look at the bottom left corner and see the file size:
Tumblr usually won't upload anything bigger than a MB. Because its dumb like that. Now go ahead and hit cancel. That just gives us an idea of how much we need to size it down.
Step 4:
Now to trim your gif. Down in the animation toolbar, go to either the first frames or last frames [whichever you deem most unimportant] and trim off about ten frames by selecting them and hitting the trash can button.
Now check your file size again. If its under a MB and is now listed as KB, then you're fine. If not, delete a couple frames at a time, checking inbetween until you reach the proper size.
Step 5:
Timing. Right now, your gif is probably way too fast. What you need to do is select all the frames and, while still holding shift, click on the little number with an arrow next to it on one of the frames. A menu will pop up. Select other and enter .05
That setting is usually fine for me but you can mess with it and find what's right for you. You can check what it looks like in the same way you previewed it before [on the save for web screen, its more accurate].
Your gif should now look something like this:
Step 6:
COLORING! My personal favorite part. Now there are several ways to approach this. You can use a premade PSD [a guide on how to do that here] or you can do it yourself. If you're doing it yourself, you'll use this toolbar:
You can use any combination of these [mess around a bit, find what you like]. I usually use the "brightness/contrast" and "vibrance/saturation" the most. Once I've fiddled around with that [make sure you have the first frame and top layer selected] I come up with something like so:
Which is prettier and brighter. Now you're done with the basics!
How To Make Gifs || An Attempt at a Guide Even Though I've Never Made One Before
This is the way I make gifs, though there are a ton of different techniques. Also, a lot of this is personal preference. You can mess around to find the settings you really like.
What you'll need:
Photoshop CS5 [x]-non torrent [x]-torrent
KM Player [x]
[optional] Photoshop CS6 {unfortunately I only have a link for the portable version, hence why I use CS5 for the actual gif creation} [x]
Quick Note: As far as I know, those links work. However, it has been a while since I used them so if they don't work just tell me and I'll fix them.
Making The Gif:
Step 1:
Find the video that you want to get your gif from. Preferably an HQ vid because that will produce the highest quality gif. I'm using this video.
Step 2:
Download it-preferably in mp4 format-and open it up in KM Player. Simply open up the player, click the button on the top left, open file, select your file, tada.
Step 3:
Find the part of the video that you want to gif. Once there, pause it and hit ctrl+g. A little box will pop up that looks something like this:
Once you have that up, you'll want to have the settings looking like I have it. Or you can set the "frames to extract" to 2 or 3. This allows you to have gifs that span a longer time in the video, but the quality is a little lower. I would say no higher than 3, in any case.
You can set "extract to" a specific folder if you'd like, or simply put it in the default folder. Since you'll delete the frames later anyway, it doesn't really matter.
Step 4:
Once ready, hit the start button. Then, click onto the player itself and hit play. Pause it once you have played the length of video that you want to gif [though sometimes it won't reach the whole length, in which case you need to split it up into several gifs]. Then hit stop on the frame extraction box. Now you're done with KM Player for now and you can close it. [or keep it open if you're going to make more gifs later.
Step 5:
Now, open up Photoshop CS5. Make sure that you have gone into window and have animation selected. A little thingy at the bottom should be visible like such:
Now open up the file that contains the frames you just captured [the location you set "extract to" to]. There may be some extra frames from bits of the video before and after what you wanted. Go ahead and delete those. Now drag the first file-and only the first file-onto photoshop. It should automatically open up like such:
Now select the rest of your frames from your file and drop them onto that. There should be an X in the middle of it like:
Now hold enter. The X should flash as it adds all the files. Hold enter until the X stops flashing and all the files are added as layers:
Step 6:
There is a little button on the top right of the animation tool bar that looks like this:
Click on it and select "Make Frames From Layers". Your animation toolbar should look something like:
For some reason that I can only assume is the magic trolls that live in photoshop, sometimes the frames get a little messed up such as about 20 frames that belong at the end are for some reason stuck at the front. To test this, press the play button to see a preview of your gif:
If it plays smoothly, then you're probably fine. If not, simply grab the first few frames before the random jump [wow i suck at explanations] by simply holding down shift and selecting the first and last frames. Click and drag and drop them at the end of your gif.
Step 5:
Now to save your gif. Go to file>Save For Web&Devices It may take a while so just click off of photoshop for a minute or two. Once this pops up, you can click back onto it:
You can test it out by hitting the same play button you hit before, which is now located at the bottom right. Its probably a bit jerky and/or super fast. Which is coming up next. Now hit save and you have made a gif! Yay! The problem being is that it is [probably] massive, too fast, and badly colored. I'll go over how to fix that in the next post because this one is already painfully long. If you have any issues, please tell me.
Eye magic allows the user to transform into an animal-and only that animal-at will. However, rather than being considered a blessing, it is often considered a curse as the user takes on traits of that animal. For example, someone with cateye magic may play with string, lick themselves clean, and be prone to being very cat-like. Also, unless they possess speak magic of the same kind, they are not able to communicate with animals.
titsay
ellievsbear
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
snowghoul
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
stormborns
gracieabrams