Gif Making
Sep. 28th, 2019 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smilebackwardsThis week I made a gifset for Black Sails and it reminded me that it took me forever to learn how to gif and that I don't do it often enough to actually remember a lot of the details in the steps.
I always meant to make myself a cheat sheet. There are many tutorials out there but the ones I found were mostly like graduate level gif making. I'm at the 101 level here using an old copy of PhotoShop CS5.
1. Clip the gif scene. I use QuickTime. File > New Screen Recording.
2. Set up PhotoShop. A quality wikiHow tutorial. For if this link ever stops working, the primary important set up things for me were setting to 32 bits (Finder > Applications > Photoshop CS5 > Right click the program file and select Get Info > Check 'Open in 32 bits'), finding the Animation Timeline under Window > Animation, and setting the loop on Forever. I usually just leave these settings so PhotoShop always opens on them unless I'm attempting icon making or something non-gif and then I need the reminder.
3. Import the gif scene. File > Import > Video Frames to Layers. Because I'll inevitably have clipped way more of the scene than can fit in a gif, select Import Selected Range Only. Hold Shift and drag the hourglass for the selected area. Check 'Limit To Every 2 Frames' if it's still a long range, although I think it decreases gif quality. Check 'Make Frame Animation'.
4. Cut frames. Frames appear in the Animation Timeline at the bottom. There will probably still be too many for it to end up a reasonable size for tumblr or elsewhere, so click the play arrow button on the Timeline and narrow down to about 40 frames. Highlight unnecessary frames and click the trashcan button on the Timeline to delete them.
5. Slow it down. The gif speed may look okay in PhotoShop but will generally look way faster posted elsewhere. In the Timeline, highlight all the frames and click the down arrow beneath one of them to set the time delay. Select Other and set delay to 0.08 seconds.
6. Crop. From the Toolbar, select the Crop tool. I start with the width at 540 px and height at 300 px. Do not be fooled by setting the measurements at in and not px! Also, always do cropping after cutting down the number of frames, otherwise it will take longer and sometimes lock the program up. Cropping makes the image smaller so if it's harder to see now, set the magnification at the top from 25% to 100% or so.
7. Resize the image. Image > Image Size. 540 x 300 is good for tumblr when doing a single gif across the width of the post like this. If doing a double like this, cut the image size in half to 268 x 149. Leave on the locks and constrain proportions.
8. Save for Web. File > Save for Web & Devices. Settings for Gif, Selective, Diffusion. At the bottom left, it will show the file size of the gif. Make sure it's under 1 GB if posting to tumblr, otherwise the gif will freeze. If it's more than 1 GB, cut more frames until it's under. At the bottom right, click Save. Don't click Done, that won't save. For me, the part of the screen with the Save button is weirdly hidden and I need to drag the window over right to see it.
9. Post. For tumblr, click the Photo button and upload the gifs. Drag them around to the desired configuration and post. I set to Save as Draft first to check the gif speed and make sure they don't freeze. Usually I also put the first gif I make into a post before continuing with others in case I do need to make speed or other changes and then I know adjustments to make from the start. For Dreamwidth,potofsoup made this nice tutorial.
10. Clean up. Delete the PhotoShop .psd file if I saved it along with the .gif file. The .psd files take up huge amounts of space. My computer always likes to give me the irritating disk space low notification during gif making. This is another reason I need this cheat sheet, because I can't keep files to go back and look at what I did lol. Sometimes I don't save the .psd in the first place but a lot of times I do because I want to cut frames from the same scene import into multiple gifs. The easiest way to do it is save the .psd with all the frames, then cut some for gif 1 and save under a new name. Then open the original .psd and cut different frames and save it as gif 2. And so on.
Extras:
Brighten - One of the best and easiest things to improve gifs is brightening. Highlight all the frames in the Timeline. In the Layers panel, click the black and white circle icon and select Brightness/Contrast. Drag the arrows around until it looks good.
Add text - Tutorial. I always forget how to do this and also I make the text too large. Next time I do one, I'll try to remember to come back here and list some font info.
I always meant to make myself a cheat sheet. There are many tutorials out there but the ones I found were mostly like graduate level gif making. I'm at the 101 level here using an old copy of PhotoShop CS5.
1. Clip the gif scene. I use QuickTime. File > New Screen Recording.
2. Set up PhotoShop. A quality wikiHow tutorial. For if this link ever stops working, the primary important set up things for me were setting to 32 bits (Finder > Applications > Photoshop CS5 > Right click the program file and select Get Info > Check 'Open in 32 bits'), finding the Animation Timeline under Window > Animation, and setting the loop on Forever. I usually just leave these settings so PhotoShop always opens on them unless I'm attempting icon making or something non-gif and then I need the reminder.
3. Import the gif scene. File > Import > Video Frames to Layers. Because I'll inevitably have clipped way more of the scene than can fit in a gif, select Import Selected Range Only. Hold Shift and drag the hourglass for the selected area. Check 'Limit To Every 2 Frames' if it's still a long range, although I think it decreases gif quality. Check 'Make Frame Animation'.
4. Cut frames. Frames appear in the Animation Timeline at the bottom. There will probably still be too many for it to end up a reasonable size for tumblr or elsewhere, so click the play arrow button on the Timeline and narrow down to about 40 frames. Highlight unnecessary frames and click the trashcan button on the Timeline to delete them.
5. Slow it down. The gif speed may look okay in PhotoShop but will generally look way faster posted elsewhere. In the Timeline, highlight all the frames and click the down arrow beneath one of them to set the time delay. Select Other and set delay to 0.08 seconds.
6. Crop. From the Toolbar, select the Crop tool. I start with the width at 540 px and height at 300 px. Do not be fooled by setting the measurements at in and not px! Also, always do cropping after cutting down the number of frames, otherwise it will take longer and sometimes lock the program up. Cropping makes the image smaller so if it's harder to see now, set the magnification at the top from 25% to 100% or so.
7. Resize the image. Image > Image Size. 540 x 300 is good for tumblr when doing a single gif across the width of the post like this. If doing a double like this, cut the image size in half to 268 x 149. Leave on the locks and constrain proportions.
8. Save for Web. File > Save for Web & Devices. Settings for Gif, Selective, Diffusion. At the bottom left, it will show the file size of the gif. Make sure it's under 1 GB if posting to tumblr, otherwise the gif will freeze. If it's more than 1 GB, cut more frames until it's under. At the bottom right, click Save. Don't click Done, that won't save. For me, the part of the screen with the Save button is weirdly hidden and I need to drag the window over right to see it.
9. Post. For tumblr, click the Photo button and upload the gifs. Drag them around to the desired configuration and post. I set to Save as Draft first to check the gif speed and make sure they don't freeze. Usually I also put the first gif I make into a post before continuing with others in case I do need to make speed or other changes and then I know adjustments to make from the start. For Dreamwidth,
potofsoup made this nice tutorial.10. Clean up. Delete the PhotoShop .psd file if I saved it along with the .gif file. The .psd files take up huge amounts of space. My computer always likes to give me the irritating disk space low notification during gif making. This is another reason I need this cheat sheet, because I can't keep files to go back and look at what I did lol. Sometimes I don't save the .psd in the first place but a lot of times I do because I want to cut frames from the same scene import into multiple gifs. The easiest way to do it is save the .psd with all the frames, then cut some for gif 1 and save under a new name. Then open the original .psd and cut different frames and save it as gif 2. And so on.
Extras:
Brighten - One of the best and easiest things to improve gifs is brightening. Highlight all the frames in the Timeline. In the Layers panel, click the black and white circle icon and select Brightness/Contrast. Drag the arrows around until it looks good.
Add text - Tutorial. I always forget how to do this and also I make the text too large. Next time I do one, I'll try to remember to come back here and list some font info.
