#also gifmakers do god's work by colouring these movies

[perotovar]

Hi!!!! No worries if you don’t want to tell me or respond lol. But I really like the colour grading you did on that most recent Joel Miller gif set. I do photography and I’ve been struggling for ages to find a way to bring out the warm sort of brown tones without making things feel too muddy or red. Just curious about what HSL adjustments you made / what colour grading helped you get that look?

ohhhh my god thank you so much??? this might be a convoluted answer/unnecessary rant so i apologize in advance lol but i tend to keep the colorings/psds i use for gifs saved in a folder so every gif i make in a set is consistent with color/lighting/shading/whatever. i get anxious if there's even a little bit of difference per gif lol

a lot of what turned out in those gifs has to do with the lighting/coloring that's already in the show/that specific episode/scene. i've got the rest of the episodes' gifsets made and finished but i can try and kind of show what i'm talking about. they all look different color-wise, at least in my opinion, because of the differences in each episode's lighting. if that makes sense.

the goal with any gif i make, regardless of show/movie, is to make them either

1) better than what was there before (for example, if the movie is INCREDIBLY blue/yellow then i try and color correct that blue or yellow to be more neutral)(i'm looking at you triple frontier and your dark, blue ass scenes dfjkdflh)

and

2) not whitewash pedro. this is incredibly important (at least in my opinion) because i've noticed a lot of gifmakers (or least they used to) went for a really pastel/pale look and it whitewashed poc so dramatically and it was ~problematic~ to say the least. (i used to make gifs for a band that consisted of all mexican band members and i got hate a few times/people policing how i should color my gifs so the band wouldn't get whitewashed, so it's something i've been hyper aware of ever since)

so, even if i'm going for a more moody/darker aesthetic like i am with these gifsets of tlou, i never try and diminish the color pedro has in his skin tone. he's got a lot of color in his skin and i want to be able to see it, y'know what i mean?

basically, that boils down to keeping a lot of the warmer tones while also going for an ~aesthetic~ and it can be really hard sometimes. sometimes a show or movie, in this case the last of us, every episode is lit a little differently since it takes place over the course of a year.

i'll put some examples under the cut:

ok so i'll use episodes 2 and 8 as my examples.

to begin with, the last of us has, what i call, a "post-apocalyptic filter" over the top of it so i kinda have to work with that from the start. lots of greens/earthy brown tones and stuff.

this is with only sharpening applied and no color or anything:

and this is with my previously mentioned ~dark and moody~ psd applied on top of that sharpening:

now, this is the same color grading i used on that gifset you were mentioning.

this is also the same color grading i used on episode 8, which takes place in the winter/snowy areas so the coloring to begin with is going to reflect that:

and now with the coloring:

the big thing between these two scenes is that in the winter one, he's also recovering from actively dying and being deathly pale so any color he had in his face is really minimal lmao

so this is already way too fucking long and i don't think i even actually answered your question i am so sorry lol

to start, i ALWAYS start with an automatic curves layer and then adjust accordingly.

the actual color grading part mostly consists of vibrance, hue/saturation, selective color, channel mixer, gradient map, and level layers. i'm willing to give you the psd privately if you'd like to have a closer look at them!

thank you so much for asking and for putting up with my ranting lmao

[expensivemistake]

5, 10, 34, 37, 38 for giffing asks <3

(Giffing asks) <3

Ooh ooh ooh thank you so much!!!

5. What is your favorite movie/TV show to gif? Right now, definitely Umbrella Academy, although each season has a pretty distinct look which makes them pretty hard to combine into a gif. I also loved Glee, specifically doing songs that took place on a stage, because the colours already feel bright, interesting and enhanced by stage lighting.

10. What was the first gif you ever posted? I can't remember the first ever gif (singular) but I remember I started gifmaking in the glee fandom by doing a little set for each of my top five characters at the time. I've attempted to track down the early sets but I genuinely can't see them, even after going on blog archives, but here's a few from the first one that I found on google.

As you can tell, they look like ass hahahaha.

34. A set that took you a long time/was really hard but you’re really proud of how it came out. Oh god, the only gifset I remember taking forever was I'm Still Here, but I hated that one. I think maybe this Mash Up one. There were so many parts, and the layout was kinda tricky to make work. But also I thought it was pretty cool and unique and I was proud of it.

WAIT. Rose's Turn!!! If anyone can find my Rose's Turn set, I'll reblog it here. Because I was SO proud of that one, and it took a long, long time to get right, because it was my first blending experiment.

37. What sets, if any, do you have planned to make in the future?Oooh! Right now most of them are Umbrella Academy sets. I've still got five more to do for my TUA request meme, so I'm sort of planning for that. I really want to gif a specific bouncy castle scene, so I'll probably do that at some point. And I also want to do more music-based sets, probably based on different needle drops in that show. And at some point I'd like to do more Glee sets again, even just if I did a few songs/scenes and stuff. I also meant to do some Everything Everywhere All at Once stuff a while back, so that's absolutely on my list of things to make gifs of.

38. What are you really excited to gif that isn’t out yet Ooh, I don't know. I'm not really looking forward to any specific media right now. I normally stay limited in my gifmaking and what I actually do, rather than just... a lot of media.

Thank you so much for these!!! This was fun to work out and answer!!! xx

[lesbianrobin]

answer every 5 on the gif maker asks xox

you must always do The Most huh.... here goes <3

5. What do you dislike most about making graphics / gifs?

mmmm well before adobe started closing my t*rrented photoshop every five minutes i would have said trying to get file sizes small enough to post on tumblr. but now that adobe is closing my t*rrented photoshop every five minutes and i must make all of my gifs like i’m doing a bank heist on a clock before the cops show up i would say that i probably dislike that the most!

10. What graphics / gif trends do you dislike most?

okay this is just MY OPINION but.... super washed out small gifs that are either EXTREMELY light or EXTREMELY dark.... i just don’t love them i think they can be done well yknow but it takes a lot of fiddling and the right shots to make it work and too often it just results in gifs that look kinda muddy and it’s difficult to even see what’s in the gif! 

luckily that trend is kinda out right now, though. i know gifs like that were huge on tumblr a few years back but right now everybody seems pretty into like really bright colors and big gifs which i think is so much fun!! 

15. Colour(s) you dislike

i think.... okay i love blue SO MUCH i love it it’s a great color!!! but i swear to god the second you try to tweak the colors in a gif with lots of blues every goddamn pixel in the universe comes out of the woodwork to be like HEYYY LOOK AT ME I’M JUST HERE CHILLING IN YOUR GIF DON’T MIND ME <3 and it pisses me off!!! i’ve made SO MANY gifs with blue as a prominent color that i just never posted because i couldn’t fucking make it look any less pixelated and i got too frustrated to finish the set!!!

20. Your favourite fandom(s) to make graphics / gifs for

so far i’ve only giffed for stranger things and i love it!! i’ve thought about giffing some other shows and movies, particularly the queen’s gambit, emma, little women, and over the garden wall, but i don’t really have any particular ideas for those things that are strong enough to make me think it would be worth it to go through the trouble of torrenting/screen recording/buying them. 

25. What would you like to see others learn how to do?

hmmmm idk i’ve seen giffers do AMAZING things and i don’t know that much yet!! i do love when gifmakers do composites where they combine multiple gifs into one, and i’d love to see people come up with new ways of combining/organizing gifs like that!! i’m absolutely horrible at envisioning gifsets and making gifs work with each other, so i always love seeing how people make different gifs so visually cohesive.

30. Biggest errors you’ve made in graphic / gif making (with or without realising)?

uhhhhh not saving often!!! save your work kids because by god does it hurt to lose the last three hours of your life !! 

35. Gif makers, what is your go to frame delay? (And why!)

0.07 seconds!! @kittenscully taught me how to gif and she even wrote me a nice comprehensive starter guide to giffing which said very clearly to set the frame delay to 0.07 seconds For Reasons so i listened <3 i do sometimes set the frame delay to 0.06 or even 0.05 seconds if it’s an “action shot” of something like max skateboarding, because the slower frame delay can make some continuous or quick actions look... wrong.

i really like 0.07 for wide shots or focusing on facial expressions/casual movements, though, because i think when you put a bunch of gifs right next to each other it’s easy for things to get overwhelming, and having a slightly slower frame delay can combat that! it also allows you to take notice of small details that might pass too quickly when you’re watching the show.

40. Show a screenshot of your software’s workspace!

so i use i think the default photoshop setup??

i always like to keep at least two gifs open at a time when i’m working on a set so that i know i’m keeping my colors somewhat consistent/harmonious.

thank you for all the homework babes love u xoxo <3