Basic gif tutorial

Okay, so a few have been asking me about gifs & I just got another request to create a tutorial about making a gif. I’m pretty sure you will find much better tutorials online & specially on Tumblr but here you are :]

First of all - you need to have two programmes: KM player & Photoshop [CS3/CS4/CS5]

(at least this is my way of creating the gifs)

After you have downloaded the video which you want to make a gif from, you open it up with the KM player. I suggest HD videos for better quality but that’s okay.

You go to the exact second that you want the gif to start from & you pause. You press Ctrl + G.

This box should appear:

Adjust the settings as mine & then press play & start. This will extract the frames from the video to the destination you have designated (In the “Extract to…” folder). When you want it to stop you just press stop & close.

Now open the Photoshop.

Go to File»Script»Load files from stack & go to the folder where the frames are. Select the ones you want to use for the gif & open them in Photoshop.

Please mind: For the best results/quality, you should use these sizes dimensions for the gifs:

(those are the dimensions that the gif sets require but if you want to upload one single gif any width would work less than 500px)

Now consider that a gif with 500px width can have about 15-20 frames since we have the 1MB limit with gifs in Tumblr.

So back to Photoshop.

You have now opened the frames. Go to Window»Animation. The animation bar will appear at the bottom.

Click what I have highlighted below:

And select “Make frames from layers” & “Reverse frames”.

Also “Select all frames” & set a time for all of them, I usually select 0,1 seconds:

Make sure to resize your gif. Edit»Image Size [I will set the width at 500px] 

Now that’s pretty much it. All you can do later is some coloring and probably some text if you want to - all these take some practice but regarding the making of the gif, that’s it.

To save it properly, go to File»Save for web & devices. Then apply these settings as shown:

MAKE SURE the size of the gif is UNDER 1MB.

Click “Save”, name your gif & voila.

The hardest part is the coloring really but if you download some proper PSDs, you can do miracles!

Let me know for any help anons ;]

Hope I somehow helped!

This is the finished gif:

106 Notes


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