#but we—the niche weirdos of tumblr—can fix that

[teenagefeeling]

i am going to give a brief (ish) tutorial for my method for making gifs. literally nobody asked, but i think making gifs for little things i like is very fun and i also think it's like, the most quintessential tumblr fandom thing to do. love a thing? reblog a gifset of it! and i just think more people should be making gifs of their weird niche interests it's good for the ecosystem

my method requires a couple of different programs, but i think i've managed to find a relatively quick and easy way to do it using all free and open source software (mostly gimp) so here we go

SO. the first step to making a gif is to identify the clip you would like to gif and download it. ur on your own for this part bc the method varies depending on what you're downloading and your personal comfort level re: piracy, but the biggest thing to remember here is you want the highest quality version of the video you can get. also this is what i use for downloading from youtube

you'll need to get the frames from the clip u wanna gif as still images. i do this in two steps: i cut the video to a few seconds long in a video editing software (specifically, this is the one i use) and then use ffmpeg to grab the frames. you could, theoretically, use ffmpeg to do both of these things at once but im a weenie and i think it's easier as 2 steps. (ffmpeg can do a shit ton of different things tho, just a side note). anyway here's a tutorial on downloading and installing ffmpeg (yes it's wikihow but if it works it works) and this tutorial or this tutorial will show you how to extract the frames

okay so once you've grabbed your frames from the video, i usually organize them into easily accessible folders (but you do you on that front lmao) and then usually i have to go through and delete a couple extra frames on either end to make sure i have just the clip i want isolated. as a general rule of thumb, i find it is best not to have more than like 100-110 frames in a gif. less if ur able. otherwise things just start to get real unwieldy. (not to mention, tumblr's max file size for images is 10 mb, which we're gonna worry about more later)

so before importing into gimp im actually gonna make you install a couple plugins. that process is super simple, you just download the file for the plugin you want, then go to file explorer and find "program files > gimp > lib > [number of whatever version of gimp you have] > plugins" then just drag the file into that folder (and click yes as an administrator). plugin number one is for applying filters to all of our layers at once, and there are multiple different plugins u could use for this but i've been using export layers. the next one is only gonna be necessary if u want to add text (or other images) to your gif: interleave layers (+ download it here)

okay cool now you're allowed to open gimp. so u should go to "file > open as layers" and select all the frames you just pulled out of that video clip. then u gotta wait a minute because gimp doesn't love it when you add 50+ layers at one time (but she'll do it. she'll do whatever you ask, she lives up to her name ❤️)

then i like to add any text before adding filters but i guess it doesn't matter if u prefer your text unsharpened lol. anyway adding the text itself is fairly straightfoward, but i am gonna point you toward this youtube tutorial and this one by the same channel for a bunch of different gimp text effects, i found them both quite helpful

add your text in its own separate layer on top of all of your frames and then once you're done messing with the settings and moving it around, right click on the layer and click "layer to image size." then go to "image > interleave layers > title mode" and make sure your settings reflect your desires then apply the filter (it'll give it to u in a new project file im sorry it's just how it is. but just a note u should re-save after doing this step). once your text layer has been merged to all of your frames, you can delete the extra layer your text was in

next we wanna brighten up our images, increase the saturation, and sharpen the shit out of them, because gifs are tiny and compressed and if u just use raw video frames it will end up looking rly muddy and dim. so! add filters by going to "file > export layers" and then when the little menu pops up, hit the little arrow at the bottom next to "settings" and choose "batch editing" instead. then click "add procedure" then "add custom procedure" and search for the filter you want. as i mentioned, i always make a point to add brightness-contrast, hue-saturation, and unsharp mask. often also color balance, because doing all those other filters can kinda throw off the coloring of the frames. the specific settings you need will vary depending on the gif you're making, but as always i can link you the tutorials i used. specifically this one for unsharp mask, which i think is by far the most finnicky. but basically just mess around until u think it looks similar to other gifs that you've seen on here and thought looked good lol. i sometimes literally pull up other people's gifs in another window for reference

now, me putting this step here instead of before the last one is actually kinda breaking a graphic design rule (you should always apply filters to photos at their final resolution) but i don't rly care so. like you can switch steps 8 and 9 if u want but anyway scale your image down (by going to "image > scale image") because tumblr's image size limit is 10 mb and now is the time we're gonna worry about it! part of the reason i do this last is because ideally, i always wanna get em as big as i can and sometimes that takes a little experimenting with different image sizes (or sacrificing a few frames lmao). but as a rule of thumb i usually start by reducing the size by half and seeing where that gets me

go to "filters > animation > optimize (for gif)" and run the filter (usually takes a minute). i have to be honest with you all, i have no idea what this does. but every gimp gif tutorial ever tells me to do it and it usually reduces the file size a little and doesn't affect quality at all so i do it every time

yayyy now we can export we're done!! literally just hit ctrl + e (or go to "file > export as") and then change the file name so it's .gif instead of .png and then click export and on the little menu u gotta uncheck "gif comment" (unless you want a watermark), check "as animation," and then probably adjust the delay between frames (the default is 100 milliseconds which is very slow. i usually change it to 40 or 50. and don't forget to click "use delay entered above for all frames"!)

if u read this, i challenge you to go forth and use this power for the most obscure, niche interest u possibly have (and then link me the post so i can reblog it ❤️)