Hi! I love your tutorials, and I may also have a question 😊 I've been making gifs recently, but I am having trouble with Tumblr showing them correctly. For example, I work on them in photoshop and then post them on Tumblr via desktop and they look fine when it comes to brightness. However, when I look at them on the mobile app, they are so dark, it bothers me. If I adjust the brightness of my phone (which really hurts my eyes LoL) they look fine again, however when I put it back to the lower brightness it's darker again, while other people's gifs do look brighter than mine. How do you ensure the correct brightness without losing quality? I've seen brighter gifs, but when I look at those on PC they are super grainy. Thanks in advance for the help!

Hmm. I’ve never actually paid much attention to the brightness of gifs, or at least not in a comparative desktop-vs-mobile light. That could be because I so rarely use the app (and often as a last resort, because I truly hate the mobile experience) but something I do keep an eye on is colors and colorings, just because something that drives me bananas as an editor is the fact that colors can look anywhere from mildly to wildly different between screens.

A general piece of advice I’d give to you or any creator—and I emphasize any, because I’d give the same advice even if someone isn’t experiencing this specific issue or something similar to it—is to save your gifset as a draft instead of posting it straight away, if you don’t already do as much. This allows you to see how the gifset looks on both screens, and make adjustments accordingly.

Now, in terms of advice that’s specifically brightness-oriented, I would probably recommend... the backwards of a lot of people? Because I use Curves to do everything. Literally everything: brightening, adding contrast, even color correcting if Color Balance isn’t quite getting the job done for me. I used to use Levels, but never do anymore unless I’m trying to create a silhouette. I never use, or so much as look at, Exposure. And the only time you’ll see me use Brightness & Contrast is to actually lower the brightness for scenes that are on the too-bright side of things.

You might find you like other adjustment layers better, which is more than fine. I’m a firm believer in there being no one particular or exclusive way of doing anything in Photoshop. But since I keep my computer at max brightness and keep my phone near or at min brightness, and I haven’t seen much of a difference (beyond colors) in how my gifs look, I thought I’d give a quick rundown of what I do in case you’d like to try it out.

My ‘base’ layers tend to look like this:

And this is what my Curves layers typically look like:

The trick to using Curves without making things too grainy, I’ve found, is to avoid any extremes. Instead of tinkering with that first Curves layer on the far left, I a) adjust the opacity of the layer as I see fit, and b) duplicate it when a scene is still dark and calls for some added brightness.

Alternatively: The droppers on the left side will do a lot of the work for you in both the brightening and color correcting departments if you know what you’re doing. (And, like anything in Photoshop, it really is just playing around with it until you get a feel of how it works.)

When picking the brightest point of a scene doesn’t brighten it to my standards, I go for the brightest point on or near a character’s skin (typically around the nose and forehead area; wherever the light hits them) or hair, if they have lighter hair like Ciri and Geralt do in The Witcher.

Here’s a quick Before and After look:

There’s obviously no 100% guarantee of retaining The Most Perfect Quality, especially when uploading on Tumblr, but as long as you’re working with HD footage (1080p or 2160p), sizing your gifs correctly, and choosing the right Save for Web settings, ensuring brightness shouldn’t mean loss of quality.

If you’re still experiencing issues with it, feel free to let me know! I’m always happy to work with people one-on-one.

hey! i lovelovelove your edits/psds so much. Jes they're so pretty and smooth and nice!! I was wondering, did you save that psd from the gina gifset? or could you tell me how to get the blues and blacks balanced like that? for blues and purples specifically, I always have a really hard time trying to make it look good. Could you help or anything? (if you can't that's okay, don't worry!!) Thanks in advance!

Ok so this is just a quick partial coloring tutorial of how I make my blue/purple gifs.

Continuar lendo

Hello!! I love your icons!! I was wondering how you made them? Or how you make icons in general?

i’ve gotten a few requests so here’s a detailed tutorial of how i make my icons. i apologize for typos and the fact that i just am not great at tutorials but let’s give it a shot.

you’ll need:

here’s a tutorial on how to make icons like these ones:

Continuar lendo