Questions & Queries Corner 2012 - Page 43

• Most other people who make gifs make them differently than I do, but since I have a mac, I have to work around certain things like not being able to screencap DVDs and such, but when I need to make a gif I have to go to file>import>video frame to layers

• Once you have your layers, it will look like this

• Now, when I make gifs, I go through and delete every other frame to prevent it from being too long, therefore too big. So, on a mac I press command + left click every odd numbered frame on the animation bar AND the layer pallet.

• Next, I got up to filter>sharpen>sharpen more to sharpen each of the frames before I size it down

• Once I've sharpened each of the frames, I then go to the crop tool and set the pre-sets (idk the real name for them) to 245 px by 200 px. You can set the height to whatever size you want, but for this size gif in a photoset, tumblr posts them at 245px.

• After I've resized it, I then go back up to filter>sharper>smart sharpen, and resharpen each of the frames again.

• Once each of the frames are resharpened, I then change the speed setting (shift + click the first frame & last frame to change the speed on every frame at once).

• Feel free to change the speed to whatever you would like, but I'm comfortable with .13 seconds for this particular gif (**If you delete every other frame, you are going to want a speed around .1-.15).
• After I've changed the speed, I then edit it however I want, and I've made a .psd out of the coloring I've gotten comfortable with, but just mess around with the brightness/contrast, hues, curves, etc.
• But, because I do use a gradient fill in mine, the bottom half of the gif will be slightly darker, meaning Misha's skin tone will be basically split in half, and I don't like that. So, all I do is make a new layer, go to the paintbrush tool (make sure your color is set to white) and I paint over the darker area.

(***I use a soft brush and feel free to change the brush size to whatever you want***)

(**new layer**)

(**it will show up on your layer pallet like this**)

• As you can see, it shows up as a big white blob over his face, but all you have to do is go to layer style>soft light and then change the opacity to whatever works for you

• After I did that, I just go to file>save for web & devices

• Make sure the colors are set to 256 & the size of the gif is under 1MB AND always, always, always click the nifty little preview button to see what your gif will look like when you post it.

Credit to:

http://jennycockles.tumblr.com/post/18159897590/anonymous-asked-for-a-gif-tutorial-for-this-gif

Hope it helps!😃