How to Make a GIF

Hi, I’m going to show you how to make a GIF!

Here are the things that you need:

· KMPlayer

· Photoshop

· A video (preferably in 720p or 1080p)

Taking Screencaps

The first step is to take screen captures of the scene/moment/etc. from the video of your choice.

Open up your video in KMPlayer, go to the part that you want to gif, then right click on the screen and go to capture →frame extraction (or just press ctrl+g).

This is the window that should pop up, be sure that you set yours to the settings that you see here.

Press Start when the video gets to a little before the part you want to gif, then press Stop when it gets to a little after that part. This makes sure that you don’t miss any frames that you may want/need. After you have collected your screencaps, press the Open button (top right hand corner of the frame extraction window. This will take you to where your screencaps were put. I suggest moving them to a new folder meant for screencaps just so that everything stays organized. Then delete the screencaps that you don’t want for your gif.

Making the Actual GIF

Open up Photoshop, then go to File →Scripts →Load Files Into Stack

Then click Browse, navigate to where you saved your screencaps, select them all and click OK.

Then bring up your Timeline in Photoshop by going to Window →Timeline.

This should come up at the bottom of the screen, click the little arrow beside “Create Video Timeline” and select “Create Frame Animation.” After you’ve selected it, click directly on “Create Frame Animation.”

Next, click on the little square made of a few lines in the top right hand corner of the Timeline.

This will come up, then select “Make Frames From Layers”

Now, if you press the spacebar (or play in the timeline) your gif will play. You might notice that it’s in reverse, if it is, press that little square in the top right hand corner of the Timeline made out of lines, but this time click “Reverse Frames.”

Next, near the bottom left corner of the Timeline, it should say “Once.” Click on that, and change it to Forever (so that your gif plays forever instead of only one time).

Next, click the square with lines in the top right corner of the Timeline again and select “Select All Frames.”

Then, in the Timeline, click the little arrow at the bottom right corner of one of the frames (the arrow is next to “0 sec.” and select Other).

Then, change the frame delay to 0.05 or 0.06 seconds (so that your gif doesn’t play ridiculously fast) (I usually use 0.06, but use whichever you prefer).

Next, you’re going to crop your gif to the size that you want it to be. If you’re posting your gif to Tumblr, then it has to be a certain width so that it looks nice on their website. We’re going to use those dimensions. The height can be whatever you want it to be, so when you crop your gif, that’s what you have in mind. The crop tool should be along the left side of your Photoshop window.

Once you’ve cropped it to your liking, you have to change the image size. To do this, at the top of the screen click Image →Image Size.

Next, the window pictured below will pop up. You have to make the width 540px (make sure it’s in Pixels). This is the width that Tumblr says gifs have to be, and since this size will be compatible for most other sites, we’re just going to use that. This gif is 540px in width because in this tutorial we are just making a gif that wouldn’t have any gifs beside it. For example, you can have gifsets of 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10, but for those since there would be two gifs in each row, the width would be 268px. But since this gif that we are making is double that width (well, really close to double), it would stand on its own, or have other gifs beneath it.

(If after changing the width, your gif has shrunk on your screen, make sure to set the display to 100%).

Next, we’re going to sharpen the gif.

Sharpening

To do so, we have to click “Convert to Video Timeline”

Next, select all the screencaps in the Layers sidebar, which should be on the right side of the screen (shift+selecting first and last frame).

Next, click the square made of lines, this time the one in the top right corner of the Layers sidebar, then select “Convert to Smart Object.”

Next, at the top of the screen go to Filter →Sharpen →Smart Sharpen

Make sure you have the following settings:

Amount: 500% Radius: 0.3px

Make sure you also select “Use Legacy,” “More Accurate” and “Remove: Gaussian Blur”

Then click “OK”

You could leave your gif in the Video Timeline, but it changes the frame delay to 0.07, which is too slow. So, at the top right of the Video Timeline click the square made out of lines, then select Convert Frames →Flatten Frames into Clips

Then, click “Convert to Frame Animation” (bottom left corner of Video Timeline)

If a warning box pops up, just click “Continue”

Next, we click “Make Frames From Layers” like we did before.

Then, in the bottom left corner of the Timeline, change “Once” to “Forever”

Then, change the Frame Delay again by clicking the square made of lines on the Timeline, then click “Select All Frames.” Next, click the arrow at the bottom right corner of one of the frames in the Timeline, then select “Other” and change the number to 0.05 or 0.06.

And that’s it! You’ve made a basic gif!

Now, most people “colour” their gifs (adjust levels, curves, brightness/contrast, colour balance, selective colour, saturation, etc.), but that’s really just personal preference as to how you want to do that, and basically like editing a picture, so I’m not going to through that today. But I am going to show how to use a PSD.

A PSD is basically just people’s “colourings” that they’ve saved and have uploaded to the internet to share with other people so that they can use them for their gifs. You can find them by Googling or searching on Tumblr.

How to use PSDs

Go to File →Open, then navigate to where you have saved or downloaded a PSD. Click on it then click Open.

Then, click on the name of the PSD (next to where you can exit out of the PSD’s window) and drag it out into the middle of the screen.

Next, go to the Layers sidebar for the PSD, find the folder, and drag it onto your gif (just into the middle of your gif is fine, it will go into your gif Layers sidebar automatically).

Make sure that the PSD is at the top of all your layers in your gif’s Layers sidebar.

Ta-da! After adjusting some of the colouring in the PSD, you can leave your gif just like that.

Text

If you want to you can add text, just like how you normally would to other projects. Select “Text” on the left hand side of the screen.

Then click anywhere on your gif and start typing. These are the settings that I use.

←

(The size of the text just depends on the size of the gif, and most people either use Arial or Calibri)

Next, in your Layers sidebar, right click on the text layer and select “Blending Options”

Then, click “Stroke” so that it has a check-mark beside it, and change the Stroke to these settings, then click OK.

Now you’re finally done!

To save your gif, go to File →Export →Save for Web (Legacy)

Then, make sure you have these settings:

Make sure that your gif is under 3MB if you’re posting it to Tumblr or else it won’t ‘play’ on Tumblr.

……….And then click save!!!
That’s officially the entire process of how you make a gif.

Enjoy! :)

Gifs are great to use for many reasons.

• They let you enjoy a show visually. When you go on websites to look things up about your favourite shows, you don’t just have to read articles or look at still images, you can ‘watch’ your favourite parts, characters, lines.
• It’s a great way to express your love for shows, movies, bands etc. artistically. There are many different ways that you can style gifs to give them each their own unique aspects, and when you put them together in a gifset, it creates something personal that lots of people enjoy looking at.
• When you want to respond to your friend or people’s comments etc. you can send a gif. A lot of the time a gif will give a better reaction and more accurately portray what you’re trying to say than you could by just typing or using emojis.
• It’s a great tool to punctuate articles and blog posts with.

*All pictures/gifs used were taken or made by me