[[ #106 -- How to gif!! ]]
17/2/12 16:18![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ririThis entry is for shongkinamez who wanted to learn how to make gifs :D I'll keep it as a public entry in case it helps anyone else too. ^^
Well for this I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS5 on Windows 7, but I know it works exactly the same on a Mac since I used to have one. You must use the 32 bit version; you can't do it with the 64 bit.
The first step is to find a movie file that you want to make a gif out of. !!IMPORTANT!! FOR THIS TO WORK IN CS5, THE VIDEO HAS TO BE IN MP4 OR MOV FORMAT. I've never actually used it with mov, but I hear it works. I usually do mp4. AVI WILL NOT WORK. But don't worry; you can convert avi to mp4 easily! I use a program called "Any Video Converter" which works like a charm, but there are plenty of good converters out there for Windows and Mac. You can download Any Video Converter here [Windows only, I think.]
If you are using Photoshop CS4, avi will work just fine. I'm not sure about any versions of Photoshop that are earlier than that, but I think CS3 works with avi too.
After you have a mp4 [or mov] video in mind to use, it's time to open photoshop!
The first step is to go to file, then import, then video frames to layers -->
That's how you get your video into Photoshop! You should see a popup screen that looks like a mini video player so you can view and import your video.
Under range to import, there are two options. "From Beginning To End" and "Selected Range Only." MAKE SURE TO CHOOSE "Selected Range Only"!! Otherwise your animation will be the entire video file and you will have to delete a lot of frames ^^;;
You can scroll through the video by dragging that vertical bar, or by using the two buttons on the far right. When you find the part you want, hold the shift button on your keyboard and scroll through it, letting go of the shift key when you get past it. It's pretty difficult not to get extra stuff you don't want toward the beginning and end of the gif, but that's okay because you can get rid of those frames after you import them, which I'll show you how to do in a second.
When you have the selection you want, press "Okay"!
For the sake of this tutorial, I will be making a simple gif of Tennen pair hugging in Mago Mago Arashi :'D
After importing, you should see the first frame of your gif. But you want to be able to see all of it, so you want to go to window -> animation
The animation window looks like this, and it usually appears at the bottom of the Photoshop window. Here you can scroll through all of your frames and play your gif with the play button. What I'm doing here is removing extra unwanted frames. To select multiple frames, hold down the shift button and click them. :3 Then you click the trash can icon to delete them all.
You can also edit how fast the gif goes by clicking the downwards arrow and inputting a different number for the delay of the frames. However, 9 times out of 10 I find that Photoshop gives the gif a good speed and there's no need to edit. ^^
After that's done, you can crop the gif just like a normal image by going to the rectangular marquee tool. [Very simple.]
What I did was remove the black frame that was around the gif, and also cut out the subtitles that were on the video.
After you make the selection, go to image -> crop
And now you should be ready to save your image! To do this, you DO NOT use file -> save or file -> save as, but rather file -> save for web and devices.
And your preview screen should pop up, allowing you to do some last minute editing before your gif is saved.
I usually don't mess around with this too much, unless it's to edit the size of the gif. If you're using very HQ movie files, Photoshop will make the gif very large in dimensions. So just imput the width of the image you want, in pixels, in the box under where it says "Image Size." The height will be changed automatically to fit the width.
You also want to make sure under "Animation" the Looping Options are set to "Forever", otherwise your gif may only play once or twice and then stop. :3
When you're done, click "Save" and your computer will ask you where to save it/what to name the file/etc~ And your gif is finished!!
and the finished product should be something like...
I hope that my instructions were clear! Please comment here with any questions! :3
shongkinamez who wanted to learn how to make gifs :D I'll keep it as a public entry in case it helps anyone else too. ^^ Well for this I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS5 on Windows 7, but I know it works exactly the same on a Mac since I used to have one. You must use the 32 bit version; you can't do it with the 64 bit.
The first step is to find a movie file that you want to make a gif out of. !!IMPORTANT!! FOR THIS TO WORK IN CS5, THE VIDEO HAS TO BE IN MP4 OR MOV FORMAT. I've never actually used it with mov, but I hear it works. I usually do mp4. AVI WILL NOT WORK. But don't worry; you can convert avi to mp4 easily! I use a program called "Any Video Converter" which works like a charm, but there are plenty of good converters out there for Windows and Mac. You can download Any Video Converter here [Windows only, I think.]
If you are using Photoshop CS4, avi will work just fine. I'm not sure about any versions of Photoshop that are earlier than that, but I think CS3 works with avi too.
After you have a mp4 [or mov] video in mind to use, it's time to open photoshop!
The first step is to go to file, then import, then video frames to layers -->
That's how you get your video into Photoshop! You should see a popup screen that looks like a mini video player so you can view and import your video.
Under range to import, there are two options. "From Beginning To End" and "Selected Range Only." MAKE SURE TO CHOOSE "Selected Range Only"!! Otherwise your animation will be the entire video file and you will have to delete a lot of frames ^^;;
You can scroll through the video by dragging that vertical bar, or by using the two buttons on the far right. When you find the part you want, hold the shift button on your keyboard and scroll through it, letting go of the shift key when you get past it. It's pretty difficult not to get extra stuff you don't want toward the beginning and end of the gif, but that's okay because you can get rid of those frames after you import them, which I'll show you how to do in a second.
When you have the selection you want, press "Okay"!
For the sake of this tutorial, I will be making a simple gif of Tennen pair hugging in Mago Mago Arashi :'D
After importing, you should see the first frame of your gif. But you want to be able to see all of it, so you want to go to window -> animation
The animation window looks like this, and it usually appears at the bottom of the Photoshop window. Here you can scroll through all of your frames and play your gif with the play button. What I'm doing here is removing extra unwanted frames. To select multiple frames, hold down the shift button and click them. :3 Then you click the trash can icon to delete them all.
You can also edit how fast the gif goes by clicking the downwards arrow and inputting a different number for the delay of the frames. However, 9 times out of 10 I find that Photoshop gives the gif a good speed and there's no need to edit. ^^
After that's done, you can crop the gif just like a normal image by going to the rectangular marquee tool. [Very simple.]
What I did was remove the black frame that was around the gif, and also cut out the subtitles that were on the video.
After you make the selection, go to image -> crop
And now you should be ready to save your image! To do this, you DO NOT use file -> save or file -> save as, but rather file -> save for web and devices.
And your preview screen should pop up, allowing you to do some last minute editing before your gif is saved.
I usually don't mess around with this too much, unless it's to edit the size of the gif. If you're using very HQ movie files, Photoshop will make the gif very large in dimensions. So just imput the width of the image you want, in pixels, in the box under where it says "Image Size." The height will be changed automatically to fit the width.
You also want to make sure under "Animation" the Looping Options are set to "Forever", otherwise your gif may only play once or twice and then stop. :3
When you're done, click "Save" and your computer will ask you where to save it/what to name the file/etc~ And your gif is finished!!
and the finished product should be something like...
I hope that my instructions were clear! Please comment here with any questions! :3
