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#been gifmaking for so long i should hope i know how to color by now ;-;
softpadawan · 2 years
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Where's the nsfw stuff?
Sigh.
I was going to ignore this ask, but then I decided this is a perfect opportunity to unpack one of the bigger problems creators are facing in fandom today, namely entitled consumers (not fans) of their work, who expect a constant stream of new content without giving anything in return. 
Let’s begin with this simple formula: if you like something an artist has created and want to see more of it, then you should:
Comment on and publicly bookmark the content (AO3)
Reblog the content (Tumblr)
In other words, anon, you have to support them. You’re going to have to put in a little effort, which isn’t asking much considering the much greater effort it takes authors and artists to make the content you enjoy so much. 
Likes on Tumblr don’t do shit; reblogging is the only way to be seen. Private bookmarks on AO3 don’t do shit. Comments make an author’s day, even one liners like “I really loved this” or a keyboard smash with a little heart on the end. A simple “thank you for writing and sharing” is a great way to endear yourself to an author. 
How long does it take to leave a 4-word comment? A few seconds? Reblogging a post takes literally one second, maybe a few more if you add some nice tags (yes, we see those too). To compare, how long does it take an author to plot, draft, write, edit, and post a 5000-word story? Or an artist to draw a fully colored and rendered piece of art? NSFW art can take even longer, because finding the right pose and drawing anatomy is more challenging. 
Almost all of us creators have jobs or education or health issues or real life obligations that prevent us from being able to devote all our free time to writing or drawing. They are our hobbies, the things we do to unwind and give our lives a little zazz. Many fan authors and fan artists receive no financial compensation for their work. They make it for free and share it with others in the hopes that their creations will be enjoyed by others and people will send them a little feedback about how much they liked them. That is the only payment some of us get. 
Do you know the difference between a consumer and a fan, anon? A consumer is someone who takes and takes and never gives back, someone who follows an artist on social media without ever interacting with them, who never reblogs or retweets that artist’s work, never comments, but only clicks the “like” button and moves on, and then later wonders why that artist has stopped making art for X thing.
A fan is someone who is enthusiastic and supportive, who will leave a few positive words when they can, who reblogs and comments. A fan is thankful, and so are we creators when we find people like this—we’ve got a live one, boys! Many of them become our friends, and we go on to have epic chats and brainstorming sessions and share ideas, which in turn generates more art than there would have been without this friendship. 
This is the heart and guts of fandom itself. This mingling and sharing, this love fest between artists and authors and gifmakers and photoeditors and fans who can’t do any of that but love to see the stuff their friends make, and they hit that reblog button and leave comments and click that little heart when they’re making a bookmark on AO3 to show just how much they loved it.
We creators see that. And it validates us. We’re not alone! Someone out there enjoys this thing as much as I do, and holy shit they reblogged it too! And now other people are seeing it! Asdf;lkjs;ljdf;lsajd
If creators never receive feedback or have their work shared, then they have no idea if their audience is enjoying their work. Or if they even have an audience. If you don’t engage and interact with creators, very few of them are going to create more stuff. Why should they? They have no incentive beyond whatever love compelled them to create in the first place.
If you want writers and artists to keep creating the content you enjoy, SUPPORT them. Reblog. Comment. Bookmark. You never know if you’re going to make someone’s day—or a new friend.
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thyla · 1 year
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Hi there! I was wondering if you had any tips for coloring Eddie's performance? Your edit (post/705347354650427392/stranger-things-409-the-piggyback-bonus, really all your piggyback Eddie gifs) the coloring is absolutely SUPERB, truly that scene has been the bane of my existence and any tips you would be willing to share would be appreciated.
first off, thank you!!!! and secondly, so sorry this took so long. i didn't know how I would do this tutorial and then life happened and I weirdly got busy. lol but here we are now!! let's get to it. (for this tutorial you’re gonna need basic gifmaking skills)
i'm gonna show you some how I colored these gifs:
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so they pretty much have the same coloring but i tend to go in a tweak stuff around. So in this tutorial i’m just gonna show you what layers i use and what order (that totally matters). and some other tips that i found helpful.
after i do that i go and stack all my layers i’m gonna use.
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i learned that channel mixer is my new best friend it comes to coloring the upside down. once i have those stacked i actually start with curves.
click the bottom curve layer and click the white eyedropper
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and then on the gif click the part of the scene you want the lightest. so i usually look at the whites points on the gif.... for example i don’t remember completely but i’m pretty sure i clicked the whites in eddie’s bandanna. it it could be something in the background to a person’s face... just depends. and you can always adjust the opacity and fill of that layer if it’s too intense.
and now click on the black eyedropper
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and click on an area you want the darkest... and it should come out something like this
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after that i go to the brightness/contrast layer and adjust it... which changes to scene to scene so just play with it.
NOW COLORING!!
i start with hue/saturation
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and because this gif i’m using as a lot of blue in it naturally... i’ll go where it says master and hit that arrow down and go to the cyan & blue and play with those adjustments... for example:
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this is also helpful if you wanna change the bluish coloring to like pink or purple or green... etc... ALSO, for that eddie performance if.... i’ll turn up the red saturation too!
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now we have this..
from here i kind of move around in all the other layers... i don't really have step by step... i would suggest maybe playing around in selective colors. and in selective colors... i start with black and work my way up. after you do that... i would play around with the levels layer and the exposure layer...and this is how it comes out to look like:
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NOW after those... it’s time to go in with the channel mixer... its a game changer (at least for me haha)
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here’s what my red output looks like but click on where it says red and play around with the green and blue output and after that i get my final look for my gif!
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i hope that all makes sense! i wanted share a good amount and also let you have space to play around and learn too.
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haknew · 3 years
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Ok so i dont want you to spill all your secrets, that's part of the work so it wouldn't be right, but like how do you do coloring that way??😭😭 I mean the cyans and the reds, they go so well together I'm speechless every time I see your works;;;
oh nothing about my gifmaking process is really a secret djkffbdjjd no worries ! i’m always happy to help anyone who wants to make gifs ! 🥺✨ hmm well ! my coloring style i’ve been told is very uniquely my own ? but to be honest i drew inspo from my own personal fav gifmakers to see which color combinations i liked best for colorings ! since everyone has a coloring style they prefer, cyans + reds are my personal favorite ! smth to be said about color theory too since they’re complementary colors ! as for how i get cyans and reds … typically i adjust all the colors in my gifs over to those two tones in hue / sat and selective color ! i think gifs with too many colors look a bit busy (imo of course it’s just a preference) so i’ll go through individual colors (magentas, blues, greens, yellows) and adjust cool colors over to cyan and warm colors over to reds ! (for blues it’s about -30 in hue / sat and yellows -20 !) but yea ! tbh i just eyeball it 😭 some colorings turn out better than others and i never feel like i’m consistent but it makes me reeeeally happy to hear you think they look nice 🥺💖✨ means a lot to me ^^
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jemelle · 4 years
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how i make gifs
 @robins-gf​ asked if i could make a tutorial on how i gif, so here’s my best shot! this is just going to cover the physical act of gifmaking; if you want to know how to download videos and make your gifs as high-quality as possible for uploading, i’d suggest this tutorial!
this is also a photoshop exclusive tutorial because that’s what i have. a good windows link for photoshop is here!  download 7zip and you should be able to open the file (still looking for a good mac link though) 12/13/20 unfortunately this link no longer works
[edited to say: i forgot cuts were a thing when making this post lmao, so the rest of it is under the cut to save y’all from having to scroll through it]
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1. record your video. the shows i watch are all on netflix, so i record individual clips, although i know some people have entire videos downloaded. be aware that itunes goes black if you try to record it. if you don’t know how to screen record, google [your operating system] + screen record
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2. open photoshop and click file -> import -> video frames to layers, then select your video
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3. select the part of the video you want and click ok. if it’s a long portion, you’ll want to click “limit to every 2 frames,” but because i’m only capturing a small moment, i’ll leave it unclicked
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4. your workspace should look something like this! if there are frames you don’t want, now’s your chance to delete them: just select the frame in the timeline at the bottom and click the garbage can icon
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5. after you’ve trimmed your gif, you need to change the frame rate (otherwise it will go really quickly)
click the three little bars at the top of the timeline and hit “select all frames,” then click the little arrow below any individual frame and change the rate. my go-to is 0.07, but you might want to fiddle around depending on length
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6. with all the frames still selected, click “convert to video timeline” (in the bottom left of the timeline)
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7. once your frames have been converted, click select -> all layers, and then click filter -> convert to smart filters
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8. now technically at this point you’ve made a gif (remember to save it!) but i’m guessing at least some of you are interested in how i edit my gifs, so to start out, i add a bunch of adjustment layers (if you can’t see the adjustments panel in your workspace, click window -> adjustments)
my first step is usually levels, just to brighten the gif. sometimes i add curves or vibrance on top of that, and then i usually finish things out with a selective color layer. this is the part of the tutorial where you really want to rely on trial and error more than anything else.
9. once you’ve recolored your gif, you’ll want to crop and resize it. 9/10 times i crop my landscape gifs to 16:9 and my portrait ones to 4:5, but that’s totally up to you.
after cropping, i click image -> image size to resize the gif. my go-to is usually 300 or 600 pixels, depending on how many gifs i want to have in a row, but as long as it doesn’t exceed the tumblr size limits, you should be able to upload it
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10. to export your gif, click file -> export -> save for web. i can’t remember if i had to change my settings from the default, but you should make yours match mine
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11. et voila! you now have a completed gif to proudly post everywhere! i hope this was helpful, and if you have any questions or would like tutorials on specific things (captioning, adding text, etc.) please let me know!
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daily-hundred · 5 years
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THE 100 GIF/COLORING TIPS
Okay, so I know nobody asked for this lmao but I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about the lighting on The 100 (which is completely understandable since it’s very bad.) And even though I’m not at all a pro, I’ve been giffing this show for awhile and I’ve found out some stuff that might be useful for other The 100 gifmakers out there.
Please reblog/like this if you save anything from this tutorial or if it helps you at all :)
WHAT YOU NEED 
Photoshop (I use CS5).
General knowledge on giffing.
Patience because The 100 is a hard show to color. 
COLORING PREVIEW
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WARNING: This is very long. Everything starts under the cut!
GENERAL GIFFING TIPS
Get 1080p/720p downloads. Since The 100 is already a very dark and grainy show, anything lower will ruin the gifs’ quality.
Make sure you have cropped the gifs to the proper Tumblr size. Click here for reference. And get rid of the network logo when you’re cropping it! It always looks better without it.
Sharpen your gifs! I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t. Sharpening your gifs will make it look more HD and show off your coloring better. My sharpening is a smart sharpen with these settings. You can go here if you want to experiment with other actions/settings, though.
Do not have any skipping frames. Please. Your gif will look sloppy and won’t be as smooth, therefore ruining the quality of it.
Make sure you have the gif timing right. I usually go for 0.05 seconds because personally I think it looks best, but I’ve seen some who went with 0.04s or 0.07s and that also works well. Go for 0.05s! I realized now other time settings doesnt work as well as 0.05s especially with The 100.
Save settings. My usual go-to settings are these. Though sometimes I went for selective instead of adaptive and it looks okay, too! :)
+ extras: subtitle!
The font you use for subtitles on your gif will also affect the way your gif looks. Fonts that are too big or too small will make it look less HQ, but having the right font with the right size (and the right position!) will make it look good. Here are some text settings you can use that I’ve found: [ one / two / three ]
COLORING TIPS
Now that you’ve kind of gotten the general giffing tips, I’ve listed out some coloring tips that I found out specifically for The 100. All PSDs will be linked at the end of this post.
Adjust your brightness before anything else.
The 100 is generally very dark, but even with scenes that are already not too-dark, you’re still gonna want to adjust the brightness so you can work on the colors better. I’ll go detailed with this one. We’ll be working on 3 scenes, bright, neutral, and dark scenes.
1. BRIGHT/YELLOW
For this one, I used a scene of Clarke from Season 5. 
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The scene is already very bright, so what we’re gonna do here is to adjust it so it’ll look prettier without being too bright that it hurts our eyes. First let’s do curves. I added two curves layer, the first one is to add just the tiniest bit more brightness to her face, and the second one is to darken the background. and then I’m gonna add brightness and levels for contrast:
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Alright, now that I’m already happy with the brightness, I’m gonna go and adjust the color. This is too yellow for me, so I’m gonna add a color balance layer to and pull up the blues/cyans/magentas
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That’s good, but it’s too desaturated. I’m gonna go and add selective layer to make the colors pop up. I adjusted the red, yellow, and neutral and I got this:
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Now this looks great already! Unfortunately, I’m annoying so I have to add more adjustments lmao. This is the final result after being added with an extra brightness layer and a gradient map on luminousity.
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2. NEUTRAL
For this one, I’m gonna use a scene of Lexa (reshop heda you’ll always be missed) from Season 2. It’s not very bright but it’s also not too dark.
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Now the tips with scenes with enough clarity (doesn’t have to be super bright, but if you can still see things clearly) like this one, clicking the ‘auto’ button on curves saves a whole lot of time. I did so and this is what I have in result:
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The auto curves will usually brighten the gif and balance the color on it. Often times you still have to adjust it again. But still this will save a lot of time. I added some more brightness and levels before adding color balance and selective colors layer, and here’s the final gif:
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Keep in mind that this will only work with some scenes. This will work alright with the Clarke gif above, but it definitely won’t with this next gif we’ll be coloring.
3. DARK/BLUE
Okay now this one requires some work. I chose Octavia’s scene from the Season 6 trailer. 
The original sharpened gif (notice that I got rid of the logo! It’s really annoying for me so I always find a way to get rid of it.)
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It’s reaally dark. So let’s start with brightening it up a little. I added curves, brightness, levels and more brightness because it was still dark as hell:
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Now, you may think it’s already bright enough, but for me personally I can still make it brighter, so I added exposure. With dark scenes exposure works really well. But you have to take it easy with this layer since it affects the gif drastically with very minimal effort. I also added a black and white Gradient Map layer that I always set to luminousity:
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Now it’s time to go and adjust the hell out of the color balance to make it less blue! I also added an extra selective colors layer to make the reds pop out and get rid of the pixelated/grainy blacks on her hair. After that I added another brightness layer. Here’s my final result:
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The quality on this gif is not as good as the others since it was from the youtube trailer (1080p youtube video are still low compared to web-dl’s) but that’s basically the gist on how I work on The 100′s darker scenes! :)
Color balance and selective colors.
The 100 lighting often makes your gifs not only too dark or too bright, but also too yellow or too blue. Balancing it out using a color balance almost always helps. Selective colors layer will also help when you want to pop up certain parts of your gifs. Here’s some tips on selective colors that I got from msmarvel’s coloring tutorial.
Selective colors and color balance layer usually go in the middle or on top of brightening adjustments for me. But I found out that color balance could also be done after you’ve done your coloring, but you have to put it under the other adjustment layers to have the most effect.
I’m gonna show you how I edit this gif here of Raven and Murphy with what I’ve said above.
Without any coloring:
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Yeah, I know. I can’t see anything either.
I brighten up this gif using my method above for dark blue scenes. Curves, brightness, levels, and add more depending on what you need. Here’s what I have now:
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We can see both of them properly now, but it’s waay to blue. Also I’m losing some color from Raven’s skin so I’m gonna add color balance under every adjustment and pull up the reds and yellows.
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Now it’s better! You can totally leave it here and post your gif like this. but I added an extra selective colors layer to bring out the red, yellows and blacks, and here’s the final result: 
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I should mention that when it comes to scenes with POCs, you have to be very careful. With this scene with Raven color balance and selective colors helped bring back her color, but on other scene adjusting too much of the red/neutral/yellow might ruin her skin. You are allowed to adjust the colors on a gif extremely when necessary, but be careful about it :)
Some dark scenes are supposed to stay dark.
I realized that with the 100 (or any other shows tbh) brightening up a gif with a dark scene too much will make it lose so much quality and ruin it. So, what I’ve learned to do is to let it be dark. I’ve seen some people brighten their gifs too much and even though I understand your frustration, it’s gonna be better if you just let it be as it is. But, still, make sure it’s bright enough so you can still see the things happening on the gif. 
Here’s a gif of Bellamy from Season 5. You can see how dark it is without any coloring:
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First, let’s brighten this baby up so we can see Bellamy’s face. I added curves and brightness, levels and more brightness:
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Now I know it’s still very dark, but instead of brightening it up too much I’m gonna go to color balance and add the tiniest bit of red and yellow, and then I’ll add a photo filter. These two adjustments are done so we can have more color on his face instead of the ugly dark red we had. With those adjustments, what we have now is this:
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Next, we’ll move on to selective color. This is what I mean when I say you have to be careful with this adjustment. I want to brighten up Bellamy’s face by putting down the blacks on the red selective color. But by doing so I might erase all the reds from his face and whitewash him. To prevent that, while I put down the blacks, I bring up the reds (lowering the cyan) and yellows. I also pull up a bit of neutral and black selective color so I can get rid of the grain (adjusting the black on both selective colors.)
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With a little more last-minute brightness, here’s the final result:
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That’s pretty much it! You can add more brightness than what I did here (I was in a rush when I made this but I would definitely add a little more curves or brightness) as long as it doesn’t ruin the colors and won’t make the grain too visible. 
Now as promised, here are the PSDs I made for this tutorial! Please don’t claim them as your own and feel free to tag me (#useraaya) if you make anything with them so I can check it out :)
[ clarke ] [ lexa ] [ octavia ] [ murphy & raven ] [ bellamy ]
I hope this helps! Don’t hesitate to message me on my main blog if you have any questions. <3
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Happy Mancrush Monday
July 6th was International Kissing Day but we all know that every day should be Olicity Kissing Day!  :)  On Mancrush Monday, let’s appreciate all the many ways Oliver has kissed Felicity over the years and get his perspective on them  ;)  
The non-canon it’s a ruse to fool a Mirakuru-powered psycho but I’m only fooling myself because I’ve totes been in love with you for ages but I’m a broody pine tree with my head up my ass so I haven’t been able to tell you until just now kiss
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The angsty af I can’t let you walk away without knowing the sweet taste of your lips and how your face feels in my hands even though I continue to be a broody pine tree with my head up my ass don’t ask me to say I don’t love you kiss
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The bittersweet I’m going to duel an almost immortal assassin leader and even though we aren’t together because I’m a broody pine tree I just want to feel your skin under lips and breathe in the scent of the hair to sustain me on my journey and give me strength as I face my enemy because I’m completely in love with you and can’t even pretend to hide it anymore kiss
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The very sexy OMG you love me too this would be the best day of my whole life if I wasn’t a self-sacrificing pine tree but I’ve dreamed of this moment for so long and I couldn’t let you go right now if my life depended on it kiss
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The incredibly hawt I’ve only got one night with you before I give my soul (and this amazing body) to the LOA so I’m gonna make sure this is the best sex of your life kiss
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The soft and sweet after-afterglow I love you even more and I didn’t think that was possible kiss
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The heartbreaking I know I have to let you go in order to fulfill my obligation and Ra's prophecy except I don’t know how to let you go when every fiber of my being is crying out to you, for you, in a silent unspoken plea for all the things I will never get to have with you-peaceful days...passion-filled nights....marriage... golden-haired baby geniuses...a life and my only hope is now that I’ve been part of you and I’ve given you every part of me Oliver Queen will live on in you kiss
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The blissfully domestic you can’t cook to save your life but you like me when I’m sweaty and I’m so damn happy that I can barely stop smiling long enough to kiss you kiss
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The yin-yang I’m amazed we’ve made it this far but we’re gonna be fine because we found ourselves in each other kiss
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The passionate I now understand why you find the salmon ladder so hot kiss
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The adorable I’m such a smitten dork that I went out and bought a nerd emoji key chain for you, put the key to my apartment on it and even gift wrapped it because I want you in my life more, like all the time would be really great since you already have the key to my heart kiss or more succinctly put.....
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The adoring my gorgeous future wifey loves touching and kissing my face and IDevenGAF that we’re in the middle of a crowded restaurant and she’s probably leaving red lipstick marks all over my face cause I want everyone to know we are back together and my heart, face, and everything else belongs to her kiss
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The eager and enthusiastic we made it all the way through dinner without any interruptions and now it’s time for dessert kiss
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This is the kiss right before Slade calls.  Not only did that guy fatally stab Moira, now he is trying to kill Oliver’s libido.  My AU head canon for this scene is when Felicity handed him handed him the phone and he heard it was Slade, he said new phone who dis and flung it across the room.  He then flung Felicity over his shoulder and carried her upstairs to the bedroom because that couch wasn’t big enough for what he had planned for dessert.
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The cute and charming I’m so happy you’re here I’ve missed you so much and I want to come home to you every day for the rest of my life kiss
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The epic full-suit ‘nothing matters except that I love you’ kiss
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The ardent MasterChef of Chez Queen I just wanted a night to remind myself of what I’m fighting for and it’s definitely you baby kiss
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The gentle reunited and it feels so good kiss
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The I remember everything about you from the first moment we met including the color of the pen you were chewing but you actually thought I would forget our wedding anniversary and the exact words I said to you when we got married kiss
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The Arrow writers ripped my Olicity-loving/they deserved a happy ending heart out and stomped on it  ‘we are buried in broken dreams, we are knee-deep without a plea, I don't want to know what it's like to live without you, don't want to know the other side of a world without you’ kiss
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Oh, you didn’t think I was gonna end this on that depressing note, did you?  Nope, I’m not one of the Arrow writers lol.  In this Mancrush Monday AU, Aunt Nyssa, Aunt Thea and Uncle Roy are babysitting Mia while Oliver and Felicity finally get to go on their honeymoon.  This is the I’m the happiest man in the whole world kiss (and yes, that was the caption this adorable smitten sap used on Snapchat because our once broody pine tree chose something to live for and is living the life he (and the love of his life) deserve). <3
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Bonus gif!  The fervent we are having a wonderful time in Bali and currently conceiving Lucas Smoak-Queen kiss ;)
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Thank you to all of our amazing gifmakers! <3  Bolded lyrics on the 7x22 caption are from The Other Side by Ruelle.  
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adoringjensen · 7 years
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heya! I know you've probably been asked this before, but how do you make your gifs? :D They're super duper cool and I was thinking about making some gifs myself. Thank you and have a lovely day!
Hey!! I’ve been asked this before, but I don’t think I’ve ever really made a tutorial about it, so I suppose this would be a good time to do it, huh? And thank you sO much ahhHH!!! I really appreciate it :”)) I hope you have a wonderful day as well! xx
Okay so there are two different ways I make gifs, depending on what I’m giffing. I will go through both processes under the cut.
Programs I use:MacPhotoshop CC 2017UMPlayeruTorrentMiro Video Converter
Alright, let’s get started!
Gif Process 1: DVDs
For this process, I use UMPlayer to take screencaps from DVDs. UMPlayer is basically the Mac version of KMPlayer for PC. You can find a tutorial on how to use UMPlayer here. Make sure you understand how to take screencaps before continuing. From this point on, I’m gonna put everything into steps :)
Step 1: Load screencaps into photoshop by going to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack
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this window will pop up:
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Step 2: Click browse, go into the folder you saved your screencaps in, select the ones you want to use for your gif, and they will load into the box like this:
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Press OK and wait for the layers to load. This may take a while, depending on how many screenshots you’re uploading. I try to never exceed more than 120 layers at a time at the very most. 
Step 3: Once your layers have finished loading, make sure your timeline is showing so you can work with your frames. Go to Window > Timeline (or Animation, depending on your version of ps) to open it up
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now your window should look something like this:
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Step 4: Click Create Frame Animation in your timeline, and one frame will appear. Then click that little paragraph-looking button to the right of your timeline and select Make Frames From Layers
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now your timeline should look like this: 
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Step 5: *THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT* Your screenshots upload in reverse order. So you need to select that little paragraph-looking button again and click Select All Frames then Reverse Frames.
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Step 6: This is when I move my frames to a new canvas. So you’ll want to make sure all your frames are selected, then click Copy Frames in that same dialogue box as before.
Step 7: Create a new file and enter the dimensions you want to use. For gifsets with two columns, I use 268px x 168px. For single column gifsets, I vary in height but be sure to keep your width at either 500px or 540px. That’s what matters.
Step 8: Paste your frames into your new canvas. They will load at the same size they were before, so you’ll need to adjust that by selecting all your layers on the righthand side of your photoshop window, press cmd (or ctrl) + T to transform the layers, hold down the Shift button to keep the proportions in place, then scale your layers to your new canvas. 
This is similar to how it should look now:
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Step 9: Set your timing for each frame and duration of the gif while you have all your frames selected. On the bottom left of your timeline is where you can adjust all these things.
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Change Once to Forever so that your gif loops continuously. For the timing of each frame, I usually keep it around 0.06 seconds. You can select Other to type in your preferred timing. 
Step 10: Now is when I make sure my gif is looking the way I want. You can click the play button on the bottom left there to preview your gif. Watch for any glitches or anything in case the video paused or skipped while you were taking screencaps. You also want to keep the number of frames in mind, because the more frames you have, the larger your file size will be.
Step 11: Okay so next is when I do my sharpening. I know there are several ways you can do this, but I usually use a sharpening action for my gifs. To do that, click Flatten Frames Into Layers in that dialogue box on the upper right of your timeline. You’ll notice that in your layers window on the right, you will have a duplicate of your layers on top of one another, only now they’re called frames. I delete the old layers when I do this to keep it organized, but you don’t have to. 
NOTE: You can find sharpening tutorials here for other ways to do it, and you can find sharpening actions here.
When using a sharpening action, make sure you flatten your frames into layers as I just mentioned. Then make sure your first frame in your timeline and your first frame layer on the righthand side are both selected. Then select the action you want to use in your actions window and click play. 
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Gif sharpening actions will vary in length as far as how many frames it will sharpen. Mine sharpens 120 frames at a time, so once it reaches that 120 frame limit, the action will stop. If there are less than 120 frames, a dialogue box like this will pop up:
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click Stop.
Step 12: Coloring! From here, it’s all up to you how you color your gifs. You can find all sorts of PSDs all over the place, like here. Look through resource blogs to find and collect PSDs you like. Remember that the same coloring won’t be compatible for everything, so you’ll have to do some tweaking here and there. Or, if you’re good at coloring, you can make your own! I’m horrible at coloring from scratch omfg so PSDs are super helpful lmao :)
Step 13: Once you’ve finished coloring the gif to your liking, save it by going to File > Export > Save for Web
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this box will pop up:
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The things circled in red are the things you want to pay special attention to in order to make sure your gif works and saves properly. I always preview my gif and make tweaks as needed. The tumblr file size limit for gifs is 3M now (hECK YEAH) so be sure your gif is under that limit, otherwise it won’t work. 
Step 14: Upload your gif to tumblr and BAM, look at that! All done! Great job, fam :)
Gif Process 2: Importing Videos
I use this gif process for anything I don’t own on DVD (so new episodes that have just recently aired, youtube/twitter/instagram videos, etc). 
Step 1: For new episodes, I find torrents on sites like thepiratebay, extratorrent, or wherever I can find one with good dimensions (always pay attention to that, 720p is usually your best bet for quality). I click the magnet link, which opens uTorrent, and the episode downloads to my computer in mkv format. 
Step 2: Then I convert the video from mkv to mp4 format using Miro Video Converter, because mkv is not compatible with photoshop. mp4 is pretty much compatible with anything, so it’s helpful to have it in this format anyway. The conversion will take quite a while, so now’s a good time for a break! Go pee, pet ur cat, grab some cereal. Stretch it out, you’ve probably been sitting a while, right?
Step 3: Once the video is converted, now you can upload it to photoshop to gif it! Go to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers
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Find your converted video and open that. Then this box will pop up:
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Step 4: Move the arrows below the timeline to select the scene you want to gif and click OK. (You’ll want to keep the arrows really close together for long videos like episodes.) It may take a while for the frames to upload, so be patient. 
Step 5: The frames upload in order, so no need to reverse them this time. Go through your frames and cut out the ones you don’t want/need to keep your gif at a reasonable file size.
Step 6: Everything is the same from here on out, so refer to steps 6-13 in the previous process :) And then you’re done! BOOM, nailed it.
At the end of it all, you can show off a pretty gif like this:
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So that’s what I’ve got for ya! The biggest thing with gifmaking, in my opinion, is patience. It takes a lot of patience to sit through and find ~just the right~ scenes and screencap it all, wait for things to load, color things ~just right~, etc. It can be a huge pain in the butt, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not so bad. I hope this has been helpful! If you have any further questions, feel free to ask :)) Best of luck in all your gif endeavors!
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