So here is my second attempt at a gif tutorial even though the first one was like two years ago. As already warned, I write a lot, so I am sure this will be longer than needed.
Lol, I just finished it and it really is long because I tried to be detailed with everything, but I hope it helps as opposed to being overwhelming.
Edit: 3/12/2014 - Since I upgraded my computer, I have gone back to using Google Picasa as an image browser / organizer and I also find it much, much easier to delete frames using it since I don’t have to choose ‘yes’. Yes, that makes a big difference to me as my manual method was a bit frustrating. You can use whatever you want to delete frames, though. Doesn’t really matter what you view / organize your images with as long as you delete double frames.
Edit: 4/7/2014 - A lot of people ask about smaller file size and one thing I have started doing is selective color black + white. It can make the blacks really dark or the whites really bright, which in turn reduces the file size since there are less colors. If I choose white, I go negative and if I choose black, I go positive.
Edit: 6/13/2014 - The upload size was increased to 1.75MB, even though anything under 2MB seems to work. I still use this method but now you have a lot more freedom for your gifs!
For this tutorial I will be using:
Photoshop CS6
KMPlayer
Use KMPlayer to open up your video and when you get to the part you want to gif, Press Ctrl + G
This will bring up the following window:
Extract To: The location the frames will go after they are captured - change to which location you prefer.
Prefix: The beginning of the file name after the files are extracted - change to whatever you want (I change it per episode).
[NOTE: I actually save mine at 508 x whatever it picks because sometimes there is a little green line in the corner or black lines on the side and I like to crop it out. I just crop 500 out of the 508 but that’s a bit more work and something you can decide on your own. You can just crop above the little green line with it set at 500.I actually have a simple tutorial on cropping here.]
Other than that, you can copy my exact settings, even though some people have different settings for the “Frames To Extract” part. I have it capture almost every single frame so I can make sure I don’t miss anything but it means that you will capture a lot of frames and have to do a lot of deleting of doubles.
Once your settings are done, press the START button and have the video play the scene you want to capture and when it’s done press Ctrl + G again and STOP it. It will tell you how many frames you captured - for this particular one I captured 68 frames to begin with - I know it sounds like a lot but that’s how I make them.
The next part requires deleting double frames. Go to where your frames were extracted and delete any double frames or frames that are even similar to being doubles / close in movement. I don’t know how to explain what I mean, but these are what I would keep + delete with frames like these, that are similar but not doubles:
DELETE
KEEP
KEEP
DELETE
KEEP
Even though her hair is moving, you don’t need every single movement of her hair to keep it smooth and nice looking.
I went from 68 frames to about 25 and then deleted a couple of more to get it to about 20. I have been making gifs for a long time so I am pretty good at guessing how big the gif will be by what frames I have, but for other people, you might need to mess around more.
One thing you want to keep in mind when making gifs is the background because if the background moves a lot, your gif will be a lot larger in size. At the end of this scene, she pulled him off to the side a little, so the whole back wall moved to follow her, but I cut off the gif before she could do that.
Now to Photoshop - I only used one other Photoshop before this but I am pretty sure similar methods can be used with older versions.
File –> Scripts –> Load Files into Stack
Find your images, select them all and hit enter and then hit OK.
Just in case you don’t have your Timeline (which you need to make gifs) open, go to Window - Timeline
That will make another little window at the bottom of your screen.
Click this little button on the right of the Timeline and choose “Make Frames From Layers” which will take all the images you opened and put them into an animation in the timeline.
Open same window again, choose “Select All Frames”
And same window again, choose “Reverse Frames” because the gif will be backwards unless you do.
While all the frames in the Timeline are still selected, click the little arrow button on the bottom of the frames - where it says 0 sec. and then choose the “0.1 seconds” which will change the speed for all your frames to a speed.
0 is super fast. 0.1 looks more like the speed of the show.
You can press the little Play button on the timeline and view your gif to see how it looks and make adjustments if you have anymore doubles or really similar frames.
Now it’s time to save because this isn’t an editing tutorial.
File –> Save For Web
My regular settings. I say this because I change them all the time depending on the gif. I prefer 256 colors but is by no means totally necessary.
You can see the size of your file underneath the picture to the bottom left. It should be under 1022k to get it work properly.
There is also this option, which you get by clicking on the little icon all the way to the top right. You can choose “Optimize to File Size” and choose the size you want the gif to be saved and Photoshop will decrease the quality to fit the size you want but I don’t really use this option because it can really decrease the size for some of them. You would set it to about 1020k.
This is my completed gif. I didn’t edit the colors at all or anything else.
I hope that helped?
There are some other things you can do to reduce your file size as well. I could have definitely deleted a couple of more frames in this one, like her hand reaching to grab him and one of her pulling him back to her.
You can also crop your images to be smaller in pixels, which I do a lot when I am trying to trim off a little for size. In this one I cut off some from the top and the bottom.
And the easiest thing is to reduce the colors when saving. I try to save usually at 200 - 256 but a lot of mine are 128 too if necessary. This last one is under 900kb but still looks fine. It’s only 128 colors.
And that’s that. Feel free to ask any questions and I will do that I can. I have a few more tips to give about specific things in gifs but I don’t want to make this any longer than it already is!
I just made this gif for this tutorial so will probably actually post it later with some minor editing.
If you actually learn off of this, please tell me! :D
