#tagged: ps help

[chikoriita]

what is good sharpening vs oversharpening? im sorry if i have oversharpened anything i am to new to this

It's a great question! There are a lot of reasons that oversharpening is a problem and just one is that it causes intense colorwashing. Oversharpening introduces excess graininess that skews skin tones and accentuates stray highlights that can wash out a gif.

I want to preface this post with this: I am not here to shame anyone who is oversharpening.

The most important part of this answer is to bring awareness of why these basic steps of gifmaking are so important to the whole process.

Each of these gif pairs are uncolored, unedited, and has the same save settings. The only difference is the sharpening settings that are listed on each gif. The left side has my usual sharpening filters, and the right side has the filters that usually lead to oversharpening.

(Kate Sharma, Bridgerton, 2022, 1080p footage live action)

(Matilda, 1996, 1080p footage live action)

(Barbara Howard, Abbott Elementary, 2022, 1080p footage live action)

(Miles Morales, Into the Spider-verse, 2018, 1080p footage animated)

It's not a crime to oversharpen your gifs, but it does lead to the slippery slope of colorwashing (even for white people).

Look for the halo: If you look at the oversharpened gif of Barbara, you can see a yellow outline around her hair. That is an obvious indicator of going too far.

Use a layer mask to see what the colors were before sharpening: you can see in most of the oversharpened gifs above that there is a huge difference in the colors shown vs. in the less sharpened gif.

If you're working with older footage: don't try to overcorrect the graininess of the media. It's okay if some of it comes through!

Try to get the highest quality footage you can: I primarily work in 1080p files because my poor laptop starts to sound like a plane taking off when I try to screencap 4K files. If you're like me, look for larger file sizes. That will reduce the graininess of the gif.

Here are some links to different sharpening actions and guides: daenerys-stormborn action anyataylorjoy action anya-chalotra sharpening guide

These are great to use if you are starting out in Photoshop! (psst if you need a hookup lmk) I know some people don't use PS, and for them, I put my sharpening settings on this post. I think both of the action sets I linked above have similar if not the same settings.

Also, one thing I noticed when making the gif pairs is that the less sharpened gif was always a smaller size. Fixing sharpening settings might help people who are trying their best to keep things under the 10mb limit.

I hope this answered your question, anon. If anyone has any questions or would like other resources, let me know!

[userpeggycarter]

COLORING + SHARPENING TUTORIAL

someone asked for a coloring tutorial and my sharpening settings, so here it is! there are also a few tips to achieve more HQ gifs. :)

tutorial under the cut!

FOR HIGH-QUALITY GIFS

FILE SIZES

it doesn’t matter what your sharpening settings are if the file you’re using to gif is too low quality, so i tend to look for the best that i can get when downloading stuff. 

usually, movies (+2h) look better if they’re 5GB or more, while an episode (40 min/1h) can look good with even 1GB. the minimum definition i try to find is 1080p, but i gif with 2160p (4k) when available. unfortunately, not every computer can handle 4k, but don’t worry, you can gif with 1080p files just fine if they are big enough. contrary to popular belief, size does matter! which means sometimes a bigger 1080p file is better than a smaller 2160p one, for example.

SCREENCAPPING METHOD

this can too influence the quality of your gifs. as a gifmaker, i’ve tried it all: video frames to layers, directly opening video clips, loading files into stack, and i’ve finally settled down with opening screencaps as an image sequence. with bigger files, it doesn’t matter much what technique you use, but i’ve noticed with smaller files you can do wonders if you screencap (either by loading files into stack or opening as an image sequence) instead of using video clips. for example, this gif’s original video file was only 4GB (so smaller than i’ve usually go for), if you can believe it!

here’s a tutorial for setting up and screencapping with MPV, the media player i use to screencap. again, you can keep using video clips for bigger files, but you’ll find this useful when dealing with dire causes. i don't file loads into stack, though, like the video does. i open as an image sequence (open > screencap folder > select any image > click the image sequence button). just select OK for the speed. this will open your screencaps as a video clip (blue bar) in timeline mode (i'm a timeline gifmaker, i don't know about you). you will need this action pack to convert the clip into frames if you're a frames gifmaker. i suggest you convert them into frames even if you're a timeline gifmaker, just convert them into a timeline again at the end. that way you can delete the screencaps right away, otherwise you will delete the screencaps and get a static image as a "gif".

ATTENTION if you’re a Mac Sonoma user, MPV won’t be an option for you unless you downgrade your system. that is, if you have an Intel chip. if you have M1 Max chip (or even a better one), here’s a fix for MPV you can try while keeping that MacOS, because nowadays MPV is skipping frames in its latest build. or you can use MPlayer instead for less hassle. here are two tutorials for setting and using MPlayer. Windows users are fine, you can use MPV without trouble.

FOR EVEN MORE QUALITY

ADD NOISE

here’s a tutorial for adding noise as a way to achieve more HQ gifs if your original material is too low quality.

REDUCE NOISE WITH CAMERA RAW

instead of adding noise, you can reduce it, especially if your gif is very noisy as it is. 

the path is filter > camera raw > detail > nose reduction. i do this before sharpening, but only my video file isn't great to begin with. because it’s a smart filter, you can reduce or increase its opacity by clicking the bars next to its name in the layers panel.

TOPAZ AI

i use Topaz Photo AI to increase the quality of my screencaps when i need to. it’s paid software, but there are… ways to find it for free, usually on t0rrent websites. if someone’s interested, i can make a tutorial solely about it in the future.

SHARPENING SETTINGS

here are my sharpening settings (filter > sharpen > smart sharpen). i sharpen things twice: 500% 0.4px + 10% 10px. here's an action for it, for more convenience. here's a tutorial on how to use Photoshop actions. for animated stuff, i use this action pack.

COLORING

here’s the gif i'm gonna use as a base. it’s already sharpened like the way i always do it.

LIGHTNING THE SHOTS

half of the secret of a good coloring is good lightning. i always useCurves (layers > new adjustment layer > curves) and Brightness & Contrast (layers > new adjustment layer > brightness & contrast). the settings depend on the scene you’re giffing, but i always try make my gifs bright and with high contrast to make the colors pop.

CURVES

besides lighting your scene, the Curves adjustment layer has four automatic options that will color-correct it for you. it’s not always perfect and it doesn’t mean you won’t need to do further coloring, but it’s a great start. it’s a lifesaver for most ridiculously yellow scenes. look at the difference! this gif uses the 3rd automatic option (the screenshot below isn't mine btw so that's why the fourth option is the chosen one), from top to bottom. what automatic option you need to choose depends on the gif.

sometimes i like to tweak my Curves layer. not everybody does that, it’s not that necessary and if you’re not careful, it can screw your gif up. to modify your layer by hand, you will need to click and drag points of that straight line in the position you desire. this is the concept behind it:

basically, the lower part of the line handles the shadows, while the upper part handles the highlights of the image. if you pull a highlight point up, the image’s highlights will be brighter. if you pull it down, it will make them darker. same thing for the shadow points. you should play with it to get a grasp of it, that’s what i did when i first started giffing.

BRIGHTNESS & CONTRAST

then i added a bit of brightness and contrast.

CHANNEL MIXER

the scene looked a bit too yellow, so i used the Channel Mixer (layer > new adjustment layer > channel mixer) adjustment layer. here’s a tutorial of how it works. not every scene needs the Channel Mixer layer though, i mostly use it to remove heavy overall tints. in this particular case, the Curves layer got rid of most of the yellow, but i wanted the gif to be just a bit more blue so the Channel Mixer tweaks are very minimal.

SELECTIVE COLOR

now, this adjustment layer i always use: Selective Color (layer > new adjustment layer > selective color). this is THE adjustment layer to me, alongside the Curves one. this is how it works:

ie, you can separately edit a color this way, giving it tints. for this gif, i wanted to make the colors more vibrant. to achieve that, i edited the selected colors this way:

for the reds, i added even more red in them by moving the first slider to the right, making the color more vibrant. for his hat to have a more warm tint, i added yellow to the reds (third slider, moving it to the right). finally, to make the reds stronger, i moved the last slider to the right (more black).

for the yellows, i made them brighter by adding white to them, thus making the tile wall and Paddington more bright as well.

for the cyans and the blues, i just added the maximum (+100) of black that i could.

i wanted for Paddington's nose to be brighter, so i added more white to the whites.

lastly, i added depth to the blacks by increasing their own blackness.

you should always play with the Selective Colors sliders for a bit, before deciding what you want or need. with time, you will automatically know what to change to correct the color grading. it all takes practice!

HUE/SATURATION

i don’t know if you noticed, but there are some green spots on the blue wall behind Paddington. to correct that, i added a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer (layer > new adjustment layer > hue/saturation) and made the saturation of the greens 0%, making that unwanted green disappear from the background.

while the green spots on the wall are specific for this gif, i use hue/saturation a lot to tweak, well, hue and saturation. sometimes someone’s skin is too yellow, i made it redder by tweaking the reds and the yellows, or vice-versa. the hue bar follows the rainbow bar, so the maximum settings (+100 and -100) give the selected color to change its hue to something more red or pink (the rainbow extremities). changing hue can give pretty whacky results, like turning someone’s skin tone to green, so you will need to play with it to get the hang of it. you can also tweak the opacity of your hue/saturation layer to further improve your gif’s coloring. i didn’t do it in this case, the opacity is still 100%. the reds and the blues had their saturation increased to make them pop just a bit more, without affecting the other colors.

COLOR BALANCE

the highlights of the gif still had a green tint to it due to the automatic correction of the Curves layer, so i used Color Balance. this is how it works: instead of giving specific colors some tints, you can give them to the shadows, highlights, and mid-tones. if your shadows are too blue, you counterbalance them with the opposite color, yellow. same thing with the cyan-red and magenta-green pairings. in my case, i added a bit of magenta.

B&W GRADIENT MAP

now, if this gif was a dish, it’s time for the salt and pepper. i always add a Gradient Map (layer > new adjustment layer > gradient map) (black to white gradient) with the Soft Light blending mode, thus giving my shadows more depth without messing with the mid-tones and highlights. it also doesn’t “deep fry” (you know those memes?) the gif too much by adding even more contrast. usually, the opacity of the layer is between 30% to 70%, it all depends on the gif. it always does wonders, though!

COLOR FILTER

finally, i like to add Color Filters (layer > new adjustment layer > color filter) to my gifs. it’s very handy when giving different scenes for the same minimalistic set because it makes them kind of match despite having completely different colors. in this gif’s case, i added a “deep blue” filter, opacity 50% density 25. you can change the density and the opacity of the layer for further editing, again, it all depends on the gif.

VIBRANCE

if i feel like it, i add a vibrance layer (layer > new adjustment layer > vibrance) to make the colors pop. this can ruin your coloring sometimes, especially when regarding skin color, so be careful. i didn't do it in this gif because i felt i didn't need it.

TA-DA! 🥳

AN OTHER EXAMPLE

the color grading of the original scene it’s pretty good as it is, to be honest. let’s see a worse scenario, a VERY yellow one:

no channel mixer this time because the automatic curves option dealt with the yellowness, but you can see it made the gif too green. i needed to correct that with the following adjustment layers:

curves (automatic option) (gif 2) >> same curves layer (tweaks) (gif 3) >> brightness & contrast (gif 4) >> hue/saturation (tweaked cyan+blue+green) >> selective color >> color balance (gif 5) >> b&w gradient map >> (sepia) filter >> vibrance (gif 6)

i added a hue/saturation layer to remove the blues & greens before my selective color layer because i thought that was more urgent than tweaking the tint of all colors. color balance (gif 4) was the real hero here, though, by removing the green tint. the selective color layer was meant to make the red pop more than anything else, because the rest looked pretty good, especially her skin tone (despite the green tint). you can notice that tweaking the curves layer (small gif 3) also helped A LOT with the green problem.

tl;dr 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

here's a list of my go-to's while coloring and lightning gifs. it's not a rule, just a guide. there are gifs in which i don't use all these adjustment layers, or use them in a different order. it all depends!

1. curves (automatic option + tweaks) 2. brightness & contrast 3. channel mixer 4. selective color 5. hue/saturation 6. color balance 7. b&w gradient map 8. color filter 9. vibrance

i'll suggest that you study each adjustment layer listed for more info, either with other Tumblr tutorials or YouTube ones. the YouTube ones focus on images, but you can translate what they teach to gif making very easily. you can ask me to further explain any adjustment layer, too! i was brief to keep this short (which i kinda failed lol).

feel free to ask me for clarification or something else about gifmaking wise, i always like to help. ❤️

[eddiediaaz]

hi!! would you mind doing a tutorial on how you add subtitles to your gifs?

hey, sure! :)

with the text tool selected, i will draw a box that is as wide as the gif and type my text. i created an action that selects all the right settings for me so it's faster and my subtitles always look the same.

arial rounded bold is a very popular choice for subtitles, and it looks awesome, but i' always've been using the font calibri bold italic for years now. here are my usual settings for a 540px wide gif:

i usually keep the font size and leading value the same, if i change it from 18 pt. and sometimes i'll play around with the anti-aliasing method, whatever looks best for this particular gif. this will help make your text look less crispy or soft, depending on which filtering method you use. the other settings i pretty much always leave like that for subtitles.

as for colors, i always go with white first, and if there's another character talking, i will give their subtitles a different color. i usually try to pick a bright pastel color found in the gif, or even on the character's clothing (just because i like to match things haha).

it's also important to leave a bit of a gap on the sides and bottom, so the text doesn't go all the way to the edges (as shown in the next example). it's definitely harder to read text if it's too close together, or goes from edge to edge. you can push words on another line if it becomes too close to the edge, and you can nudge the text from the bottom with the arrow keys.

as for the layer style, i'm adding a black stroke and black drop shadow (by double clicking the text layer). the stroke almost never changes, but i'll edit the drop shadow accordingly with the gif. if it's a very busy gif, the drop shadow should be thicker to help with visibility.

and that's it! :D

[orykorioart]

Here’s another ‘redraw’ of sorts, ft. my beloved Team Sweet Flips! (AKA TAZ sapphic ships my beloved)

Once again, I realized that I never posted this 2021 piece, but in looking at it again I wanted to redraw it (and I am always in the mood to draw more dragons) sooooo…..

(I like the idea of date-night Killian doing hair up and wearing a cute blouse, but also still accessorizing with some armor, lol)

[mercymaker]

A couple of general gif-making tips for anyone trying out the craft!

When resizing your footage, always leave yourself a couple of pixels for margins.

I see a lot of people make this mistake when it comes to making gifs, where they resize their footage to the exact dimensions of the end gif. However, that almost always results in the pixels closest to the outside border going semi-transparent, which when saved as gif results in gifs having these tiny 'borders'.

I zoomed in a bit, but you can see that the outer edge has a line. Those are the semi-transparent pixels.

To avoid that AND leave yourself some wiggle room when it comes to moving screenshots or cropping, resize your footage to the target dimensions and add +2, +4 or +10 pixels to the number. After resizing you can then crop away the margins which will result in cleaner edges and will get rid of the transparent border.

For example, tumblr's full-post width is 540px so if I were resizing say 1080p footage, I'd put the width as 544px or 550px and then crop the edges (I use canvas size option for this) to 540px.

Make sure to use proper dimensions!

Tumblr will automatically resize your gifs to set dimensions and if your gifs are shorter or wider than those sizes, you will lose quality and sharpness in your gifs.

Ava (@anya-chalotra) has an excellent guide on dimensions and gif sharpness (as well as some other excellent information in giffing department) that goes into exact numbers.

I mostly make gifs that are full width, so they're always 540px wide.

Be aware of the size limit

According to tumblr's own guide, the general max limit is 10MB. However, anything over 3MB will be compressed by tumblr. That can result in quality loss, but most gif-makers ignore the compression and try to 'squeeze' out as much as possible out of a gif.

Some tips on how to lower your gif size to fit within the limit:

Reduce the number of frames.

Try to restrict the colors used to a selection (I usually try to have one or two dominant colors). Gif format only supports 256 colors anyway, so if you try to include all the colors of the rainbow, things might look wonky anyway.

Darken parts of your gif (usually brighter gifs tend to take up more space, so adding some darker shades can help reduce the file size).

[opopsums]

lizzie coming to hermitcraft real guys

designing joel and coloring him was so hard oh my lord also ignore how much more detail was obviously put into lizzie can we actually like not talk about that rn

[itzneverlupus]

hello medical malpractice md (with a side of queerbaiting) fans. i have a lil smth silly for you.

im rewatching this fuckass show for the fourth time, except.... ive only recently embraced the almost always present homoerotic fuckery wilson and house participate in EVERY. SINGLE. EPISODE. tell me why i went into the show, pretending their in a secret relationship, and it makes sense??? so odd to me, really... everytime wilson pulls house aside? seems oddly intimate, doesn't it... everytime house flirts with a "hot babe"? hes making sure no one get suspicious....

let thar sink in my friends.... (im delusional.)

[sugurugetos]

Thank you so much for your fast answer!!! Love the new @ btw!

I'm terrible at explaining in English I'm so sorry I want if possible to achieve gifs like this set: https://www.tumblr.com/hansjisung/756342060998606848 if that makes sense whether it's in smoothness or even the color i tried vibrant and it kills the quality every time i try it so matte would be what i aim for. A shame that there's not many uhd files for male idols :/ There's so many people using Vapoursynth for KPOP gifs that I thought that I couldn't achieve smooth gifs without it.

So to recap in case I got it wrong; topaz upscaler & uhd files will help?

the particular set u sent isn't mine so i'm not sure what op does exactly in their method 🤞 so i can't be much help there!

vapoursynth is very commonly used and super helpful but its quite finicky on a macbook, because the super smooth denoise filter used in a lot of sets doesn't work with the m1 chips so its kind of moot...

but in terms of matte colouring, i'm sharing my psd that i use <3 just remember to change the curves layer using auto, and it'll probably need minor tweaks depending on lighting and how pale the stage is 💖 HERE IT IS!

this is the psd on a uhd file!

and this is the psd on a regular 1080p ts. file, upscaled with topaz!

the save settings are below the cut!

[nostalgia-tblr]

"are people not into that?" i ask, after posting my weird niche shit to the internet, despite knowing it to be weird niche shit.

[ashedrose]

so you've got a lotta blogs, but not a lotta patience to be signing in and out between em? i'm about to save your life !!

i. let's start with the email trick!

ps: i have only ever done it with gmail. if you use a different one, give it a try anyway! but i can vouch that it does work for gmail. it's super simple: youremail@gmail.com -> youremail+musename@gmail.com you just add +musename and you can create a new tumblr account while still having everything in the same email account! (you do this during the "sign up" component on tumblr, not your email! it'll automatically add it to your email. you can also add the +musename part to your email in account settings)

ii. now, multiple sign ins!

google chrome: profiles! on your browser, up top, right next to the settings you'll see a button for the profile attached to that browser. when you click it, you'll see the existing profile, and the option to "add" a new one. each profile is its own browser page, which allows you to sign onto a different tumblr account in each! i like to name mine according to the muse it belongs to so i can keep track. firefox: there's an extension called 'containers' which allows you to have multiple sign ins on the same site open!

if you've got any other tips to ease the process of having multiple muses and blogs, feel free to let me know and i'll add it to this!

i hope this helps! let me know if it does or if you've got questions about it!

happy roleplaying <3

[laugtherhyena]

Control over time

[chikoriita]

Hello! I’d love to start giffing the actors from Abbott Elementary and was wondering if you had any psds already or tips on how to colour, because the last thing I’d like to do it whitewash! Thank you.

How exciting! I adore Abbott, and I'm glad you're gonna gif for it.

I avoid using coloring PSDs because from my experience, there's not really one PSD that fits every scene, character, or actor. My best advice is to play around and see how you adjust to coloring. Another thing is to always have a reference of what the actors look like in real life so you can check to see if your coloring is accurate.

Here are some guides to help avoid color/white washing:

@zoyanazyalensky guide to avoid orange washing

@jeonwonwoo how to avoid pink/yellow washing

I hope this helps!

[binariesuns]

A lovely anon asked for a coloring tutorial and here’s is it! My photoshop is in spanish so I added a translation in some parts that I felt it was necessary (the other stuff is pretty much in the same place) but if you have questions let me know!! (image heavy!!)

First, I choose my scene > delete the unnecessary frames > sharpen my gif, you know, the basics, this tutorial is pretty good explaining it! Then, I start with an exposure layer, I feel you can play with values more than a curves or brightness/contrast layer (which is useful when you work with dark scenes). This scene is not too dark so I didn’t do much

After that, I use a color balance layer. Most scenes have either a yellow or a blueish filter, so depending on the scene you have to play with the numbers. If it’s a yellow scene, try to add more blues, if it’s a blue scene, add more yellows (and the same if it has a different filter). In this case my scene has a soft yellow filter, so I added more blues. If I see the filter is too difficult to work with color balance I use a curves or a channel mixer adjustement! these are good tutorials explaining how those works

Now it’s time to make the colors pop! and i start with a selective colors adjustement. I set it in absolute because the change is more ~radical~, if you are going for a softer look, set your selective color to relative (that part at the end). In this case, the predominant colors are blue and green so I play with them:

Here’s how it looks now! as you can see, the sky is more blue and the grass looks more greenish

You can end the coloring there if you want, but I’m too extra so I add a vibrance layer to make the colors pop more. Adding a vibrance layer can make the skin look orange so I advice to check this tutorial explaining how to fix it

Then I add other exposure layer to add more contrast in the gif so it doesn’t look ~plain~

This is optional and I usually do it when I work in dark scenes but I like to add a white layer, set it in soft light and play with the opacity depending of how light I want the scene

Now, a new selective color layer again! I wanna make the sky more cyan and the grass more ~lemon green~ so here are my settings:

Here’s how it looks now, it make a BIG difference

Optional but I like to add other vibrance layer if the scene let me do it (which means is not grainy/the colors are well defined)

And finally, I add a levels layer to add more contrast on my gif. I set this one in 50% (forgot to add it to the screencapture sorry lol)

And that’s it! That’s the basic coloring. Of course you can play with layer modes or other adjustements! I like to do it depending of the ~vibe~ I’m looking for my gifs, here’s for examples of what I do when I’m in the mood of experimenting 1. Gradient map, set it to hue 50%

2. Hue/Saturation, in this case I’m playing with the yellows, set it in normal 50%

3. Selective color, modifying the cyans

4. Gradient layer, the layer mode is color 100%

Keep in mind that every scene is different, so what works for this gif It could look bad in others and that’s why it’s important to experiment! Depending of how vibrant/colorful you want the gif to be you can add more or less adjustements

And that’s it! if you have a question feel free to send me an ask and I’ll gladly explain it :)

[your-fave-is-bi]

picked up yakuza 0 again bc seeing new majima game hype made me crave playing cabaret czar and also i never finished this game back when i first played it and i gotta say

having a blast. meandering around. seeing the sights. instinctively ending up at the club sunshine doorstep again.

soon my beloved...soon

[undertow1326]

learning of things ive never known

[treacherous]

I recently received a request to show how I recolor photos from black and white (mainly from the photos featured here and here), so here is a quick summary of how I colorized another photo from TIFF from black and white in Photoshop!

Tutorial including some photos under the cut:

For this set of recoloring I used the newest version of Photoshop as of December 2022, which includes an option for “neural filters” under the filter tab. This opens a variety of options, of which I will select “colorize”.

A couple examples of what auto-colorizing will generate from this include the following:

Some resulting photos appear more realistic from this option than others (some parts of the curtain behind her on the second photo are reddish and don’t match, the dress is missing gold and her eyes are missing the blue, etc.), which is why it’s helpful to go in the section on the right and manually add points of color where needed.

In this case, I added a gray point to the patch underneath her face to make that curtain section consistent with the gray on the rest of the background, and added several points of yellow in varying strengths to realistically add color back to her dress.

Once I finished adding these points, I opened the photo as a new layer and got this as my result:

It’s mostly there but I still have some areas that need adjusted to make it fully realistic to other photos of her at this event. Outside of some general edits to add more depth/brightness/color vibrance, I also added some transparent layers and used a brush tool with different colors to add certain colors that didn’t generate beforehand. The photo below shows my addition of blue on her eyes with the brush on the left and how it looked before I added the brush coloring on the right:

Depending on what section I’m working on and how saturated I want that extra color to be, I’ll set the blend mode that the brush layer is on to either “soft light” or “color” (I used soft light for this photo). In other layers, I set a layer mask to concentrate other changes to smaller areas of the image.

Some additional layers for hue & saturation, selective color, and color balance especially helped in getting my coloring lined up to be consistent with other photos from the event she was photographed at, leading to this final result:

The process of colorizing photos from black & white is full of trial and error to get a realistic result, but hopefully this will help give some ideas on how to get a good recolored result!