only love is not fate

Hello! How are you doing?

So, what I do to make the background blend together with my subject is using color balance, selective color and choosing the right "tone" for the background color. If the picture/image you're using is too bright it will be difficult to use a darker background or if it's too yellow or green, there may be some colors that won't look that great.

Also, to make my job easier I tend to choose pictures/images that have good to decent lighting, so will also help when I remove the background and make the icon look more "smooth".

Another tip I will give is: pick the colors that are already on the picture/image to use as a background. For example, for the icon on the left I chose a pink shade from the darker side of her dress, in the middle i chose a lighter pink shade and for the icon on the right I choose a more lighter pink shade that is more grayish. (The image doesn't have any other filter/effect).

Also, one thing that helps me with choosing the color is knowing where the light is coming from. In the icons above, the light is coming from behind her so I think lighter colors suits best than darker ones even when I'm using a different color that is not on the picture itself:

After choosing the color you want, you can play with the adjustments and make the icon more colorful by using selective color enhancing the background and also the subject and color balance to "set" the tone. As well use levels and curves to bright the image or make it darker depending on the mood you're setting for you icon.

I also like to apply a white gradient layer to enhance the lighting and I think it makes the background more interesting, for example on the left icon I applied some adjustments but made the background solid and on the right I applied a while gradient layer coming from the left and above where the natural light was already coming from:

And that's it! Hope my answer helps you on your icon making!

Hello! So, I don't open the mkv files on Photoshop, what I do is use the program Avidemux or Handbrake to cut the scene I want to gif because I use vapoursynth to encode my video before opening on Ps. If you want to know how I do my gifs, you can check this video I posted later.

You can also use one of these two programs to convert the scene you want to gif to mp4 and open direct on Photoshop without any problem.

i decided to make a video showing my giffing process to anyone that might be interested.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.

hello!! omg thank you so much for liking my gifs 🥹🫶🫶

Of course! In this post I'll share some tips that I think are helpful when making gifs, specially from asian dramas (mostly chinese and korean)!

2. Where to make gifs?

Mostly, the gifs on this website are done using Adobe Photoshop but I think for the past few years there is a lot of users who use Photopea which is an online (and free) version of photoshop.

3. How to make gifs?

Well, I think there's a some ways of making gifs but the 2 most common are through screencapping and using vapoursynth. Before I knew how to use and install vapoursynth I used the screencap method a LOT so I totally recommend you to begin giffing using the screencap method before you try other ways of giffing. Also, with this method, you can use on both Photoshop and Photopea.

But if you want to know how to gif using vapoursynth (if you are an MAC user), i totally recommend this how to install post and COMPREHENSIVE GIFFING TUTORIAL (vapoursynth + ps cc 2018) post, both from my beloved @dingyuxi 🫶

If you don't have Photoshop and want to make gifs using Photopea, I think this and this tutorials will be great for you.

4. How to color?

Coloring gifs is something very personal to each gifmaker but if you want to know how to start doing it, i recommend you these tutorials:

Finally, I recommend you looking at the resource directory from @usergif because they have a collection of tutorials and resources that are very handy when making gifs!

If you have any particular question from how I gif, I will gladly answer!

Oi! Eu posso te indicar alguns tutoriais mas todos são em inglês, espero que não seja problema!

E eu também recomendo muito você dar uma olhada em tutorials no @usergif porque no momento é o tumblr que tem o acervo mais completo de tutoriais relacionados a gifs!

Hi!! thank you so much for your words, i'm really glad you like my gifs, this made my day!! 🥹💖💖💖

And sure, for the first set I used this video as a texture and for the second one, i used this video. Hope it helps 🥰

Hi! Thank you so much for liking my gifs <3

Before I share my current sharpening and coloring process I must say that I make my gifs using vapoursynth and sometimes I add sharpen on that before making the gif on photoshop, so the result may differ on other styles of giffing.

For my sharpening I use Smart Sharpen with 13% for Intensity and 20,0px for Ray. I duplicate the layer, set the mode to Overlay and then apply High Pass with ray of 2 pixels.

For coloring, I'm currently leaning towards a "natural" feel but still enhancing some colors and making the scene look more bright so the adjustments I use the most are Exposition and Selective Color. I talk more about it on this post.

Hi! When i want my gif to have a lot of color i moslty use color selective and color balance!

Selective color is great when you want to enhance certain colors, for the gif above, i went to Reds and increased the "yellow" (+8) and "black" (+20), then i went on Cyans and increased the "cyan" to +100 and did the same on Blues and to finish the first layer of selective color, i went on Neutrals and increased the "yellow" to +6 and "black" to +7.

This already make a "base" for the colors to appear more.

With color balance, i used the Midtones to make his skin more warmer (because this drama really makes yunxi so pale 😐).

I put the "cyan/red" on +4 and "yellow/blue" on -13, this also makes the scene a little bit yellowish.

Then what i do is going back and forth with the adjustments layers, i use the "channels" to enhance the colors going "little by little" until i get the result i want.

The "Neutrals" channel on selective color is amazing to set the "tone" on your gif, the positive numbers on the respective colors will make the saturation on your gif to be the color you want.

Another example:

Of course, i also use adjustments like curves, exposition and levels to make it more bright or to enhance the black tones!

My tip is to try it out and see if works with the scenes you want to color!