How to make gifs: In a very long-winded way by ninjafarts

For the anon who asked me, and for anyone else who wants to know! My way of making gifs, to me, is kind of more long-winded than most. Personally, I don’t feel like it’s as basic as it could be, but I’ll try to show you all anyway! This may be a very long post because I’m horrible at explaining things.

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So how I get my videos is normally I either download youtube videos with “KeepVid” or I have a video downloaded in .avi format and I screencap them with “VLC Media Player”. (If you google those names, KeepVid should be the first link that pops up, and for VLC Media Player, the first few links should allow you to download the software for free)

I’ll explain VLC Media Player first. In VLC, you can screen cap parts of a video. If you go to Tools then Preferences, and go to Hotkeys, and find Take video snapshot. I’ve set my short cut as “Shift+s”, so when the video is playing and I want to snapshot a certain scene, I hold down “Shift+s” and the snapshots will be saved to a designated folder. You can choose where to save your snapshots to in the Video tab. At the bottom, there is a box labeled Video snapshots where you can choose where to save your snap shots.

When you have your snapshots, go to photoshop (I’m using CS5 but they’re all virtually the same) and go to File > Scripts > Load files into Stack. A window will pop out, click on Browse, go to the folder with your snapshots and load all the snapshots you want in your gif. When the files are loaded (make sure your Animation bar is opened. If not go to Window and click Animation), go to your Animation bar and at the top right corner of the bar click the symbol to get a menu. In the menu, choose Make Frames from Layers. Your layers will be transfered on to the Animation bar. Normally, your frames will be in the reversed order. Go back to the menu symbol and select Select all Frames, then select Reverse Frames. This should make your gif run normally.

When you have all your frames in the Animation Bar, you can begin to crop the image. If you want to make your gif tumblr friendly, you’ll want the dimensions be under 500px in width. Also be aware of how many frames you have. Tumblr only lets you stay under 500kb, so the most you can have is around 10-15 frames. I normally play around with Contrast and Brightness, Vibrance, Colour Balance and Curves. Make sure these are at the top of all the frames so they are applied to all frames.

To add text to your gif, select the T for Text on your sidebar. Type on one frame and it should be applied to all your frames if you put the text layer as the first layer. If you want an outline around your text, right click the text layer and go to Blending Options. In Blending Options, select Strokes. At the top, you can choose how thick you want your border to be. I normally set it at 2, but it’s personal preference. 

Normally, it will only be bordered on the one gif, so go back to your Animation bar menu and select Match Layer across Frames. Select OK and the text border will be applied to all your frames. You’re almost done! At the very bottom of the frames, there’s a time there. If you don’t want your gif racing through your frames, select a slower time. Depending on the frames, if it’s less than 10, I normally set it at 0.15, but once again it’s personal preference.

When you’re done this, all you have to do is save. Go to File > Save for Web & Devices. Most of the time, your gif will be too big. So! Go to the “Optimize Menu” at the top and select Optimize to File Size. Choose a file size around 498kb if it’s for tumblr and select OK. You are now done! Click Save and designate where to save it and VOILA! GIF! 

If you’re downloading from youtube using KeepVid, make sure you’re downloading it in MP4 format. Photoshop only allows you to import videos if they are Quicktime compatible. When you have your video downloaded, go to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers  and select your video. You can choose to select how much of the video you want by pressing shift as you buffer through the video. Select “Limit to 2 Frames” if you want fewer frames.

When you have all your frames, select the ones you want in your gif and delete the ones you don’t. Once you’re ready to begin editing, you can just toggle around with Effects. The steps to how to make your gif are the same as if you used VLC Player now. Just scroll up to the part where I explained the Effects that I used.

And there you go! Hopefully I sort of helped to guide you through making gifs. If you’re still confused please feel free to drop by my askbox and ask!