Hello everyone! For those of you who don't know me, I'm Minalover and I am the new Workshop/Critique host for the AG&C subforum.

From what I understand, these are to be held like a class where we critique our works together each week. So, every week, I will post one piece of a tutorial and everyone who has signed up will post their example displaying what they have learned. The rest of us will comment weekly about what we like and how we think the piece can be improved. At the end of the class, we will do a final critique on finished products and hopefully spur ideas for the next class.

Sound great? Fantastic. So glad to have you on board!

Weekly Requirements:
- Post your graphic into the topic, illustrating the points learned in the week's lesson
- Respond to at least two other artists' creations, discussing tactical skills (sizing, speed, etc.) and possible visual suggestions (colors, brushes, textures, etc.)


Since this is a "class", so to speak, I will need to know who is here! Please sign up by posting below.

This month's class is on: creating GIFs from video files
Class will begin on: Saturday, February 7th


Thank you all for your interest in this workshop and I hope to see you soon! xo

#ag #agworkshop

Oh, this sounds interesting! And I really need to improve my skills, so: Sign me up, please!

Me too, I need to learn gifs!

Even though I know how to make gifs, a class would be fun! I'm always eager to learn something maybe I didn't know before.

step one: choose a video file.
in this workshop, we will be working on making GIFs from videos. please choose a video file (usually .mp4 or .m4v) to use. 
     pro tip: remember to look at resolution! something in 1080p is going to be much higher quality than 720p. 1080p is the highest you can get, so aim for that if you can! there's usually something in the video name or description that says what the resolution is.

step two: download the video file.
if your video file is already on your computer (like a television show you can't stop watching lol), great! if not, use this website to download the video file.

step three: open Photoshop
i use ps6 and so all of my instructions will be from this. i'll try and translate into ps5, but i will have trouble with gimp.

step four: "import video frames to layers"


step five: select a video from your computer


step six: actually import video frames to layers

this step can get confusing if you've never done it before, so don't panic! 

this is what the screen will look like once you've selected your video file to import to layers. it's asking you "wow, that's a lot of frames - are you sure you want them all?" and chances are good you don't. 

to scan the video, use the arrow outlined in blue. this allows you to scan through the video to find the scene you're looking for. 

once you've found it, go to the arrows in green - they allow you to tell ps6 to only cut that specific scene. so drag the arrows just to the left and just to the right of your blue arrow. 

now, go up to the arrow outlined in yellow - push play. this allows you to watch the part of the video you've outlined. if everything you want to gif has been played, great! if not, play around with the green arrows until you've got the clip you want. 



notice where all of my arrows are.



LOOK AT THE BLUE CIRCLE TO THE LEFT. 

the "use selected range only" should automatically select as soon as you move the green-circled arrows. 


REMEMBER TO SELECT AND LIMIT TO EVERY TWO FRAMES. it makes life so much easier by turning 80 frames into 40 frames without losing quality.

as soon as you're done picking your frames, click the ok button.

step seven: the frames


this should be the screen you get. from here, it's time to decide which frames exactly you want in your GIF. 

see the layers/frames at the bottom? you can delete frames from here! the layers will still be on the right, but they won't show up in your GIF. 

delete any extra frames you have (you should have a lot of extras! there are usually 150-200 frames in a cut and you'll only need about 35 of them)

if you find yourself with 50 frames that you need to keep: delete every 4th frame - you can usually avoid major weird things if you do every 4th. 

aim to have between 30 and 35 frames!

step eight: the cropping


find the cropping tool (circled in blue) and crop to your heart's content! try to crop and not re-size, unless you're keeping the dimensions equal!

step nine: the speed


you've got your GIF cropped! all you need now is the speed. see the number .12 circled in blue at the bottom? select all of your frames (at the bottom) and click that button (the .12). it's usually set at a standard .04, but whatever number it is will work. my standard speed is .12, but feel free to play around with it as much as you like until you get it right for you!

step ten: save it.


file > save for web


the screen should look just like this. these are basically the presets and your system shouldn't be different (unless you've been messing with them, which is awesome, just switch 'em back!). at this point, you should be able to click OK and be done! name that GIF and post it here.




this is my GIF cropped to galaxy cauldron avatar size with a speed of .04



this is my GIF cropped to tumblr size with a speed of .12

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i hope this has helped! please post your GIF by saturday, february 14th and tell us about how you implemented the lessons learned so we can offer some critique!

lessons learned this week:
- how to choose and download quality video
- how to import video frames to layers
- layer selection
- cropping
- speed

these are the things we will critique on. 

next lesson: posted saturday, february 21st
our next lesson will be on styling these GIFs. we'll learn about premade PSD files and image filters. if there's anything else you'd like to learn about (textures, text, gradients, etc.) please let me know and i'll add it to the next workshop session.

you all are the best - i can't wait to see what you create!
(also, please let me know if there's anything i can do to help you!)

Little problem over here
I don't have any version of Photoshop and it isn't possible to do it with GIMP:( The only thing I could also do in GIMP is cropping.

The only alternative I have is http://ezgif.com/ but I don't know if this is okay for you because most of the work (i.e. layer selection) does the web site for me.

Princess Moon wrote:

Little problem over here
I don't have any version of Photoshop and it isn't possible to do it with GIMP:( The only thing I could also do in GIMP is cropping.

Sorry if i'm disturbing the lesson

But GIMP isn't able to create gifs? really? i thought it also works with GIMP? even though i also use ps for all of my graphics... it's just weird that GIMP isn't able to create gif-sets as well

Do you own the newest version of GIMP?

And for the website... i don't have any experience with it, but i guess it can't create the videos into layers? i don't want to say something wrong, though

So, I can paste gifs and crop them - but that's everything. No speed, no video-to-gif, no saving settings, nothing

No, the second newest: GIMP 2.6
And I'm afraid of downloading the new one. Every time I update a program on my laptop I always get new browsers and new settings without asking me I'm not good with computers >.>

@Princess Moon: No problem! You use what you have! Pick a video file (remember that the website only takes certain kinds of files), select the section of the video you want, and crop it! Let's see what you can make with the website!! And if there's anything we can do to help get you the newest version of GIMP, let us know. <3

@Marianne: I'm not entirely sure what the website can do (and I can't even try it out because all of my videos are .m4v and they don't like that haha), but we'll see what it CAN do! And the frames-to-layers thing is really a Photoshop term, so I'm guessing the website can't do that.

Can't wait to see what we all do!

Alright, I tried to do it as much as possible like you did
Here are my attempts:




My subject was the beautiful Megan Fox

But I have a problem, hoping that you can help me It's a bit fuzzy at some places. I know it's normal that there's a quality loss when you make a gif but maybe you have a tip for me how I could avoid it? Or at least how to reduce the fuzziness?

@Princess Moon: They look great! I had to actually lift my computer to my face to see the fuzziness. One of the things you can do is add some additional color to sort of mask the fuzzy, like you did with the black and white.

I like the way you cropped her face in the second GIF and how you've framed her face in the first. It's clear you started with videos with great quality and resolution, and it shows. 

That particular fuzz is called "noise" and there are sometimes filters to reduce noise. Does GIMP have anything that reduces noise? See if you can control+f (the find function) anything that says noise.

All in all, great work! Next session, we'll look at coloring and other cool stuff you can do with your GIFs.

Bit by bit I get the feel that GIMP can't do anything xD I can't reduce noises with GIMP >.> Aaaaaaaah, I hate it! Guess, I can't do anything to improve the gif

But thank you for your critique! ^-^ Can't wait for the next session!

So I'm probably not gunna have time to make something because I still haven't even gotten my computer set up from the move (i'm still technically on LOA but i can check GC at work from time to time ) and I saw your GIMP issues. So with my trusty pal Google, I did a search for "how to reduce noise in Gimp". There's lots of tutorials!

This one is straight from Gimp's website: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Reducing_CCD_Noise/

And a tutorial on simple animations: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Simple_Animations/

I haven't tried it yet, but it may enlighten you to some features you didn't know about.

This one is ok too but doesn't go over how to adjust the timing: http://www.elearnhub.org/how-to-make-an-animated-gif-in-gimp/

(P.S. Google (or your search engine of choice) is awesome and may be your best bet to figure out how to do things in gimp while trying to follow along with our tutoriols)


EDIT: The only thing I've noticed in that last tutorial is they say to "save as" when in gimp (at least the version i have), you need to go to File > Export As to be able to select file formats like .gif, .png, .jpg etc. Doing "save as" only allows you to save as native GIMP file formats (which would be equivalent to saving a .psd file to be able to open and edit your layers later)

This isn't fancy cause i just took a couple pics from google images but I threw this gif together to see if I could do it in GIMP.

Thank you so much, Small Lady! ^-^