#I downloaded lots of screencaps | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

eddiediaaz · 6 months

Note

alie! I absolutely adore this mirrorball x buck set that you made last year! (/post/701462848238403584/) (also I can't believe it's been a year, like seriously what is time?) I was wondering how you did the shattered glass effect in the first gif? in particular how you made the black and white gifs appear distorted within the glass if that makes sense? thank you!!!

ahhh thank you so much renee! literally what is time lol, this gifset is still one of my faves that i made. the shattered glass effect is mostly just a lot of layer masks to be honest hahaha. i'm so glad i still have the psd, so here's how i did it under the cut~

(this tutorial assumes you know how to put multiple gifs in the same canvas and are familiar with layer groups and masks)

I. PREPARATION

first things first, create an empty canvas of your desired size. mine was 540x540 px.

then, you need to find a cracked glass texture. if i remember correctly i simply googled something like "broken glass png", "cracked glass png", because i wanted something already transparent.

(a texture that's something like black lines over a white background definitely works too, you'll just have to put that layer's blending mode to darken or multiply.)

here's the png i used (and a download link for best quality):

and after positioning it into my canvas.

II. CREATING MAIN SECTIONS FOR GIFS

so basically when i did is i sectioned parts of the texture for each gif that i wanted to put. following the texture's lines, i zoomed in and carefuly drew a first shape along the lines with the polygon tool. you can also put a color fill layer behind the cracked glass layer so it's easier to see, like i did.

once you have your shape selected, click on the folder icon (1), then on the layer mask icon (2). it should give you a nice masked group to put gifs in hehe

then i repeated the process until i had all of my desired shapes. i've put some color layers so it's easier to see, but here are my 6 main shapes and how my layer groups look like so far:

III. GIFFING TIME

after screencaping and making all 6 gifs required for each section, you need to put all of them in the same canvas. i simply put one smart object gif layer in each group created earlier. then, i resized and rotated each gif to fit its group (by hitting ctrl + T while selecting the gif layer), as you can see with the gif labeled 6x02 in the layers preview. for the coloring, i went simple with black and white for most of them.

once i have all six gifs sharpened, colored, and placed in each shape group, the gif looks like this. the broken glass texture does most of the work to be honest:

obviously the center gif doesn't have any kind of effect, it's just colored as usual, so i'm not gonna go over it. it's just one gif layer in a masked group.

IV. SUBSECTIONS FOR DISRTORTED EFFECT

okay so for the distorted effect it's even more layer masks! basically i created more smaller sections within each main shapes already, still following the cracked glass texture's lines with the polygon tool and put them in individual masked groups like i did in the second step. here's how i ended up dividing each main sections:

yep, each color here is a different masked group, for example the 2nd and 3rd shape sections:

for each main shape section, you want to duplicate your gif layer the same amount of times as you have subsections within that shape. so if the main shape has 5 smaller subsections, i want 5 layers of that same gif. just make sure to not change its duration or position yet, and make sure the coloring layers/group stays on top of the groups in its shape section. then, simply put one gif layer duplicate in each group. example of my layers for the second shape so far:

then just repeat this until all subsections have its own gif layer.

V. DISTORTED EFFECT

this is the best part! and it's really easy. basically you want to slightly move each subsection by a few pixels, so they're in a slightly different position than the ones next to it.

to do so, select one of the gif layers and with the arrows on your keyboard, move it left or right, and even up or down if it looks good. i do this for all duplicated gif layers, making sure it looks like they're all slightly offset. focus on the cracked glass overlay's lines while nudging the gif layers, it's easy to see how the shapes break when you move them. for example here:

this is really just all trial and error, you just need to move each subsection gif layer by a few pixels with the keyboard arrows until it looks good to you.

here's my result once i've done this for all (23!!) subsections:

VI. FINAL TOUCHES

i don't think i did much else to this before typography besides adding a bit of contrast overall and a thin drop shadow to the cracked layer texture on top of everything. if you have a transparent png this definitely helps to give a bit more dimension to the effect. so here's the final result:

i hope that was clear enough hehe :D

373 notes · View notes

brotherconstant · 9 days

Text

GIFMAKING TUTORIAL: PHOTOPEA (for Windows)

Screencapping

Gif Width/Size Limit/Ezgif

Loading Frames

Cropping and Resizing

Rasterize/Make Frames

Sharpening

Coloring (not detailed. Links to other tutorials included)

Exporting

Obligatory Mentions: @photopeablr ; @miwtual ; @benoitblanc ; @ashleysolsen Definitely check out these blogs for tips, tutorials and resources, they're a gold mine. Finally I recommend browsing the PHOTOPEA TUTORIAL / PHOTOPEA TUTORIAL GIF tags. DISCLAIMER: English is not my first language and I'm not an expert on what I'm going to discuss, so if anything's unclear feel free to drop another ask.

1. SCREENCAPPING -> PotPlayer (the one I use) or MVP or KMPlayer

INSTALL PotPlayer (tutorial)

Play your movie/episode and press Ctrl + G. The Consecutive Image Capturer window will pop up. Click Start to capture consecutive frames, Stop when you got what you needed.

Where it says "Image Type -> Format" I recommend picking PNG, for higher quality screencaps.

To access the folder where the screencaps are stored, type %appdata% in windows search, open the PotPlayerMini64 folder (or 32, depending on your system) and then the Capture folder. That's where you'll find your screencaps.

Admittedly MVP is a lot faster but I prefer Potplayer because it generates (at least in my case) higher quality screencaps. MVP kind of alters the hue and it made it harder for me to color my gifs. Still, if you're interested in how to use it, I recommend this tutorial.

As for KMPlayer, every tutorial out there is outdated and I couldn't figure out the new version of the software.

2. GIF WIDTH/HEIGHT, SIZE LIMIT, EZGIF OPTMIZER

At this point you should already know how big your gifs are going to be. Remember the ideal gif width(s) on tumblr are 540 px / 268 px / 177 px. These specific numbers take into account the 4 px space between the gifs. No restrictions on height. Here are some examples:

You can play around with the height (177x400, 177x540, 268x200, 268x268, 268x350, 268x400, 540x440, 540x500, 540x540 etc) but if you go over the 10 MB limit you'll either have to make your gifs smaller/delete some frames.

OR you can go on ezgif and optimize your gif, which is usually what I do. The quality might suffer a little, but I'm not really (that) obsessed with how crispy my gifs look, or I'd download photoshop.

Depending on the gif size, you can decrease the compression level. I've never had to go over 35. It's better to start at 5 (minimum) and then go from there until you reach your desired ( <10mb) gif size. Now that I think about it I should have included this passage at the end of the tutorial, I guess I'll just mention it again.

3. LOAD YOUR FRAMES

File -> Open... -> Pick one of your screencaps. The first one, the last one, a random one. Doesn't matter. That's your Background.

File -> Open & Place -> Select all the frames (including the one you already loaded in the previous passage) you need for your gif and load them.

(I recommend creating a specific folder for the screencaps of each gif you're going to make.)

WARNING: When you Place your screencaps make sure the Crop tool is NOT selected, especially if you've already used it and the width/height values have been entered. It will mess things up - I don't know why, could be a bug.

You can either select them all with Ctrl+A or with the method I explained in the ask: "when you want to select more than one frame or all frames at once select the first one, then scroll to the bottom and, while pressing Shift, select the last one. this way ALL your frames will be selected".

WARNING: Depending on how fast your computer is / on your RAM, this process may take a while. My old computer was old and slow af, while my new one can load even a 100 frames relatively fast, all things considered. Even so, I recommend ALWAYS saving your work before loading new frames for a new gif, because photopea might crash unexpectedly. Just save your work as often as you can, even while coloring or before exporting. Trust me, I speak from experience.

Now you can go ahead and delete the Background at the bottom, you won't need it anymore.

4. CROPPING AND RESIZING

Right now your screencaps are still smart objects. Before rasterizing and converting to frames, you need to crop your gif.

Technically you can rasterize/convert to frames and then crop, BUT if you do it in that order photopea will automatically delete the cropped pixels, even if you don't select the "Delete Cropped Pixels" Option. Might be another bug, unclear. Basically, if you crop your gif and then realize you cropped a little too much to the left or the right, you can go ahead, select the Move Tool (shortcut: V) and, after selecting ALL YOUR FRAMES, move them around on your canvas until you are satisfied. You won't be able to do this if you rasterize first and then crop, the excess pixels will be deleted. I don't know why, I found out by accident lol.

CROPPING

(Cropped pixels: the gray/opaque area outside of the selected area. That area disappears once you press enter and crop, but the pixels are retained, so you can move the frames around and reposition them as you like. In this case I could move the frames to the left and include Silver's figure [curly guy in the foreground] in the crop)

After deleting the Background, you will need to select all your frames (using the Shift key), use the C shortcut on your keyboard to choose the Crop tool. Or you can click on it, whatever's more convenient. Once you do that, a dropdown menu is going to appear. You need to select the "FIXED SIZE" option, as shown in the following screencap.

Once you do that, you can type in your desired width and height. Do not immediately press enter.

Your work area should now look like this. Now you can click on one of the white squares and enlarge the selected area until the edges are lined up. You can then move it around until it covers the area you wish to gif.

WARNING: to move the big rectangle around, you're gonna have to click on a random point of the work area, PREFERABLY not to close to the rectangle itself, or you might accidentally rotate it.

See? When your cursor is close to the selected area it turns into this rotating tool. Move it away until it reverts to your usual cursor, then you can start moving the rectangle. Press Enter when you're satisfied with the area you selected.

RESIZE

This isn't always necessary (pretty much never in my case) - and it's a passage I often forget myself - but it's mentioned in most of the tutorials I came across over the years, so I'd be remiss if I didn't include it in mine. After cropping, you'll want to resize your image.

IMAGE -> Image Size...

This window will pop up. Now, should the values in the Width and Height space be anything other than 540 and 400 (or the values you entered yourself, whatever they might be) you need to correct that. They've always been correct in my case, but again. Had to mention it.

5. RASTERIZE & MAKE FRAMES

Now that your screencaps are cropped, you can go ahead and convert them.

LAYER -> Rasterize (if you skip this passage you won't be able to Sharpen (or use any filter) on your frames at once. You'll have to Sharpen your frames one by one.

Photopea doesn't feature a timeline and it's not a video editor, which makes this passage crucial. When you select all your smart objects and try to apply a filter, the filter will only by applied to ONE frame. Once you rasterize your smart objects and make them into frames, you can select them all and sharpen them at once. Unfortunately this also means that you won't be able to - I don't know how to explain this properly so bear with me - use all smart filters/use them in the same way a photoshop user can. For example, you can sharpen / remove noise / add noise / unsharp mask... but you can't act on those filters in the same way a photoshop user can. When you work on smart objects you can change the blend mode - which is critical if you decide to use a filter like High Pass. If you simply apply a high pass filter on photopea you won't be able to change the blend mode and your gif will look like this (following screencaps). Or rather, you will be able to change the blend mode by clicking on the little wheel next to "High pass" (circled in green in the 2nd screencap), but you'll have to apply the filter to each frame manually, one by one.

Then you can rasterize/make into frames, but it's extremely time consuming. I did it once or twice when I first started making gifs and it got old pretty soon haha.

Layer -> Animation -> Make frames. This passage will add "_a_" at the beginning of all your frames and it's what allows you to make a (moving) gif. As I said in the ask, if you skip this passage your gif will not move.

6. SHARPENING

Some people prefer to color first and sharpen later, but I found that sharpening filters (more or less) dramatically alter the aspect of your gif and already brighten it a bit (depending on your settings) and you may end up with an excessively bright gif.

Now, sharpening settings are not necessarily set in stone. The most popular ones are 500/0.4 + 10/10, which I use sometimes. But you may also need to take into account the quality of the files you're working with + the specific tv show you're giffing. I've been using different settings for pretty much every tv show I gif, especially in the last couple months. Some examples:

followed by

AMOUNT: 500% RADIUS 0.3px followed by AMOUNT: 20% (or 10%) RADIUS 10px

You'll just need to experiment and see what works best for your gifs.

Some gifmakers use the UNSHARP MASK filter as well (I think it's pretty popular among photopea users?) but it makes my gifs look extra grainy, makes the borders look super bright and it clashes with my coloring method(s), so I use it rarely and with very moderate settings. Something like this:

Again, depends on the gif and on what you like. I've seen it used with great results by other gifmakers!

REDUCE NOISE

Sometimes - and this is especially the case for dark scenes - your gif may look excessively grainy, depending on how bright you want to make it. Reducing noise can help. Keep it mind, it can also make it worse and mess up the quality. BUT it also reduces the size of your gif. Obviously, the higher the settings, the more quality will suffer.

These are my standard settings (either 2/70% or 2/80%). It's almost imperceptible, but it helps with some of the trickier scenes.

ADDING NOISE

Adding noise (1% or 2% max) can sometimes help with quality (or make it worse, just like reduce noise) but it will make your gif so so so much bigger, and occasionally damage the frames, which means you won't be able to load your gif on tumblr, so I rarely use it.

You'll also want to create ACTIONS which will allow you to sharpen your gifs much faster.

HOW TO CREATE AN ACTION ON PHOTOPEA

The Action Button (shaped like a Play button as you can see in the following screencaps) may not be there if you're using photopea for the first time. If that's the case click on the magnifiying glass next to "Account" (in red) and type "actions". Press Enter and the button should immediately show up.

Once you do that, click on the Folder (circled in yellow)

and rename it however you like.

now click on New Action (circled in red). now you can press the Recording button (circled in green)

Now

FILTERS -> Smart Sharpen

and you can enter your values. Then you repeat this passage (WITHOUT pressing rec, WITHOUT pressing new action or anything else, you just open the smart shapen window again) and, if you want, you can sharpen your gif some more (10%, 10px, or anything you want.)

Maybe, before creating an action, experiment with the settings first and see what works best.

When you're satisfied, you can PRESS STOP (it's the rec button, which is now a square) and you can DOWNLOAD your action (downwards facing arrow, the last button next to the bin. Sorry, forgot to circle it) .

You need to download your action and then upload it on your photopea. When you do, a window will pop up and photopea will ask you whether you wish to load the action every time you open the program. You choose "Okay" and the action will be loaded in the storage.

When you want to sharpen your gif, you select all your frames, then you click on the Play button, and select the Action, NOT the folder, or it won't work.

Actions can also be created to more rapidly crop and convert your frames, but it doesn't always work on photopea (for me at least). The process is exactly the same, except once you start recording you 1) crop your gif as explained in step 4, 2) convert into frames. Then you stop the recording and download the action and upload it. This won't work for the Rasterize step by the way. Just the Animation -> Make Frame step.

7. COLORING

Now you can color your gif. I won't include a coloring tutorial simply because I use a different method for every tv show I gif for. You normally want to begin with a brightness or a curve layer, but sometimes I start with a Channel Mixer layer to immediately get rid of yellow/green filters (there's a tutorial for this particular tool which you will find in the list I mention in the link below)

[Plus I'm not really an authority on this matter as my method is generally... fuck around and find out. Two years of coloring and I still have no idea what I'm doing. 70% of the time.]

Simple Gif Coloring for Beginners -> very detailed + it includes a pretty handy list of tutorials at the bottom.

8. EXPORTING

Now you can export your gif. Some gifmakers export their (sharpened) gifs BEFORE coloring and then load the gifs on photopea to color them. I'm not sure it makes any difference.

FILE -> EXPORT AS -> GIF

(not colored, just sharpened)

As you can see, unlike photoshop the exporting settings are pretty thread bare. The only option available is dither - it sometimes help with color banding - which, and I'm quoting from google for maximum clarity:

"refers to the method of simulating colors not available in the color display system of your computer. A higher dithering percentage creates the appearance of more colors and more detail in an image, but can also increase the file size."

SPEED

When you export your gif, it will play at a very decreased speed (100%). I usually set it at 180/190%, but as for every other tool, you might want to play around a little bit.

GIF SIZE/EZGIF OPTIMIZER (See Step 2)

And that's it.

P.S.: worth repeating

Save your work as often as you can, even while coloring or before exporting.

#photopea #my inbox is open if you have any questions <3 #image heavy under the cut #photopeablr #tutorials #gif tutorial #allresources #photopea tutorial #completeresources #gifmaking

118 notes · View notes

userpeggycarter · 15 days

Text

TOPAZ AI TUTORIAL

i was asked to do a tutorial for Topaz AI (a software that enhances screencaps), so here it is! :)

[tutorial under the cut]

i’m going to gif a 720p YouTube video from 12 years ago as an example. it’s the bottom of the barrel when it comes to image quality, but in the end, you won’t believe it was once so shitty. here’s the gif, without any editing:

THE APPLICATION

Topaz AI is a paid software for image enhancement. you can download it for free, but your images will have watermarks. here's a random link that has nothing to do with this tutorial.

you can use Topaz AI as a Photoshop plugin or use the software separately. i will explain both methods in this tutorial.

USING SEPARATELY

it’s the way i do it because it’s more computer-friendly, the plugin can take a toll on your PC, especially when you’re dealing with a lot of screencaps.

you first take screencaps as you normally would (if you don’t, here’s a tutorial on how to do it). open Topaz AI and select all the images. wait a while for the software to do its thing.

on the left, there is your screencap untouched. on the right, is your edited version. if you click the edited screencap and hold, Topaz will show you the original, that way you can compare the versions even better than just looking at them side by side.

Topaz AI will automatically recognize faces, if any, and enhance them. this can be toggled off, by disabling the “recovering faces” option in the right panel. it’s always on for me, though. you can tweak this feature by clicking on its name, the same thing for the others.

Topaz AI will also automatically upscale your screencaps if they’re too small (less than 4k). it will upscale them to achieve said 4k (in this gif’s case, the original 1280x720 screencaps became 4621x2599). i suggest that you let the app upscale those images, giving you more gif size flexibility. you can change into whatever size you want if you want something less heavy to store. don’t worry though, even these “4k screencaps” are very light megabytes-wise, so you won’t need a supercomputer. it might take a while to render all your screencaps, though, if you’re on a lower-end computer. (the folder with the edited screencaps ended up being 1GB, but that’s because it contains 123 screencaps, which is a lot of screencaps for 4k giffing).

two options won’t be automatically selected, Remove Noise and Sharpening, you will need to enable them to use them. rarely i don’t use Remove Noise, as is the best tool to remove pixelization. the Sharpening option depends on the gif, sometimes your gif will end up too over-sharpened (because of Topaz’s sharpening and later your own). that said, i used the Sharpening option on this gif.

next, select all images by clicking the “select all” button. you will notice that one of the screencaps’s thumbnails (in my case, the first one) will have small icons the others don’t have. this is the screencap you enhanced. you will need to click the dots menu, select “apply”, and then click “apply current settings to selected images”. this way, every screencap will have the same settings. if you don’t do this step, you will end up with one edited screencap and the rest will remain untouched!

all things done, click “save X images”. in the next panel, you can select where to save your new screencaps and how you want to name them. i always choose to add a topaz- prefix so i know what files i’m dealing with while giffing.

just a note: if your way of uploading screencaps to Photoshop is through image sequence, you will need to change the names of your new screencaps so PS can perceive that as a sequence (screencap1, screencap2, etc). you can do that by selecting all the screencaps in your folder, then selecting to rename just one of them and the rest will receive numbers at the end, from first to last. you don’t need to rename them one by one.

here’s the first gif again, without any editing:

without Topaz enhancement but with sharpening:

without sharpening, only the Topaz enhancement:

with Topaz enhancement and sharpening:

her skin is so smooth that it is a bit unrealistic. i could have edited that while tweaking the “Recovering Faces” option and/or the “Remove Noise” option, but i prefer to add noise (filter > noise > add noise) when necessary. this way, i don’t risk not enhancing the quality of the screencaps enough.

i added +3 of noise, making the gif look more natural. it’s a subtle difference, but i thought it necessary one in this case. you can continue to edit your gif as your heart desires.

VOILA! 🥳

AS A PHOTOSHOP PLUGIN

if you have Topaz AI installed on your computer, Photoshop will recognize it. you will find it in filter > Topaz Labs > Topaz AI. while in timeline mode, select the filter. the same Topaz AI window will pop up and you can tweak things the same way you do when you use the software separately. by using the plugin, you don’t need to upload your edited screencaps or use screencaps at all, a video clip (turned into a Smart Layer, that is) will suffice. the downside is that for every little thing you do, Topaz AI will recalculate stuff, so you practically can’t do anything without facing a waiting screen. a solution for that is to edit your gif in shitty quality as you would edit an HD one and at the very end, you enable Topaz AI. or just separately edit the screencaps following the first method.

this is it! it's a very simple software to use. the only downside is that it can take a while to render all screencaps, even with a stronger computer, but nothing too ridiculous.

any questions, feel free to contact me! :)

110 notes · View notes

geezmarty · 1 month

Text

...devlog #1??? - mini BG3 VN

So I recently downloaded Renpy because I wanna learn how to code in my spare time and I figured I'd write about it here for both posterity & to record my process with it all!

The project I'm starting with will be quick and easy because 1) I really don't want to start with something huge 2) I have work & commissions to take care of and those will come first.

About the project:

If you've been following me you know I've gotten hugely into bg3 so I thought why not code a little scene where you get to meet my durge, Brigha! I'll put my goals and expectations under the cut. Here's my first renpy test ft. Wyll.

First of all, what the hell is Renpy? Very simply put, Renpy is a software that allows you to create visual novels. You can check it out (and even download it for free!) here.

The "mini VN" I'm working on will feature a scene in Act1 of how I imagine you'd meet and recruit (or not!) my durge if she were a companion in the game, featuring some neat little things and details that I will hopefully be able to implement.

This is what I want to put in:

Ability to input your character's name;

(royalty free) music playing in the bg;

Multiple dialogue choices with (very small) dialogue trees;

Perhaps some pop ups like perception checks or companion approval/disapproval;

Companion pop up comments, randomized in one instance towards the end;

Two endings.

It might seem like a lot and it probably is - I might cut a couple these to make sure I don't spend too much time getting the vn out there.

So far I have the first draft of the script ready and I'll probably leave it as is unless testers will point out inaccuracies or weird phrasing. Here is a little concept of how I imagine Brigha will be dressed when you meet her:

Sprite wise she'll probably be the only one to have a full body/expressions (to preserve my wrists) but I might also draw little simple headshots of the other companions for when they'll pop up to comment.

As for backgrounds I will spare myself and just grab screencaps from the game that I will blurry/apply effects to, just to make them look a bit more coeshive with the sprites.

This is all I have so far! The VN will be available to play for free on your browser once I'm done with it :) ETA undetermined since this is a free time project done for fun.

Wish me luck!

#devlog #bg3 mini vn

108 notes · View notes

bobbiedebruyn · 1 year

Text

Hello everyone! Recently, lots of new people joined Tumblr, so I think it's a perfect time to talk about gifmaking again. In this post, I collected all the tutorials that I found helpful in the past year.

how to make a gif:

basic gif making tutorial + mvp player installation

gifmaking for beginners

how to install mvp player on a pc

film downloading & screencapping tips

correct photoset dimensions

coloring

how to fix orange-washed characters

how to: colouring east & southeast asian celebs

channel mixer

colored background

color manipulation

vibrant coloring

how to brighten dark scenes

color isolation

effects

glitch effect

blending

crossfade transition

gradient effect in the text

gradient text

red colour accent on the b&w gifs

how to add a gif in a template

blurring gif backgrounds

using templates

text

text tutorial 1

font resources

understanding fonts and typefaces

split text

subtitles

other

icon tutorial

gif headers

I hope this post helps some of you. For more resources and tutorials, I highly recommend visiting @usergif. Good luck :D

#photoshop tutorial #gif tutorial #gif resources

812 notes · View notes

bonesbuckleup · 29 days

Note

Hi, random q. I saw in your tags that you swear by Scrivener for original fic. I’m still plugging away in ye olde Word and now I’m intrigued to know what about Scrivener you like so much. I’ve def heard about it but never used it, so I’m curious :)

YES I would love to tell you about my lord and savior software Scrivener. I hope you don't mind I published this long, long answer publicly.

So. The main issue I have with Word and Google Docs is that you hit a certain length/word count, and it starts to lag and load kind of jerkily. You know? Also, navigating chapter to chapter or scene to scene is awkward for me--you either have to have a whole bunch of individual documents and multiple windows open, or you have to use headers and the table of contents...which is fine for quickly finding chapters but less so for scenes within those chapters.

Messy, basically. Does not spark joy for me.

Enter Scrivener.

Now, before I evangelize a bit, I will say that Windows Scrivener and Mac Scrivener are not 100% created equal. They are both better, I think, than Word or Google docs, but the Mac version is a bit slicker and a little nicer to look at. I only say that for if you're using Windows, because if so my screencaps below won't exactly match what you see if/when you download the program.

ONWARD.

So, the #1 thing that Scrivener has over Word is that it's a one time fee, not a subscription. So while it is a little pricey (Just went and looked, $59.99 USD), it's only the one payment. All updates and such are covered and available as free downloads. I will also say that Scrivener gives you a 30 day free trial. That's not 30 consecutive days, but 30 days of use--if you only use it every other day, you'll have the trial for 60 days. They make it really easy to figure out if it's for you or not.

This is also going to feel like a lot, but there are built in tutorials and it's actually pretty intuitive, depending on how your brain works. Anyway! The basic gist of Scrivener is that it's a digital binder. You can keep all your book stuff in one place:

As you can see, there's the manuscript (aka my book), notes, research, more. Tbh, I mostly just use notes and Manuscript, but if it floats your boat, you can store maps, place names, worldbuilding, playlist links, moodboards, a whole ton of stuff, all in one menu that's easy to access and in a single window. You can organize it however itches your brain the best way.

But like I said, for me, the best is that Manuscript part, which I'm going to go into now. I use a three act structure for books (but break the big ol' middle act into two pieces because it makes my brain happy), so each act gets a folder.

When I click and expand that act, each chapter has it's own folder. However, it also shows quick-reference index cards, so I can have an at-a-glance at what's going down in each chapter. (I'm using a outline system called Save the Cat for this book, which is why all my chapters have titles like 'Catalyst', feel free to ignore those...I also have a very compact timeline, so to help me stay organized, I labeled each chapter with when it happens.)

You can do the same with each individual chapter and the scenes, where when you click on the chapter folder, each scene gets a card. If you don't type in a summary, it'll just auto-populate the start of whatever content you were writing. You can see this in the 'Copper's Candids NEW' card.

And, of course, it is writing software. When you click on the individual scene, it opens the blank document, and you can get cracking.

So. This system is nice for a few reasons. My favorite is that it makes navigating, reorganizing, and/or rewriting scenes extremely easy. It's just point and click, drag and drop. You can also open two docs in the same window at once, like this:

Which is a nice feature for several reasons--you can work on a new version of a scene with the old one pulled up next to it, or if there's something you wrote earlier or that comes later that's important to what you're working on now, you can have them both up for quick referencing.

Another slick thing is each doc has a notes section off to the right side of the screen--which is optional! I use it for future revision notes/descriptions of how I want the scene to go:

My other favorite part of Scrivener is that it makes it very easy to hoard your deleted scenes like a deranged dragon in case you want them later. My garbage looks like this:

There are SO MANY FILES hanging out in my trash, and you know what? I so rarely actually need them, but my god am I glad they're there on the rare occasion that I do. Word, again, can make it more difficult. I always had a massive 'cut' document that was longer than the actual project and again, awful to navigate. This just makes it easier.

Scrivener also makes it easy to compile the manuscript into other doc types--pdf, doc, docx, etc--for easy printing and sharing.

ANYWAY. I'm sure there are approximately 1 million other things I'm missing, but basically Scrivener takes all your book/long project bits, puts them in one centralized file, and makes it super easy to navigate. I've also found that outlining is easier, because I can just make the folders and scenes and drag them around while I noodle through the plot.

10/10, would recommend to any long-form writer. If you have any other questions, please let me know! If anyone has read this far and has a thing about Scrivener to add, please do! I love Scrivener, and a lot of my writing buddies love Scrivener, and it really kinda has revolutionized the way I write original fiction. I'm always happy to yell about how great it is.

#mail #story-monger #long post #Scrivener #free yourselves from the shackles of Word and Google Docs my long-form-writing friends #there is a Better Way #writing

58 notes · View notes

dqmeron · 1 year

Text

some quick info: ↳ this is specifically for the screencapping method. i use mplayer osx extended to get my caps, but there are a few other programs you can use as well. i’ll specifically be going over mplayer here. ↳ i’m using ps 24.4.1 on a 2020 m1 macbook air

[tysm to @kyubinz for looking this over and adding some things ily]

☆ feel free to send me an ask/message with any questions you have! ☆

「 setup 」

1. finding videos

one big thing to remember is that the overall file size of your video will impact the quality of your gif. the larger, the better. i almost never use anything below 1080p, and try to use 2160p whenever i can. 4k video downloader is the program i use for downloading videos from youtube, it’s free to install and works great! because of how large some files can be, i always store any media on my hard drive. i highly recommend using one if you plan to keep lots of files on hand.

.mkv files are best, but .mp4 works fine as well (.mkv files are usually bigger aka better quality).

2. getting your screencaps

after downloading mplayer, go to the top bar and click file > open. open the video you’ll be screencapping.

you can either drag the little time indicator or using the arrow keys on your keyboard to move to the spot you want to capture. the > key can also be used to move forward frame by frame. to start capping, pause the video and press shift + cmnd (ctrl if you’re on windows) + s to take a screencap. i usually just hold it down until i’ve gotten all the screencaps i need.

by default, screencaps go right to desktop. you can set up a folder for them to go to automatically by going to settings > general and then selecting a spot in the menu under “interface”, but i just let them go to desktop and then sort them into individual folders so they’re easier for me to find while i’m giffing. in general, i try to stay under 80 frames so my gifs fit into tumblr’s 10mb image size limit.

3. importing screencaps into photoshop

to import your caps into ps, go to file > scripts > load files into stack. this window should open:

click browse, and navigate to the folder with your caps in it. select all of the caps you want to import, and then click open.

click ok to create a file with your caps, and then wait until it’s finished loading your caps into the layers tab. once they’re loaded in, this is what your screen should look like:

(if you aren’t seeing the timeline at the bottom of your screen, go up to the top bar and go to window > timeline)

click create frame animation, then go to the hamburger menu at the top right of the timeline and select make frames from layers. once your frames have loaded in, select the same menu again and click reverse frames. play through your gif to make sure everything looks good.

if you were to save your gif at the speed it’s set at now, it would be way too fast. to fix this, you have to set the frame delay. do this by selecting all your frames in the timeline using shift click, and then clicking (on any frame) where it says “0 sec”. select other from the menu that comes up, and you should get this popup:

the general rule of thumb for gif frame delay is 0.05 seconds. there are some cases — certain animated movies or video games, for example — where other delays are best, but for the most part, 0.05 is what you want to use (0.05 can slightly slow gifs, and sometimes using 0.04 better matches the clip's original timing. this is really a "train your eyes" thing, and picking the best delay gets easier as you gif for longer). you can set this by typing the number into the text box and then hitting the ok button or enter on your keyboard.

at this point, i’d go ahead and save your file. you can go to file > save in the top bar, or just hit cmd/ctrl + s on your keyboard.

「 making your gif 」

1. sizing

after your frames are ready, the next thing is to size your gif. to crop your gif, press c on your keyboard to open the cropping tool. white borders will show up around your gif.

before doing anything, i would suggest making sure “delete cropped pixels” is unchecked. this will allow you to drag your gif around later if you want to reposition. you can find this option at the top of your screen. drag the borders on either side until you have the area you want selected. mine looks like this:

once you’re happy with your selection, hit enter on your keyboard to finalize it.

the tumblr image guidelines require gifs to be 540px across (here’s a post detailing this). to change your gif’s image size, go to image > image size in the top bar. you’ll get this popup:

instead of setting the width right to 540, i’ll be setting it to 544, and then trimming down the edges using canvas size. this makes the quality just a little better, and also prevents any weird borders being made around your gif on the off chance photoshop decides to add them. this isn’t necessary at all, you can absolutely size right to 540, but i just like doing this. if you choose to do this, open canvas size right after you set image size (image > canvas size in the top bar), and trim your width down to 540 and your height down a few pixels as well.

2. sharpening & other filters

sharpening is essential for good-quality gifs. the first step to this is converting our timeline from frame animation to a video timeline. select this little icon in the bottom left of your screen:

this is what your timeline will look like now:

you can use the little slider with mountains on either side to change the width of your frames in the timeline for easier access when editing. now that we’ve got all this set up, we can sharpen! i use this action pack to sharpen my gifs in addition to a few of my own settings (here is a video on how to install actions into photoshop). go to window > action in the top bar if you aren’t seeing the action tab.

i’ll be using the sharper action from the pack. to use an action, select it from the list and press the little play button at the bottom of the panel to apply it.

in addition to this, i usually also add unsharp mask at 50% amount with a 0.5px radius:

there are a few other filters than can be helpful when giffing:

a. add/reduce noise noise (aka grain) can be added with “add noise”. go to filter > noise > add noise.

these are the settings i usually use, but the amount depends on the gif (i don't ever go over 3.5 for the most part):

(if you want a grain effect but moving noise doesn't work for the gif, you can also add a grain overlay and then mess with blending mode and layer opacity until it looks how you want)

reduce noise can be used to remove some of the pre-existing grain on a clip. go to filter > noise > reduce noise. here are my settings:

leaving reduce noise on its own at 100% is a bit too much, so double click this icon and change the opacity (i usually do around 45):

b. gaussian blur if your clip is a bit pixelated, gaussian blur can help with smoothing it out a bit. go to filter > blur > gaussian blur. my settings are 1 pixel radius w ~20% opacity (this changes based on the gif).

3. coloring

time to color! i want you to keep in mind during this section that everyone likes different colorings, and this is just my process! please don’t feel pressured to follow exactly what i’m doing, the best way to find what you like is to just mess around and experiment!

i like to start off with lighting adjustments: brightness/contrast, levels, exposure, and curves.

a. brightness/contrast i usually start out with this first, just because brightening the gif right away helps me start thinking about how i want to color! here are my settings:

b. levels/curves levels and curves can either be used interchangeably or together. i usually use levels to adjust lighting and curves to adjust color values, but i’ll go over using both for lighting as well as using curves for adjusting color values.

for both of these adjustments, i use the eyedropper tools to pick out white and black points. for levels, the top eyedropper tool to the left of the graph is used to pick out a black point. i do this first. use the tool to pick a spot on your gif that you want to be the base for black values. for me, that’s the shadow inside rey’s hood. the bottom eyedropper tool picks white point. use the tool to pick a spot on your gif that you want to be the base for white values. i chose the outside of rey’s hood. make sure you’re doing this on a new levels adjustment layer.

now, on to curves. you can either use the same eyedropper method or manipulate the graph directly. using the eyedropper is the same as levels, so i’ll just go over graph manipulation.

shade lightens as you move to the right along the x-axis of the graph — black is the far left, white is the far right, middle is the midtones. generally, i don’t work with midtones.

i’m going to use levels for this gif’s lighting, and curves to adjust color values. here’s how to do that:

curves can be used to adjust the amount of a certain color in different lighting areas of a gif. for example, i can specifically decrease the amount of green in the gif’s whites. to edit these values, select the rgb drop-down menu and adjust them one at a time. here are my final graphs:

c. exposure this one’s pretty straightforward. the exposure slider adjust general exposure. the offset slider adjusts how dark your dark points are, and gamma correction can be used to lighten/darken scenes as a whole. here’s my settings:

d. color balance color balance is used to adjust overall tint of a clip. this is in general pretty simple, but i do want to point out that using the shadow and highlights tabs in addition to just the midtones can really help. here’s my settings:

e. channel mixer channel mixer is one of my favorite tools in ps, especially for coloring scenes that are a pain in the ass without it. to avoid taking up too much space, here’s a great tutorial covering channel mixer. here’s my settings:

[at this point, i’m noticing my gif is still a bit darker than i’d like it, so i’m adding just a bit of brightness/contrast to fix it. there’s also a patch of blue over one of rey’s eyes, so i’ve used a hue/saturation layer to get rid of that bit and masked it to her eye. i’m not going to go over masking here, but there are lots of great tutorials out there!]

f. selective color selective color can be used to adjust the amount of specific colors within a color. for example, if i were to go into the red tab and take out cyans, the reds would become more red. if i were to add yellows, the reds would become more orange, etc etc. this can be especially good for color manipulation. for this gif, i’d like to make the background more blue, so i’m going to use selective color to do this. here’s my settings:

g. color lookup color lookup uses 3dlut files to remap gif colors (it’s a preset — think instagram filter or something similar). i don’t always use these, but when i do, i almost never leave them at 100% opacity. color lookup is great for giving gifs a film-type look if you want to do that, it’s got loads of different options. here’s my settings (adjustment layer is set to 20% opacity):

atp i’m pretty much done with coloring! i usually end up doing a few extra little lighting adjustments at the end. for this gif, i added some brightness/contrast at +8. i’ve also noticed that my gif’s looking a bit grainy, so i’ve added some noise to lean into it. this is usually the way i fix it, but you can definitely do reduce noise/gaussian blur as well if you don’t want a grainy look.

here’s my fully colored gif + a process gif (fast images warning):

「 saving gifs 」

1. frame rate

one thing you may have noticed is that my gif is looking a bit choppy. photoshop has a tendency to mess with frame delay after gifs are converted to video timeline. here’s how to fix that.

select all of your layers and convert them to a smart object (right click > convert to smart object). next, click on the hamburger menu in the top right of the timeline and go to convert frames > flatten frames into clips. now we need to change the timeline from video timeline to frame animation. click the little 3 boxes symbol in the bottom left corner of the timeline:

go to the hamburger menu again and select make frames (this is the same one you used earlier), then go through your frames and delete any duplicates. the first frame usually needs to be deleted specifically. once you’ve done that, set the frame delay back to 0.05 the way you did earlier.

2. exporting

once you’re happy with how your gif looks, go to file > export > save for web (legacy).

these are my export settings, but feel free to experiment with the menus where i have selective and diffusion selected, different settings work best for each gif. in general, most gifmakers only use selective/adaptive and diffusion/pattern because they generally work the best for tumblr. before saving, make sure your looping option is set to forever:

gif size for tumblr has a 10mb limit. my gif is under this, so i don’t need to make any changes, but if yours is over, you can either delete some frames from the beginning/end of your gif and/or adjust the height of the gif (width needs to stay 540px so your gif doesn’t get stretched/compressed on tumblr, but height is fair game).

here's my final gif!

happy giffing, and please don’t hesitate to send me any questions you have! ♡

#*mine #gif tutorial #tutorials #allresources #usertheos #userzesty #userzaynab #usershreyu #rogerhealey #userabs #userhekaates #usermaria #userraffa #usermorgan #uservivaldi #tuserheidi

280 notes · View notes

housewifebuck · 7 months

Text

hi everyone! I've gotten several requests to make a tutorial on how to make gifs for someone just starting out and I finally got around to slapping a tutorial together.

This tutorial will cover:

software recommendations

choosing what to gif

creating a gif step by step with probably a lot of unnecessary detail

some tips and tricks:)

(This particular tutorial will not cover how to find tv and movies to download and gif, or any specific instructions on coloring. only the basic gif making process.)

so for the purposes of this tutorial, we will be using Adobe Photoshop, which is the most common program for making gifs, and the one I recommend. the version you have doesn't make a major difference in terms of capabilities but the interface may be slightly different looking if you have an older version or a different type of device. you cannot make or edit gifs in any mobile version of the photoshop application. Optionally, we will also be using Adobe Premiere Rush/Pro or another video editing software of your choice. wherever you are downloading Photoshop, whether from Adobe or a third party, you should easily be able to acquire Premiere as well. I am aiming to be as detailed as possible in this tutorial, so it may sound more time consuming than it really is. once you get the hang of things, it goes fast. the most time consuming part by far is the editing and coloring. in my opinion, one thing that majorly saves time while giffing is knowing your keyboard shortcuts and using your mouse/trackpad as little as possible. I will be going over these in this tutorial as well.

before we begin, some general tips:

gifs of single shots that do not cut between angles or subjects generally will look the best, barring exceptions

for a single gif set, choosing scenes and shots with similar lighting will be easiest to get to look uniform when compiled together, since editing wildly different looking scenes to have similar coloring and lighting is hard and takes some practice!

avoid shots that will require you to majorly crop or zoom to properly frame the subject, as this will greatly diminish quality

speaking of quality, gifs will look best using 1080p video, but you can get away with 720p as well. I would not recommend giffing with anything lower resolution than that

Tumblr's upload capacity for image and gif files is 10mb. be sure when exporting your finished gif that it is under that size. if it is a bit over, you can try trimming a few frames off your gif in the video timeline.

if you get frustrated, don't give up! giffing is hard and complicated especially if you are new to photoshop. I tried to make this tutorial as detailed as possible so it's easy to understand (although im sure I still forgot some stuff)

ok onto the tutorial!!!

STEP ONE: choose what range of frames you want to gif, and how.

once you have decided what you want to gif, there are two main way to convert your episode into a range of frames to make into a gif. the first is by screencapping. this involves downloading a program like mplayer or vlc which can be used to convert video files into "stacks" of screencaps, which can then be separated into whatever range of frames you want and imported into photoshop. this is seemingly by far the most common method I have seen amongst gifmakers*, but personally I don't care for it and I think it's more confusing and time consuming overall, so I will be explaining the second method: importing video frames to layers.

now, normally what this would mean is opening the full episode in photoshop and using the pathetic little playheads on either end of the scrub bar to trim the file into a clip. this is where your video editing software comes into play.

open whatever episode or movie you want to gif in your program. if it is a large file like a long movie in 1080p, this may take a few seconds. like I said, I am using Premiere Rush. I will be using a random episode of 9-1-1 for my example gif.

in your media browser, hover over whichever episode you want (you can also just add the whole episode to your project and scrub through, but that can take longer unless you know what time stamp you're after). click the fullscreen button by the bottom righthand corner.

now you can scrub through and trim the episode before you even import it to premiere. this makes trimming your clip even easier.

use the trim bar (yellow outlines) to trim as close as you can around the scene you want to gif.

then click this plus, and then "add" below. this will add the clip to your project.

now, move the blue playhead up to the frame you want your gif to start on. then, use the scissors button off to the left to slice the clip. select the portion before the playhead, and delete it.

now move the playhead to where you want the gif to stop. a good length for most gifs is around 1.5-2 seconds in my opinion. some may be shorter depending on how long the shot is, or longer if you plan on making them smaller (remember, the uploading capacity on Tumblr is 10mb per file.) trim again, now delete the portion after the playhead. you can also use the left and right arrows beside the play button to move frame by frame, and you can adjust the side of the horizontal scroll bar below your clip to “zoom” in on it and make scrubbing easier.

once you have your clip, go up to where it says "share". your clip will be rendered, and then you can click export to save it.

repeat step one as many times as you want for each gif. I know this may sound complicated, but like I said above once you get in the rhythm this step takes only a few seconds.

STEP TWO: create your gif!

close premiere. open photoshop. head to the control bar at the top. select file > import > import video frames to layers.

navigate to whatever folder you exported your clip to. select it, and hit enter. a second popup will appear asking you to select your range of frames. since you have already trimmed your clip to your liking, simply hit enter a second time.

now your screen looks like this, and we are going to crop and resize our gif! (troubleshooting: if you do not see the timeline bar at the bottom, select window from the control bar, scroll down, and make sure timeline is selected as part of your workspace. Adjustments and layers should be there automatically but if not add them too).

Tumblr posts are 540px wide, so in order to make my gifs as small as possible while maintaining quality, I typically crop my gifs to be around 550-600px wide, with varying heights depending on what shape I want the gif to be. experiment with this a little and decide what works for you. just don't make the width lower than 540px. once you have the portion of the frame you want inside the cropping grid, hit enter again. sometimes you have to hit it twice.

here are the measurements I am using for this gif

now in your timeline, select frame 1. hold down the shift key and scroll to the end to select the very last frame, thereby highlighting them all. from here we will edit our frame delay rate. photoshop will automatically set it to .03s, which will make your finished gif awkwardly fast. I typically use .05s, or .06s if I want a gif to be subtly slower (this comes in handy if the shot you are trying to gif is very short). anything longer than .06s will look weird though. choose "other" from this menu and type in your delay rate. make sure not to miss the zero after the decimal.

once you've set your frame rate, go to the other end of your timeline and click here to convert your frames into a video timeline.

then press option + command + A (on Mac) or windows + alt + A (on PC) to select all layers. then right click (control + click with a trackpad) on any one of the highlighted layers in your layers tab off to the right. scroll down in the popup menu and select Convert to Smart Object.

THAT'S IT!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! WE HAVE GIF!!!

from here comes the fun part!! you will begin adding action filters like sharpening as well as adjustment layers to color and edit your gif. experiment with different adjustments and styles until you find something you like. too many adjustment layers will up the size of the finished gif though, so I tend to keep mine to 3-4 layers max unless its a really hard to color scene. if anyone is interested in a separate coloring tutorial, please let me know!

once you are finished editing your gif, click file > export > save for web (legacy) OR hit shift + option + command + S. play your gif in the export window to make sure it looks okay, and then hit save!

I hope you guys find this helpful and informative! please hit up my in box if you have any questions or if anything doesn't make sense. happy giffing!!!

*one reason people seem to prefer screencapping to this method, is saving all the individual clips as video files does take up a lot of space on your scratch drive, which in turn can cause your computer to work slowly or crash programs. this can be rectified by making sure to delete the clips from your computer once you are done making the gifs. another space hoarder to look out for is the proxy files of your episodes that will be automatically saved to your hard drive whenever you add an episode to your project in Premiere. Periodically, go through your storage and delete all the .proxy video files. this will not delete the original episode files, only the proxy files created by Premiere.

tagging some mutuals to sb hehe: @shitouttabuck @lover-of-mine @honestlydarkprincess @eddiediaaz @compactdiscmp3 @eddiebabygirldiaz @bigfootsmom @callaplums @athenagranted @firemedicdiaz @sibylsleaves @loserdiaz @buck2eddie @diazass @eddiediaztho @giddyupbuck @monsterrae1 @icecreampotluck @sunflowerdiaiz @swiftfootedachilles @singlethread @aziraaphales @911onabc

#if this doesn’t make any sense yes it does. I’m very sleepy #tutorials #gif tutorials #🪐#gif help

117 notes · View notes

saw-x · 2 years

Text

Hi so I’ve had a couple of anons asking me how I make my gifs (some specifically hsmtmts gifs lol) so I’ve decided to write up a tutorial of the basics of how I make my gifs. I’m going to try and make it as detailed and clear as possible - but I have been pretty busy with uni and stuff so if I miss anything or anything isn’t clear just lmk and I will do my best to clarify. I’m going to try and include any resources or other tutorials which may be useful as I go along. This is going to be quite long and detailed so tutorial follows under the cut. For some basic steps I know of good tutorials for - I will link tutorials rather than re-explaining :)

Before we begin with the tutorial part bear with me there are a couple of screencaps which I took out of sequence because I forgot to take them at the step I did it - and the final gif colouring result looks kind of different from the rest of the screencaps because when I was adding the gif to the gifset I was making it for I decided it needed to be brighter because the s3 scene was much brighter than the s2 gif I made for this tutorial (none of this really matters, just explaining the slight discrepancy in some of the caps).

1. SOFTWARE

To make all of my gifs I use Photoshop CS5 (this is the version I use). Any version of Photoshop should work with the methods in this tutorial and you can find a masterlist of cracked photoshops here

2. FINDING HQ VIDEO

When making gifs I always use 1080p video - but not all 1080p is created equally. Generally remux files and larger file sizes will produce better quality screencaps so this is what I search for when giffing. I know a lot of gifmakers who swear by using 4k, but personally I find 4k is more trouble than its worth in my opinion (screencaps always come out weird on my computer - like with a full on green tint, and they take forever to download). For HSMTMS in particular I like to use the release labelled 1080p SALT.

In terms of finding videos, this is a good guide on downloading.

3. SCREENCAPPING

I use mpv player to take screencaps for my gifs. This is a tutorial on how to use and install mpv. When taking your screencaps make sure you have continuous screencaps and no frames are skipped or duplicated. These missing/extra frames will make your gif look choppy and the animation won’t be smooth.

After finishing my screencaps I put them all in folders and move the folders to my desktop (but it can be anywhere you easily can access the folder) to import into Photoshop.

4. IMPORTING SCREENCAPS TO PHOTOSHOP

Open Photoshop. Open the Menu path "File > Scripts > Load Multiple DICOM files” and select the folder where the screencaps for your gif are.

5. CROPPING AND RESIZING GIFS

Click the ‘Crop’ button on Photoshop (the little button shown in the screenshot below). Typically I like to use a preset so that all the gifs in the set I make are the same size. For this set I used the 4x5 crop preset because that is what I typically use.

Position the crop where you want the gif (typically I like the character in the center).

Then push enter (or the tick next to the crop buttons) to confirm your crop.

Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + I to resize your image. This will bring up a little pop up like this:

Resize your gif accordingly based on the width. It is important to use the correct dimensions for the size of the gif you wish to make. These are summarized in the below image.

When you change the width to the correct size (e.g. in this case 540px) the height will automatically change as well.

Click Ok to resize.

6. ANIMATING YOUR GIF + SHARPENING

There are quite a lot of steps to turning your frames into a timeline animation. They are covered in detail in this amazing gif tutorial (which is the main one which helped me learn to gif).

It would be useful to have a read of how the process works, but to speed things up for myself I use a Photoshop action (shared here) I made that does all these steps for me plus my sharpening😊 (Here is a tutorial explaining how to create & install Photoshop actions)

I just highlight the word animate click the play sign and it does all the tedious steps in a couple of seconds. Note it is important to keep the reverse frames one unticked as shown in the screencap otherwise your gifs will move backwards

After that runs through we have our gif in timeline mode sharpened and ready to colour :)

7. BASIC COLOURING TECHNIQUE

My basic colouring process is very simple and honestly it may shock some people but I primarily colour my basic scene gifs using only the curves and vibrance adjustment layers. There a few reasons for this – 1) The curves tool is a powerful tool and you can do a lot with it 2) Less adjustment layers = better quality gifs 3) This works for me and it is what I find easy. Essentially, I like to keep things simple where ever possible.

First I add a curves layer by clicking on the highlighted adjustment layer

This gives you a menu that looks like this:

The great thing about Curves is that Photoshop will do a lot of the work for us if we use the eyedropper tools.

First I click the white eye dropper – then I pick a white point on the gif and see how it goes. This can take a few times to get right and often I will try a few times to see which I like best.

For this gif I selected the white light in the background but it looks a little green to me

After I have selected my white point I will usually do the same thing except with picking a black point of the gifs. I don’t always pick a dark point it kind of depends on how much I like what Curves has done with the white point and if I think the gif needs more contrast.

For this gif I picked a black point of the area behind Ricky. This is what the gif looks like now with the dark point chosen:

This looks a little better to me than just the white point – but the screencap still looks kind of yellowy and dark to me. So what I do now is I go into each colour channel for the curve and manually adjust it to my liking.

Since this gif is yellow I start in the blue channel and add more blue. I do this by changing the drop down menu on the curves screen from RGB to blue. This gives me something like this to work with:

Essentially I adjust the amount of blue in the gif by sliding the white arrow down the bottom up or down to add more or less blue to the gif. For this gif I am going to slide white arrow at the bottom to the left to make the gif more blue (i.e. neutralise yellow). If I think I have added too much blue I slide it back to the right to add yellow back in.

This is what I adjusted it to and it already looks a lot better

I am actually pretty happy with the overall colouring of this for the moment and I don’t think I need to go into the red and green curves. But I will briefly explain what they do/how they work by showing what some adjustments to these curves looks like.

Red curve – here is our starting point

Dragging the curve to the left will introduce more red into the image

Dragging it back to the right will take out red (the gif will become more cyan)

Green curves: this is our starting point

Dragging the green curve to the left will add more green to the image

Dragging it to the right will take green out (adding pink/magenta)

So after I am happy I have coloured the image in curves If I want the gif to be a little brighter I go back to the main RBG Curves screen and drag the white arrow a little up to the left to add some additional brightness

After colouring with Curves I add in a Vibrance layer (highlighted adjustment layer)

Typically I set the vibrance somewhere between 50 and 60.

This is what the gif looks like now:

At this point I also have another quick look at the gif and see if I think I need to go back into curves and tweak the colouring a bit and add a bit of extra brightness. When I add in the Vibrance I find it easier to see if there is any underylying colours I want to go back and neutralise/adjust in my curves layer again.

This is what I end up with after making my adjustments post vibrance layer:

Another step I do sometimes is grabbing the black slider on curves and dragging it just a little bit to the right to add some depth and contrast to the gif. As s2 of hsmtmts is really dark I didn’t do it for this gif because I don’t think it needs it. But I will show an example of what this might look like:

This is basically it for my basic colouring. Of course there are a lot of different steps to making my colourful gifsets, but this is just a basic tutorial for the way I gif standard scenes so I will move on to subtitling gifs.

8. CAPTIONS

My go to subtitle font is Arial Rounded MT Bold. I have Faux Italic and Faux Bold Selected for this. I like bigger font sizes because I have bad eyesight so usually I will opt between 20 – 24 pt font size

I click the T button to add text then I type out my caption.

Obviously we don’t want our text here so I align it to the bottom and centre of the gif I do this by first selecting the move tool then going ctrl + a (this selects our gif as the boundary for our alignment). You will know this is done based on the border that comes around the gif (also please ignore that drop shadow and outline settings have already been applied here lol – I added this in because I forgot to screen cap/ explain this part initially)

Then I align my text using the following menu buttons:

Next I Ctrl +D to remove the selection (you need to do this to be able to nudge your text up for the next step). This is the result of the alignment:

Now I nudge the caption up by selecting the text layer and pushing ctrl + shift + up

This is the result:

This looks ok, but I always add an outline and dropshadow to make the text more readable. To do this I go into the blending options for the text layer. You can do this by right clicking the layer and selecting blending options or by double clicking the layer (but not on the text).

First I add Stroke with these settings

Then I add Drop Shadow with these settings:

9. SAVING GIFS

To save your file use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S to open the save for web settings. You will get a screen like this. The settings shown in this screen are my typical save settings (except it should say ‘Forever’ on looping options)

However, Tumblr’s gif limit is 10mb so the size of this gif is too big to upload (it is nearly 12 mb) so we have to go back in the timeline to shorten the gif a bit so we can upload it to tumblr.

I do this by dragging the red preview thingy (idk what else to call it) around till I find a point where I feel the gif has a natural end. Then I grab the timeline bar thingy (idk what it’s called but the silver gray bar at the end of the gif) to the red bar to shorten the gif.

Now press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S again to save your gif and make sure you set the Looping Option to ‘Forever’. Sometimes I have to shorten the gif a few times to get it under 10mb - but luckily I got it first go this time :)

Now your gif is saved but there is still one step left to do. Photoshop has a glitch where it automatically sets gif speed to 0.7 after saving from the timeline function – we don’t want that! The gifs look very slow and are not very smooth.

So what we do is we open the gif that we just saved and this will open in the frame format. All we have to do is select all frames and set the gif speed to 0.5 – I also have this in my action so I go back to the actions and highlight the line that says ‘set frame speed’ and play the action through

Then we just save the gif again as we just did 😊

This is the end result:

and what the gif looks like without any colouring or text:

One other helpful tip:

If you are giffing from the same scene you can do your colouring and text manually as per the tutorial on the first gif for the set and then drag what you did across to the second (after cropping, resizing and animating it). All you need to do is drag the colouring outside to a different window then highlight your adjustment layers + text and drag them to the new canvas off of the gif (If you drag it on top of the gif it will place it where you put it. Make sure to go off the canvas to so it will keep you positioning/alignment of the text you made 😊)

Basically - you drag the text, curves, vibrance (and any other layers you need) to the gray area of your photoshop document and your colouring will be applied and your text will be placed in the same position as your source doc.

Ok so that is my super basic gif tutorial - if anyone has any questions feel free to ask!

1K notes · View notes

skidar · 1 year

Text

Please do not complain to the great folks behind Glaze that this is ‘too little too late.’

Glaze is a free software in development that coats artwork BEFORE you upload it and scrambles the image from AI ripping technology so that it can’t be effectively used in their slurry machines to generate ai shit.

I get that it’s easier to complain and that actual laws would help but are we really going to wait for our reps to give a shit (ha) and put down a group of individuals who actually care and are trying their damndest to protect themselves and others from theft FOR FREE?

Is Glaze perfect? Of course not, it’s in BETA they are still working on it but they are excited to share how its working so far so yay!

Does it stop art thief short cuts? Not yet but neither is anything else we’ve tried. Thieves scrub out watermarks, screencap and repost from private accounts and patreons all the time. Plus a lot of artists have been posting their works for years and the theft machine has already been trained on the works they have had up for decades. That doesn’t make it hopeless, just an annoying hurdle. Give them some TIME.

Point is, these people are actually trying to help, and they have been on the front lines of this fight from day one.

So lets not kick back and mope about how everything sucks and blah blah blah and actually have a little bit of HOPE in something for once.

No one gets anywhere by giving up in advance and ridiculing those who are still fighting.

Support the great folks behind Glaze. Download the software. Glaze your pieces if you can before uploading and don’t stop creating your art. The world needs your real human art.

I hope in the future we can get some good anti ai protection for writers too <3

#glaze #fuck ai

203 notes · View notes

cephaloclod · 4 months

Text

i had a thought today

what if there was a robot girl and she had a crush on you and you knew it and she was trying to ingratiate herself to you so she offered to run some of your computer programs for you on her cpu cuz haha why not haha and youre like aww thanks so you boot up your virtual doll game of choice (im talking ffxiv but you can use whatever in ur dumb brain) and download a bunch of modded clothes and start taking up all her spare memory and shes like uuuuh hehe thats a lot of mods… and youre like lol yeah i wanna try on a bunch of stuff and shes like haha yeah lol… and shes all nervous cuz you keep downloading more and more and she doesnt wanna tell you to stop obvs so shes just going along with it and then you get in the game and crank up the r-shade to the highest settings and you hear her fans kick on to overdrive and shes like uuuh whats up and youre like oh just taking a few quick pics of my heavily modded character haha i wont be long and her fans are getting louder and faster and you can see shes already getting hotter but shes still being nice and doesnt wanna seem mean so you start trying on all the modded clothes and taking a ton of different screenshots and ofc its like all horny big tiddie stuff cuz like thats the fun so shes just getting her already limited memory space spammed by whats turning out to be hundreds of super high fidelity high res screen shots of a hornily/scantily clad big boobed fat assed virtual character and shes like getting really overheated now but like soooo much of her cpu is being used to run this game and at all the highest settings with all those fancy shaders and all that junk so shes like struggling to keep it together and she cant really say much except make loud fan noises as you just sit there and spam her with more and more ridiculous pics at ridiculous angles of your character and her memories almost full but youre still taking more and she finally manages to squeek out something like a maybe we should take a breather for a second but youre like oh but im almost done and my character is just so much fun to take screencaps of and is soooo hot and shes just like yyeeahfh as you take like five more pics of ur toons ass and now the game is running really slow so its taking even longer to set up the shots to take the pictures and the computer girl is just like treading water in this lagged overheated state staring at your beloved characters huge modded rack as you try on another new shirt and realize you wanna go back and see what it looks like with those tights from earlier and she still just doesnt wanna say anything to inconvenience you and maybe this is a good way to die anyway she thinks well thinks is a strong word cuz like 99% of her cpu is being used to render the exposed midriff of your virtual cat girl or whatever it is so she just kinda feels it and the room you two are in is like getting really hot cuz shes just producing so much heat and you can see shes struggling to keep it together and the game is chugging alone reeeeeeeeal slow now and ur just like only a few more outfits im almost done and honestly you kinda would be annoyed but you know shes doing her best and you know it and atm she cant even really respond except to keep her fans going full blast so you like zoom in on your lizard girl or whatevers cleavage and just give her a good eyeful for a couple seconds knowing its literally taking up basically 100% of her processing power at this point and youre like thanks for doing this i loooove my character soooo much shes just soooo hot haha and just so great

#robot girl #computer girl #overheating #eroticism of the machine #is this yuri

40 notes · View notes