gif tutorial
STEP ONE.
1. Open Adobe CS4. Go to File > Open > and choose your media file that you want to create a gif from. In this instance I'm using Britney Spears Toxic.mp4.
2. Make sure that your Animation toolbar is open in Adobe. It will look like the bottom strip on the above picture. If you don't see it there, go to Window > Animation.
STEP TWO.
3. Now to select that part of the movie you want to turn into a gif, you will move bar from the very left to the part of the movie you want to select. As you move the bar, it will grey out the area that WILL NOT render. You will then move the bar from the right to end point of the are you're wanting. This should leave a little white space that you can preview by pressing the play button in your animation toolbar that sits at the bottom left.
4. Now you will go to File > Export > Render Video... A little Save As box will pop up on your screen. Name the file to whatever you want and save it. I save my files as Mov because I'm on a Mac. If you are on Windows, you may want to save it as something else. When you've adjusted the settings to their best quality, select Render and wait for it to do it's thing.
5. Once it's done, go to File > Open > Open your newly rendered video.
STEP THREE.
6. Now you should be able to see your newly rendered video. If you see anything that has rendered that you don't want, use the bars to grey out the areas you don't want again.
7. This is the stage where you will want to do your coloring and sharpening.
HELPFUL TIP: IF YOU ARE TRYING TO KEEP YOUR FILE SIZE LIMIT DOWN BELOW 500KB [AS TUMBLR DOES NOT ALLOW GIFS LARGER THAN 500KB IN SIZE AND 500PX IN WIDTH], DARKER TONES WILL ALWAYS BE LESS KB THAN LIGHTER TONES.
Here's how I got this coloring:
credit to coloring_help for this
8. When you've finished your coloring and sharpening, re-render the file, the same as you did the first time.
STEP FOUR.
9. File > Import > Video Frames to Layers
10. Most of the time, you're going to want to select that box that says "Limit To Every __ Frames" (this will limit the frames that are processed by skipping every other frame, depending on the number you enter - keep in mind that Tumblr does not allow gifs over 500KB and more than often you will not be able to save a gif that has more than to 10-15 frames if it is 500PX in width).
11. Now you're going to want to set the speed of your frames. You can do this by selecting the small icon on your animation table in top right (see above picture) and "Select All Frames".
12. After you do that, all the frames should be highlighted. You'll click on the down arrow right next to the frame frame second and click on "Other".
13. A new box should pop up asking you to enter the second you want. Depending on how many frames you have, the normal rate should range from .08-.12. In most cases, if you're doing a 500px gif with 10-15 frames, I've found the best second to input is .12.
14. Make sure that in the bottom left corner it says "Forever" and "Once". If it is set to "Once", the gif will only play once. You can preview your gif by pressing the play button.
STEP FIVE: SAVING THE GIF
15. Go to File > Save for Web & Devices.
16. You should see a preview of a frame of your gif. In the above picture you can see the settings I've used to save this gif. If you're saving this under a certain KB amount, you will want to change the numbers where you see Colors: ___. As you do, you will see the KB amount go up and down in the bottom left hand corner (I've highlighted that in red).
17. When you've got the KB amount you're looking for, you'll click Save and voila! You should get something similair to this: