How to make a .GIF (with coloring .PSDs)

[mercscilla]

Click on the image to go to the download link. Use the .PSDs files for .GIFs, icons or other art. :)

Before you start, I'd like to remind you that I am by no means a pro when it comes to .GIFs as I only started making them last month (October). Despite that I hope you will find this five-step-guide useful and not too confusing.

If you have questions, you can either ask them via tumblr or on the LJ post.

Step One - Set Up

• Download KMPlayer.
• Once you've installed it, open your video file and press pause. Note: I always use .MKV files, the WEB-DL from iTunes.
• Press F2 to open the Option panel.

• Go to General > Keys/Global Control > Keys/Remote Control. Select &Capture from the menu.
• Click on Frame: Quick Capture - Ctrl+A.
• Assign another hotkey (I use <) to make the whole capturing process easier. Note: This key will only work as long as this file is open. After closing your file, it will be set to the default hotkey.

• Go to Association/Capture > Capture. Select the folder you want your caps to be stored in.
• Then select from the Format menu JPG (middle).

• Now you're finished with the set up. Click Close.

Step Two - Capturing

• Press your assigned hotkey (here <) to capture the current image.
• Press F to go to the next frame. Note: To go back a frame, press Shift+F.

• Repeat the two steps until you've captured the whole scene or as much as you want.
  
• Important: The more caps you have in the end, the higher you end-size of the .GIF will be! Less is more in this case. :)

• I found that 20-28 caps work quite well and let you use up to 256 colors in Photoshop later.

Step Three - Preparing the images

• Open Photoshop. Note: I work with CS3 but I think most functions are still the same in the new versions.
• Go to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack.
• Click Browse and select your images (quick select them with Ctrl+A).
• Click OK and wait until your images have been loaded.

• Resize your images to a width of 245px.

• Go to Window > Animation to open the animation panel and convert the panel to frame animation by selecting it from the panel's menu or clicking the button in the lower right corner.
• Select Make Frames from Layers from the menu.
• Optional: In some cases you might have to select Reverse Frames from the menu to get the right order of the frames.

• Select Select All Frames from the menu and set the frame delay time to 0.1 seconds.


• Set the looping option to Forever.

Step Four - Adding layers

• Open one of the .PSD coloring files.
• Select all the layers (except the example image layers of course) and drag them into your canvas.
• Important: Make sure that the coloring layers are always on top of the layer palette.

• Check the layers and either add/remove them or change their settings until you're satisfied. Note: You can always make further changes later if the end result (the actual .GIF) is still too big in the end.

• The darker the image, the more frames the .GIF can have and the higher the maximum number of colors can be.
• Adding a Lighten layer with a color between #111111 and #282828 can help reducing the size of the .GIF as well while keeping a higher number of colors.

Step Five - Saving as a .GIF

• Go to File > Save for Web & Devices.
• In the lower left bottom you can see the end size of your .GIF.
• On the right size, next to Colors you can select a number between 1 and 256. Note: The lower the number, the lower the size of the .GIF will be but it will also reduce the quality of the .GIF (it will be a mess of grainy pixels).

• Option A: The size is under 500KB.
• Perfect. Go and save your .GIF and make the next one.

• Option B: The size is above 500KB.
• Before you reduce the number of colors, go back to the animation panel and try deleting a few frames (either from the beginning or the end or in equal numbers) to lower the size of the .GIF.
• If the size is still above 500KB, start to reduce the numbers of colors in the Save For Web & Devices panel by ten (10) at a time first and then one by one.
• If that didn't help either, go back to your layer palette and darken your image. Maybe that does the trick.
• If the size is finally under 500KB, click Save and your finished!

The END. :D