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| HOW TO MAKE A GIF USING PHOTOSHOP CC

HOW TO MAKE A GIF USING PHOTOSHOP CC

I have created gifs for over four years, so I have been through a lot of different methods, read a lot of tips and tricks and
tutorials, and I have finally found the way I like the most, a way that’s surprisingly easy and which beginner me would have
found very helpful. If you don’t understand a part or if you have any questions, please message me or look here for
other people’s questions.

Make sure you have downloaded the 100% free KMPlayer (important: this does NOT work on Macs, and I have yet to
find a good replacement), and then follow this tutorial to get your screenshots.

If you don’t have Photoshop, please do not ask me where I got mine, and I’m sorry that I can’t help you this time. I don’t
know if this works in any version lower than CC (perhaps CS6 or CS5 Extended?), so again, I’m sorry. If you google around
a bit I’m sure you’ll get some answers.

Some basic information you need to know before we start:

The size limit on individual gifs is 2 mb

Make sure you always use HD clips when making gifs, if you don’t, they automatically tend to look rubbish

It’s very important that you keep to the size rules if you want your gifs to look quality and sharp when uploaded
to tumblr

If you have two gifs next to each other in a photoset the gifs will be 268 px wide, or 177 px wide if you have three gifs
next to each other

You can at most have 10 gifs in a set

The more movement in your gif, the bigger the size

The less frames, the lower the size

So, let’s get over with this.

PART 1, USING SCREENSHOTS

Again, if you don’t know how to get your screenshots, follow this tutorial and come back for step 1. Apologies in advance
for all my screenshot texts being in Swedish and for any possible grammatical or translation errors, I am not a native

TAKE speaker.

Step 1, importing the frames to layers:

THE Open up Photoshop, click File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack… and this window will appear, then click Browse… and
select your screenshots, wait until they are all in the list and then click OK.

UNKNOWN
ROAD
NOW.
HOME ASK NAVI
ABOUT

eli / 23 / lesbian / sweden

drarry trash as always.

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take the unknown road now. | HOW TO MAKE A GIF USING PHOTOSHOP CC

It might take a while to load all the layers depending on how many you chose and how fast your computer is, but being
patient is the key to quality.

It should now look like this:

Now, follow these exact moves and if you are smart (like me), make this into an action and you will have a time-saving
shortcut aka. you can skip to point 5 the next time.

1. Click Create Video Timeline (the button in the middle of the grey field (which will be shown if you click on Window
> Timeline before you begin making the action))

2. Then click on the three small boxes icon in the left corner

3. Click on the little drop down list on the opposite side right next to the layers and choose Make Frames From Layers

4. Click on the same thing again and choose Select All Frames

5. Click again and choose Invert Frames (this is the part where you stop making your action)

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take the unknown road now. | HOW TO MAKE A GIF USING PHOTOSHOP CC

1. Now when you have all the frames selected in the timeline window, click on any place where it says a time, e.g. 0 sec
and then click Other… and write in 0,07 in the box. Click OK.

2. Click once again in the left corner where it previously were three small boxes so it will be a timeline again, like a long
clip instead of many frames

3. Go to Select > Select All (or Alt+Ctrl+A / Alt+Cmd+A)

4. Then click Filter > Convert to Smart Layer

Now you have your basic gif and it’s time to decide what size you want it.

Step 2, resizing

(Originally this was made in 500 px, but I have rewritten it to be the new size, 540 px)

I will be creating a 540 px wide gif, aka. a gif that will look sharp on your dashboard because it’s full width. You can still
make them in 500 px but that’s ugly.

1. Click on the Crop tool

2. Choose W x H x resolution in the drop down list

3. Write 542 px in the left box (this is very important)

4. and appropriate height in the right box, I will make it 302 px (again, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you make
it +2 px in each box because we will cut them away later)

5. Click OK in form of the tick in the right upper corner

6. It should now look like this. Click Ctrl+1 / Cmd+1.

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take the unknown road now. | HOW TO MAKE A GIF USING PHOTOSHOP CC

Now your gif is almost ready for actually colouring it. First we need to cut down the two extra pixels that we made, because
otherwise the gif might have a tiny white frame around it and it will be blurry/not work when uploaded to tumblr.

Click Image > Canvas Size and cut away those two extra pixels so it will be 540 px wide and (in this case) 300 px high.

You can now try playing the gif and if it works, congratulations!

Step 3, sharpening + colouring the gif using a .psd

The first thing I do, is duplicating the smart layer, and setting it to Screen. It automatically brightens up the gif in a nice
way. If it becomes too light, lower the opacity.

After that, I click on the first and original layer, go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen and these are my settings:

And then I double click this thing:

So this comes up and I change the opacity to 50% and click OK:

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take the unknown road now. | HOW TO MAKE A GIF USING PHOTOSHOP CC

Your gif will now be the right size and correctly (perfectly) sharpened.

If you try to play your gif while it’s sharpened, it might play really slow, but it’s nothing to worry about, just temporarily
hide the sharpen if you want to try and play your gif. And it will always be a little slower in the preview than when it’s
actually saved (at least on my computer).

It is now time to put on your .psd, but I am not giving out my .psds here because I don’t use my own and I tend mix them
around and using settings from one .psd to another, and I don’t want to take credit for a colouring I sort of didn’t really
create myself (and I don’t remember where I got them all). You can easily find beautiful .psds on google if you search for
e.g. gif psd tumblr or anything similar.

I think it’s very important to colour your gif, otherwise it will look very plain and grey.

Before and after the .psd is on (make sure it’s on top of all layers):

Make sure the little thing you can drag around to choose the length of the gif isn’t longer than the actual gif, otherwise it will
create an “empty” part at the end of the gif:

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take the unknown road now. | HOW TO MAKE A GIF USING PHOTOSHOP CC

The gif is now actually ready to save, which you do at File > Save for Web & Devices… (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S /
Cmd+Shift+Alt+S). 

Then I click save and this window appears (it MIGHT, and probably will take a long time for the gif to actually load, so
make sure you save the gif as a .psd just in case it all would crash and you have to redo everything) (I have been there)
(many times):

(Click for bigger image)

NOTE: IT MUST NOT BE UNDER 1000KB ANYMORE. THE NEW LIMIT IS 2MB)

As you can see, my gif is a bit too big, but I will save it anyway to my desktop because it will take much a longer time for
me to make the size smaller in this mode. I choose Save… and save it to my computer where I can find it easily.

Then I open up the almost done gif and it will appear in a completely new window. You will notice that the timeline is gone
and you will instead see the actual frames.

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take the unknown road now. | HOW TO MAKE A GIF USING PHOTOSHOP CC

Now it’s time for you to change the speed if you want to (if you start by putting the pace on e.g. 0,06 sec, the timeline will
automatically change the pace to 0,07 sec) so usually I choose all frames again and change the speed to 0,06 seconds.

If you play the gif now you will see how smooth it will run.

Now I will put on some text because Sherlock says “Into battle” here, and I’m using the Text tool (t), click anywhere on the
image and write the line in the font Calibri in bold and italics, size 15 (usually it’s between 10 and 14 but sometimes the
image is somehow bigger in itself..don’t know why) and clear in the drop down list.

(I hope this isn’t too messy but I didn’t know how to explain it)

To make it a bit shorter, I will delete frames in the end or the beginning, one frame at time and then click save for web and
devices to see how much the size is down.

The result (I used to have this domain, I don’t use it anymore):

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take the unknown road now. | HOW TO MAKE A GIF USING PHOTOSHOP CC

The pace on this is 0,07 sec.

This is how it looks with 0,03 sec and 0,1 sec.

PART 2, IMPORTING FRAMES VIA VIDEO (.MP4)

COMING SOON aka. NOT NOW BECAUSE IT’S 3 AM AND I’M TIRED

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take the unknown road now. | HOW TO MAKE A GIF USING PHOTOSHOP CC

(I SAID THIS LIKE TWO YEARS AGO HAHHAHAHA OK I WILL DO IT SOON I PROMISE)

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