hi !! first of all i use 1080p episode downloads which really helps with the quality. keeping the frame speed lower also helps with quality, so if i use every frame i put the frame delay on around 0.06. also sharpening is really important and i use similar settings to these. i also make sure that my colouring doesn't make any part of the gif too pixelated, because sometimes adjusting certain colours can make parts of the gif really pixelated or grainy :/.
for example for this gifset i had to lower the saturation completely for the cyans, the greens and the blues.
and this was what it looked liked before i did that:
and this is what it looked like after:
much clearer to look at and a lot less grainy and pixely (tho not as good as i would've liked but oh well). this is because gifs can only have up to 256 colours:
so certain colours are prioritised which can also help to result in the grain/pixelation. which is why export settings are also extremely important:
i usually use selective and diffusion, but if i have a gradient or lots of colours like in this gifset i sometimes use adaptive and pattern. i'm not as a huge fan of pattern bcs it creates tiny little boxes so i usually stick to diffusion if i can. also switching between selective and adaptive helps to see which colours are prioritised and whether it makes a huge difference on what your gif looks like, so you can play around with those settings until it's to your liking.
for example this is what a gif with a gradient kinda thing looks like with a diffusion export setting:
you can see the orange colour isn't very smooth and you can see the layers of it but with pattern it looks much better:
much better !! i did end up using selective and pattern here as there wasn't much of a difference between using adaptive and selective even tho the colour tables looked kinda different:
selective is on the left and adaptive is on the right:
here's a more in depth explanation about the in export settings: x
also make sure that your gif is the correct size for tumblr - x
that's all i can think of right now and sorry that it got a bit long and slightly off topic ahsdjdkjd. if anyone wants me to make a full gif tutorial from start to finish let me know !! and feel free to ask any more questions <3