Hi, I love your blog and your edits. I was wondering if you could do a tutorial on how you combine multiple gifs into one in the first gif of yours MIKELOGAN’s 5K FOLLOWER CELEBRATION || GET TO KNOW ME MEMEFAVORITE ACTORS [2/10]Colin Firth (September 10, 1960) set? Thank you for reading this and helping me.
thank you so much, that's so kind!! this is the post in question (which was inspired by this gorgeous set) and i'll break down how to do it step by step below the cut!
i ended up saving this gif as a psd because i remember it taking me so long and being really frustrating, i just wasn't sure why. for reference, i posted that set back in september, just over four months ago. looking at the psd, i can see just how far i've grown as a gifmaker bc that thing is a hot mess. i made it about 3x more complicated than it needed to be, so let's do this the right way lol
note: i was still using 0.07 frame rate at this point. i have since switched to 0.05 for smoother, quicker gifs.
what we're going to do is create all of these gifs separately and put them together at the end. in total, there are 6 individual gifs. let's start with harry.
i gif by importing video frames to layers, but if you prefer to screencap, load those in instead. because this ends up being a pretty large gif, both in size and length, i kept it to 20 frames per clip.
once you're satisfied with the frames you've chosen, crop your canvas to 540px x 540px. this is what i'm left with
this is when i sharpen my gifs. everyone's process is a little different. i created my own sharpening action, which converts my frames to video timeline and then sharpens.
the next step is to color your gif. if you're going for the overall look in mine, here were my layers:
a brightness/contrast layer with brightness set to 31 and contrast to 5. this will depend on the scene you're working with
a levels layer using the black and white eyedroppers. the top one is your black eyedropper. to use it, click it and select the blackest part of your gif. do the same with the white eyedropper and select the lightest part of your gif. you may need to play around with selecting different points depending on your scene and the original coloring
finally, a simple black & white gradient map layer on top
now we're going to add the thin rectangular border in the middle of the gif. i use the rectangle shape tool for this (press U on your keyboard) and these are my settings (x and y coordinates don't matter):
to center it perfectly, i use ctrl+T and drag it until it snaps into place with both the vertical and horizontal guides.
next, let's add the "choose your gentleman" text that goes at the top of the border. here is the font i chose and its settings:
once again, press ctrl+t and drag this to the vertical center of your gif and to the center of the top of the border. you should feel and see it snap into place. this is what we have now:
now, we're going to use a layer mask on the border so we can read the text. select the rectangle layer and click the layer mask button
with the layer mask selected (as shown in the second image), use the rectangular marquee tool (M on your keyboard) to draw a rectangle around your text, taking care to keep it just a little larger
as you can see, you'll know when you're perfectly centered through your text layer and vertically on the entire canvas. select your brush tool without deselecting this rectangle (B on your keyboard) and paint the selection with a black brush. this masks that part of the border!
let's add the small square gif that goes at the bottom of the border now. i think the easiest way of doing this is to use the rectangular shape tool (U) again. the size of this gif is 110x110, so create a black square of that size with no stroke. Use ctrl+T to drag it to the center of the bottom of the border (the x and y coordinates don't matter):
now duplicate your original gif layer (ctrl+J) and drag it to the top of the layer panel. right click on it and create clipping mask. this will make it so the gif only appears within the confines of the square we just created. resize your gif by using ctrl+T and, making sure the proportions are locked, drag the corners to the edges of the square.
this gif is not colored at all as we only duplicated the gif itself and not the coloring layers. i duplicated those as well and dragged them on top of our small gif, but it's important to make sure those are using the clipping mask as well. you can click this on the properties layer of each adjustment layer to make sure they do.
you'll know you've been successful when you see the small arrow next to each of your coloring layers. this keeps them from affecting the coloring of the larger, main gif.
we're going to change the gradient map adjustment layer from black & white to black & lime green (or the color of your choosing). click on that layer and then on the map. this will bring up the gradient editor. click on the small white color stop at the far right end of the gradient and then on the color picker, choose a new color.
the hex code i used for the lime green is #00ff0c
our last steps are the angle brackets on either side of the gif and harry's name in the center. here are the settings i used for those (angle brackets on the left and harry on the right):
the layer styles for harry's name (double click on the text layer to call up this menu OR right click > blending options):
and for the angle brackets:
by now, you know how to utilize ctrl+T to move these layers where you'd like them. harry's name is centered horizontally and vertically and rotated at a bit of an angle and the angle brackets are centered horizontally and i just eyeballed where to put them in relation to the space between the border and the edge of the gif.
this is the complete first gif. what i would do for your own sanity since you have two more of these two create is 1) save it as a psd just in case something crashes and 2) don't convert it to a smart object until you have all 3 gifs completed and are ready to put them together.
the nice part about having the first one done is you've ultimately done the hard part. create your two other gifs, but you'll be using at least roughly the same coloring and all the same text, just with the colors adjusted, so you can drag those layers from your completed first gif to your others as you work on them.
once you have all 3 gifs completed and still on 3 separate canvases (and saved as psds bc this is adobe friggin photoshop and shit breaks all the time), convert all layers on all the gifs to smart objects. this will simplify the final gif and make things much easier.
then, bring gif #2 and gif #3 both onto gif #1's canvas. this is what it will look like at first on the timeline and in your layer panel:
(full disclosure, i'm not making the other two lmao, i'm lazy and i already did it once in a way harder way 😂)
to get the gifs to play after one another rather than simultaneously, you just have to drag them after one another on the timeline!
a little bit hard to show the actual process, but you're just clicking the bertie layer and dragging it down to harry's line after the harry layer. then do the same with the jamie layer, dragging it down to the harry layer after bertie. when you're done, it should look like this:
btw, the little slider i circled is what enlarges or shrinks the timeline view, so if you need to see something broken down a bit more/slower, drag it to the right. if you need to zoom out, drag it to the left.
and that's it! export and save your gif!
if you have any questions or anything is at all unclear about this, please let me know! i'm happy to help!
89 notes
·
View notes