Now that you know how to make basic GIFs with this tutorial, let’s learn how to make it look nicer.

1. Prepare the layers you will be using in your GIF. I have 37 layers of Nishikado Soujiroh from “Hana Yori Dango”. What exactly are the pictures I’m using in my layers? They are screencaps I’ve taken from a video clip at regular intervals of 3 steps per layer. Video clips, as you know, consist of many frames. Each frame can also be called a “step.” So I skipped three steps, took a screenshot, skip another three steps, take another screenshot, and so on until I have 20 screenshots, which are the layers I am going to use for this GIF. The layers/frames look very similar because the interval I used is not big. If I had taken a screenshot for every 10 steps in the video clip, the final GIF would look very skippy. Keep that in mind. This step one is very important as it explains the core of how GIFs work. Thus, this is how my layer palette looks with a different frame on each layer (the first frame is at the bottom and the last on top).

click here

2. Now I can crop or resize the layers so my GIF file size doesn’t become massive. I resized the layer by going to Image > Image Resize and setting it to have a width of 85 pixels, keeping the aspect ratio.

3. I want to lighten up the frames so I can actually see Soujiroh’s hot face. To do this, I won’t have to edit each individual frame. Instead, I go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves and used these settings, then dragged that layer all the way to the top. Now all the layers will be brighter just by this single layer being at the top. You can do the same with coloring, too, by going to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance or Selective Colors.

4. Time to transport this to ImageReady to make the animation. Go to File > Edit in Imageready.

5. This will automatically open up Imageready. Make sure your animation window is open by going to Window > Animation. I’m going to assume you know the basics of GIF-making (if not, refer to this tutorial). Make a total of 19 frames for this animation.

6. I have 37 layers, but only 19 frames because 37 frames would create too big a file. So what I’m going to do is skip every other layer for each subsequent frame. This means that for the first frame, I’m going to hide every layer except for the Curves layer and the first layer. For the second frame, I will hide every layer except for the Curves Layer and the THIRD layer (skipping the second layer) and so on. Generally, I like to start off with more layers than frames that I’m going to work with so I can have an idea of the maximum length of my GIF and I can cut it down later if there are too many layers. If you’re going to elimate some of the layers in your final GIF, I recommend you cut down the layers at regular intervals, too, to avoid skippyness. So I won’t have Layer 1 in my first frame, Layer 5 in my second frame, and then Layer 7 in my third frame because the result would look very strange. Feel free to preview how your GIF looks so far by pressing the play button on the animation window. This is how my animation window looks right now:

7. One more note: remember your Curves layer should be visible for every frame (otherwise you’d have some light pictures and some dark pictures in your GIF and it’ll look weird).

8. The GIF is running too quickly for me so I will add delays between each frame. To do this, look at step 13 in this tutorial. For this GIF, I change the delay time to 0.1 sec. Now the frames change more slowly.

9. The GIF is looking pretty good by itself. But it’s also quite plain. Let’s decorate it in Photoshop. Go to File > Edit in Photoshop and that will move the file back to Photoshop. Let’s make the last layer fade to black. Create a new layer at the very top of the layer palette and fill it with black. Now go to File > Edit in Imageready. You will probably see that all the frames have turned black. To fix this, go to the first frame and hide the black layer. It will disappear from all the other frames, too.

10. Make four new frames. Unhide the black layer for each of them. In the first of the four new frames, lower the opacity of the black layer to 20% and with each of the subsequent layers, raise that opacity by 30% or so until you have 100% opacity in the last of the four layers. Play the animation and you should see it fade to black near the end.

11. Now let’s add a border. Go to File > Edit in Photoshop. Add a new layer all the way at the top and fill it to white. Set the mode to 100% Multiply and the white should disappear. Right click on that layer and go to Blending Options. Check the “Stroke” box. These are the settings I used:

12. I decided to add another layer on top of that and do the same thing, but instead of a beige border I added a 1-pixel dark green border. You can choose whatever type of border you want to add, including borders with patterns.

13. I want to make this GIF icon-sized with a background. So I go to Image > Canvas Size and change it to 200 x 200 pixels with a center anchor.

14. Icon size is usually 100 x 100, but I made this canvas bigger so I can crop it however I like. After cropping it to 100 x 100, it looked like this:

15. Now comes the part that will pretty much determine the overall finished look of your GIF. You get to choose a background! Sticking to the colors already in the GIF, I used this texture (you can download it here in the “Urban Life” pack) and pasted it directly above the Curves layer.

16. I go to Edit > Tranform > Rotate 90 degrees CW. Then I used the selection tool to cut out the part of the texture that covers the GIF (use the borders in the layers above this as a guide). This is what I got:

17. Next I added some text and put it in the layer above the texture (font: Freebooter Script; size: 30pt; mode: 100% Multiply; color: #8F692A).

18. Finally, I just want to add a border around the whole icon and repeated step 12.

19. Go to File > Edit in Imageready. Then go to File > Save Optimized As to save the file. I suggest you save another copy as a PSD by going to File > Save As just in case you want to edit it later. And…you’re finished! =)

download the .psd file