#I suggest downloading it or screenrecord it for yourself

[jacularmetteld]

*** A Listening Party 12

[joeydaccord]

hey! hope you're well! i was wondering if you'd be able to give me some tips on sharpening/coloring gifs? i've just started but my quality appears to be a mess right now lol

hi! i’m always happy to answer gif questions, even though i feel like i never know what i’m doing either. i’ll put it under the cut! if i’m not super clear about anything please send me another ask!

1. quality

quite honestly, the most important factor to have clear gifs is to start with good footage. this means 720p at a minimum, and 1080p preferably. anything lower can’t really be salvaged too much, so there’s a level of messiness that has to be expected when working with footage under 720. if you choose to make gifs with lq footage, try making it in smaller dimensions, so 268x268 or smaller would be my go to. 

to download youtube videos i use 4k video downloader.

for gifs from game footage im either making it from a screenrecording of a 6600kbps stream or from a downloaded hq game. 

2. sharpening

first, once you’ve loaded your footage in however you want, crop and resize to the size you want. for one gif across on tumblr resize to 540, for two across resize to 268. the height will change depending on the ratio you cropped the footage to. 

when i was first starting out i used one specific gif sharpening action, and i’ve continued to use it for years when i’m feeling lazy. now that i use multiple methods to make gifs, both frames and timeline, import video and screen caps, i don’t always use that action. i also have multiple sharpening actions downloaded that i sometimes use which i’ll link. there are even actions that will pretty much create the entire gif for you up until coloring, like this one. these can churn out gifs quickly and efficiently. i don’t really use these but i find they’re helpful to learn about the different ways people make their gifs.

1 (sharpening action), 2 (full gif creation plus a great explanation, but some of it is outdated due to tumblr and/or photoshop updates), 3 (sharpening action), 4 (two different sharpening actions), and there’s ton more out there. 

my most common method i use now for sharpening is simply applying a smart sharpen filter to my smart object that i created from the frames. these are my settings, pretty much everyone uses them. sometimes i bump the radius up to 0.4 and see if i like that better. you can even make your own action once you become more comfortable with gifmaking and know what you like.

3. coloring

as far as coloring, im probably not going to be too much help, i kinda just play around with all the different adjustments layers and see what sticks. however, i will run through a quick example of how i color basic gifs. 

my first step is almost always to use curves to try and bring the colors in the gif to a sort of baseline. use to the white dropper to select the area you want to make the lightest in the gif. most of the time i don’t use the dark dropper but i’ll sometimes try it out to see what i get. generally i find it makes everything too dark and often very yellow for me. 

next comes levels if i want to make the gif a little lighter, but this isn’t something i always use. i drag the little arrow a little to the left or right til it looks right. 

i’ll sometimes throw on a vibrance layer to make everything a little richer. i stay away from saturation bc i find it messes with the quality of the gif.

next is color balance, this is where color theory comes in handy. slide the arrow towards the blue to erase some of the yellow, and so on. again, just move things around til you like it. 

finally i’ll use selective color if i need to, if any unwanted color tones are still lingering. i like to add a little black (+15) to the black setting sometimes to add more contrast.

to learn more about coloring i would suggest looking at PSDs that people have shared on here and look at the layers they use and in what order to see how different things affect coloring. i have a blog that i reblog various resources onto and here’s all the PSDs that i’ve reblogged there. there’s a ton of other resources on that blog you might find helpful too including in depth tutorials and similar things!

coloring really is just whatever you think looks best, and it’s very subjective. i find i like to make brighter, more vibrant gifs when possible, with very bright whites and then go from there. develop whatever style you like! messing with colors can definitely make gifs look more pixelated so if you find yourself making them too pixelated, take a step back and see which layers might have done that. then see if there’s another way to achieve the colors you want. 

i’m always here to help!