#some of these gifs' quality are questionable uhmmm

[suga-ssi]

How do you make your gifs?

Hi!! uhmmm... this is a loaded question lmao I'll try to be brief (me? brief answers? lmao) and maybe share a tutorial for each step soon? I'm not an expert or a pro... and I just learned stuff from watching and asking then applied them too... but anyway... my main steps to giffing...

Finding and gathering content source - for video quality, .ts type video files are usually the highest quality. But you still have to check, because some .ts files are sometimes compressed and vid quality isn't optimum either. 4k mp4 videos work great. I use 4K Video Downloader to download vids from youtube. Getting the best possible quality for your clip is good so you know there is a higher chance your gif would also come out hd.

Clipping the videos - I use Vapoursynth to clip the videos. Vapousynth (for mac) or Avisynth (for windows) are softwares you can install to be able to clip your vids without changing the video quality. You can of course clip the videos through any video editing software, but usually saving them after clipping changes their quality. I don't have sources for Avisynth though since I use mac. Here is a good tutorial on how to get Vapoursynth and work it. I'll share how I use it on a different post hopefully.

Editing the video clip to make them into a gif - I use Photoshop to process gifs. It is quite a detailed process... you can probably find some tutorials on youtube too? But, for me, I usually add smart sharpen, Topaz Denoise and Topaz Clean when processing gifs to smoothen and sharpen them. Topaz is an extension you can download and use on Photoshop. Topaz Denoise helps smoothen the gifs and Topaz Clean helps sharpen the edges and outlines so your gifs won't come out blurry.

Coloring the gif and exporting it properly - there are a lot of color adjustments possible when giffing. It really depends on what you like to do and this can all be done in Photoshop. I learned how to use the adjustment tools by playing around with them, actually lmao Something to remember is that a gif is a file that compiles a series of photo frames, they are not vids so you can't expect them to be as clear as the original video. Unlike a video that can have all the colors available to remove pixelation and allow frames to move seamlessly without grains, a gif can only have max 256 colors. Even if you want the gif to capture the full blend of the color to not come out pixelated... it's not always attainable. But there are things you can do to lessen the pixelation through coloring before exporting and, proper settings and color picking while exporting. Keep in mind to stay within the 10mb parameters of Tumblr too when you export.

Oh and before exporting, you need to set the gifs frame rate. You could make it real time, or slo-mo. All depends on the style you want to achieve. I usually use 0.04 or 0.05 (slower) when I import full clips (not lessening frame count to every 2 frames when I import).

Like I said, I'm not an expert... and I only learned these things slowly through the course of me exploring giffing in the past years. So just be patient with yourself and be open to learning more. If you admire someone's gif... you can always ask what techniques they used. :) I'm open to creating a post about my full giffing process when i find the time hahahaha. I think most people who gif have similar processes to me too. :)