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antoniosvivaldi · 1 year

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Rotoscoping Tutorial by @antoniosvivaldi

Hi everyone! I’m excited to announce my long-delayed Rotoscoping Tutorial - requested by a number of people over the past calendar year.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create the cutout gifs like this (and seen in most of my gifsets under this tag) with Rotoscoping on After Effects. I’ll also provide additional examples and a number of things that I do to optimise my giffing / Rotoscoping workflow (e.g. useful shortcuts & other things to be aware of).

This is the structure of the tutorial:

Why Rotoscoping? Photoshop video timeline’s limitations

Photoshop workflow pt 1: Preparing your gif

After Effects workflow: Interface, shortcuts, and Rotoscoping tools

Photoshop workflow pt 2: Assembling your gif; with multiple examples

Bonus content: Rotoscoping tips* & workarounds to common issues

For quick reference, here are example gifsets (and where Rotoscoping is used in the posts) that I will mention in the tutorial:

Example 1: Cutout gif effect | panels 2 + 4

Example 2: Changing a gif’s background colour | all panels

Example 3: Cutout gif effect in a shape | all panels

Example 4: Putting it all together | panels 1, 3, & 5

What you need & need to know:

Software: Photoshop & After Effects (After Effects 2021 or later for Rotobrush 2.0)*

Hardware: 16GB RAM required to run later versions of AE*

Difficulty: Advanced; Knowledge in making gifs, applying layer masks, and using video timeline interface assumed

Key concepts: Rotoscoping (AE) / Video Timeline (AE+ PS) / Layer Masks & Groups (PS)

Supplementary files: tutorial resources

*I’m currently running the latest version of PS & AE on an M2 Mac, but I’ve also used older versions (CC 2015 & 2020) on Intel-based Macs. I’ll outline some known compatibility & performance issues, and workarounds later in this tutorial that could help streamline your giffing workflow.

Tutorial under the cut. Like / Reblog this post if you find this tutorial helpful. Linking this post / the example gifsets in your post caption, will be greatly appreciated if you read this to create effects seen in Examples 3 + 4.

1) Why Rotoscoping?

My Rotoscoping journey is motivated by the shortcomings on Photoshop - namely the limited options to manipulate the Layer Mask keyframes in the video timeline interface, as well my need to gif more efficiently.

Suppose I want to cutout this subject or recolour the background of a gif on Photoshop: I personally classify the gifs that I prepare on PS into 3 types based on the motion of the subject

These are the common Photoshop-only approaches when attempting to mask the subject in the gif.

Case 1: minimal motion in the subject → a simple layer mask will do the trick

Case 2: some linear panning of the subject in the gif → using the Layer Mask Position keyframes in the video timeline interface will do the trick

Case 3: subject moves around a lot (e.g. zoom motion) → Unfortunately this is where a Photoshop-only workflow will require frame by frame masking. Layer Mask Position keyframes only apply positional translation (but not transformation / rotation) on the layer mask

Enter Rotoscoping on After Effects: Instead of resigning to frame by frame procedure on Photoshop, I opted to make my life easier by learning to Rotoscope on After Effects. This essentially provides me an opportunity to cutout / recolour a wider range of gifs with relative ease.

2) Photoshop pt. 1: Preparing your gif

Prepare your gif the usual way - whether you screencap or import frames from video.

Then your Photoshop should look like this:

Now, I shall walkthrough & explain my personal giffing workflow (as of 2023) after loading the gif frames. To speed up the process, import my gif prep action file to Photoshop.

Going to Window > Action, you’ll see a set of actions under the “gif prep” folder.

"set frame delay for timeline” (highlighted in yellow) will set all of your entire gif’s frame delay to 0.03s

“convert to timeline“ (highlighted in red) will take you to the Video Timeline interface

To play an action, press on the Play button (highlighted in green)

i. Set the frame delay of the entire gif to 0.03s. (play “set frame delay for timeline” from my gif prep action pack)

I work with everything in 0.03s frame delay (or equivalently 30fps) at first. It’s always possible to change the frame delay of the final gif to 0.05s before uploading onto Tumblr.

ii) Convert this gif to a Smart Video Layer (play “convert to timeline” from my action pack)

Note: I personally don’t resize the gif just yet. That’s because Rotoscoping in full video resolution will render higher quality details around the edges as well as more flexibilities later on in the editing process.

Performance optimisation: If your computer has 8GB of RAM or less, you might find it helpful to crop / resize your gif to Tumblr dimensions now for a less sluggish performance in After Effects later on.

(I have giffed on a desktop with 8GB of RAM and it’s quite slow at rendering individual frames of a 1080p short clip on AE)

iii) Add colouring adjustments on the gif. This will save you A LOT of time when you Rotoscope gifs that are originally very dark / poorly lit (e.g. the uncoloured Taylor Swift gif shown just above).

If you usually colour your gifs at the very end of your giffing process (i.e. after sharpening), this will be a bit of a change.Nevertheless I still highly recommend adding some base colourings now to at least increase the contrast between the subject and the background.

iv) To minimise lagging on After Effects, simplify this gif file as follows:

Flatten / Unsmart this gif file back to frame animation mode: play “flatten” (highlighted in red) from my gif prep action pack

Set the frame delay to 0.03s: play “set frame delay for timeline” (highlighted in green)

Convert the simplified gif file back to the video timeline interface: play “convert to timeline” (highlighted in yellow)

After “unsmarting” and converting back to the video timeline, your interface should look like this

And voila! This gif PSD is now ready to be imported to After Effects for Rotoscoping work!

3) After Effects: Interface and useful shortcuts

Open After Effects and Import (Cmmd / Ctrl + I) your gif PSD that you’ve just prepared.

After importing your gif PSD to After Effects, the interface should look like this.

In the screenshot below, there are two compositions: the imported gif (highlighted in green) & another composition file made from selecting the imported gif (highlighted in red)

For the rest of the workflow, we will edit from the clone composition (the one highlighted in red), so select this one.

Before we take our plunge into the Rotoscoping, here are a few useful shortcuts to remember. I’ll explain the Roto Brush tool in the next section.

Preview the previous: fn + up arrow

Preview the next frame: fn + down arrow

Add to Roto Brush selection: holding Shift while you’re using the Roto Brush Tool

Subtract from Roto Brush selection: holding Alt while you’re using the Roto Brush Tool

Change Roto Brush size: while holding Cmmd / Ctrl, click + drag your mouse left / right

4) After Effects: The Rotoscoping Process

To access the Rotoscoping tools, click on the Roto Brush icon (highlighted in red in the screenshot below)

Then you’ll get the following dropdown options with two Rotoscoping Tools

Roto Brush Tool: This is where you add / subtract your Rotoscoping selection in your composition

Refine Edge Tool: Paint around the edge of your selection for more refined edges. Very helpful for Rotoscoping fuzzy edges / hairs

To make some Rotoscoping selection, first grab the Roto Brush Tool and click on the subject you want to cut out from your composition.

When you’re Rotoscoping you’ll see this in the Effect Controls panel.

There are two versions of Roto Brush:

Version 2.0: The Rotoscoping selection is powered by AI for higher accuracy when you propagate the frames.

Version 1.0 (Classic): This is the legacy Roto Brush Tool that uses a lesser algorithm. Recommended only if Roto Brush 2.0 is unstable on your machine due to RAM issues.

And two quality settings for Roto Brush 2.0:

Standard

Best

Note: I am currently unable to use Roto Brush 2.0 with Best quality model on my machine to compare the differences myself, so I’ll link this page that explains the two quality settings.

Note: if you’re using an older version of After Effects you’ll see this instead. This corresponds to Roto Brush 1.0 / Classic in the newer versions of AE.

When you’ve made a selection using the Roto Brush Tool, you’ll see the pink lines around the subject. This is the region that you’ve selected to Rotoscope!

To bring out some details around the edges, grab the Refine Edge Tool and paint around the edges

Then the interface will look like this

To view the Rotoscoping selection that you’ve made more intuitively, you could click on the following buttons.

Personally I like the viewing my selection using Toggle Alpha (the second box from the left) & Toggle Alpha Boundary (the 3rd box from the left)

Toggle Alpha

Toggle Alpha Boundary

Note: If you aren’t happy with the initial Roto Brush selection, you can always add (press Shift while using the Roto Brush Tool) / subtract (press Alt / Option using the Roto Brush Tool) your selection.

After you’re happy with your Rotoscoping selection in the first frame of your composition, press fn + down to view the next frame.

Repeat pressing fn + down and fix the selection along the way (e.g. I subtracted a small area from my Rotoscoping selection with the Roto Brush tool to make the edge look cleaner).

After fixing the selection along the way, go back to the composition file (select the clone composition again) and you will see that a cutout gif is made!

To export this, go to File > Export > Add to Render Queue. You’ll be redirected to the Render Queue panel at the bottom of After Effects.

Highlighted in red: click to change export setings

Highlighted in green: click to change save destination

Highlighted in yellow: click to render video

To preserve the transparency of your cutout gif, you need to change your export settings in the Output Module.

Under the Video Output section, change your Channels to RGB + Alpha. Press OK. Then Render the video.

5) Photoshop pt. 2: Assembling your final gif

The essence is to drag the cutout gif (aka the video file that you’ve just rendered on AE) into a new PSD composition file. This will be where you’ll do the rest of your giffing. Your workflow will contain the follow steps:

Make a new blank PSD composition file in Tumblr dimensions

Enable the Video Timeline

Follow the instructions detailed in the individual examples i.e. drag the cutout gif into the PSD & adjust the timeline start / end points

Exporting the final gif. If you’ve worked in 0.03s frame delay all the way up to here, just play the action that I’ve provided in the tutorial in the following order to set the frame delay to 0.05s.

EXAMPLE 1: finalising your cutout gif | sample gifset

After enabling the Video Timeline in your PSD composition file you’ll see something like this

Go to your folder, drag the cutout gif you’ve made on After Effects, resize / reposition, then press Enter.

And also make sure to adjust the Video Timeline’s start / end values.

Add some finishing touches. Because I did the Rotoscoping at full HD resolution, I’ll also need to sharpen my gif in this step.

After you’re happy, you can export this into a gif file and do what you usually do to change the frame delay to 0.05s.

Notes on my “Unsmarting” approach:

To prevent accidentally writing over a PSD composition file that I’ve spent time editing, I personally render this into a short video (File > Export > Render Video) and use the following export settings (to prevent quality loss)

Then I open the rendered clip and play the actions in my gif prep action pack as follows:

flatten: this “Unsmarts” the clip / video

set frame rate: this sets all frames to have 0.05s frame delay

This is the final interface that I get before I pull up the Save For Web window.

EXAMPLE 2: changing your gif’s background colour (for Case 3 gifs) | sample gifset

From your folder, drag BOTH the cutout gif (rendered on AE) and the original gif to your blank composition.

Important: you need to make sure that both layers are properly lined up in the composition file (i.e. selecting both layers when repositioning / resizing)

On Photoshop, press Enter twice and place the cutout gif on top of the original gif from the Layers panel. Then you should get something like this

Select both layers and resize / reposition them in your PSD composition until you’re satisfied with the placements.

The basic idea here is to add some adjustment layers / other things in between the cutout gif and the original gif. To do this, select the original gif layer in the Layers panel.

Then you can start adding.a bunch layers e.g. textures, onto the composition.

And then here’s the exported gif!

6) Fancier Rotoscoping examples

Note: knowledge in using layer masks / groups and making shape / text layers assumed

In the next two examples, I’ll show you how to combine the two previous examples with shape / text layers.

EXAMPLE 3: Placing your cutout gif into a shape / text layer | sample gifset

Add a text / shape layer to your blank PSD composition

We want to prepare a masked group so in the Layers panel:

Make selection from layer: Cmmd / Ctrl + Click (highlighted in red)

Make a new group: click on the folder icon (in yellow)

Create layer mask: click on the icon (in green)

After duplicating the masked group you’ll get something like this in the Layers panel

Drag your cutout gif into the PSD composition

Place the cutout gif into the masked group on top

Select the mask of the top group and paint (in white) over the region you want to reveal for the cutout gif

Add some finishing touches & export the gif!

EXAMPLE 4: Putting it all together | sample gifset

You follow the same approach as in Example 3 to prepare the masked groups, but you need to drag two gif layers in (and resize them using the approach outlined in Example 2)

Place the gif layers as follows

While selecting the mask of the group on top, paint (in white) over the region that you want to reveal in the cutout gif

Now select the original gif (placed within the other group) and add some adjustment layers

After adding some finishing touches & exporting the gif, I get this!

Note: you can do even more overlay effects in the background portion of example 4. There will just be more masked groups + adjustment layers

7) Bonus: Some useful Rotoscoping / giffing lifehacks

GIFFING LIFEHACKS:

— Use best quality footage that you could find & Rotoscope in full video resolution, for better details around the edges

— Poorly lit scenes & low contrast edges are harder to Rotoscope (e.g. Toy Story set / TS evermore set).

If you’re new to AE, I would recommend choosing videos with well-lit gifs with simpler backgrounds and high contrast edges (e.g. Maisie Peters Cate’s Brother set)

— Use Rotobrush 2.0 if you’re using After Effects 2021 or later. It’s more difficult to Rotoscope / change background colour for gifs with a lot of movements with the classic Rotobrush tool. If the scene is tricky, you might want to switch to the “Best” quality model.

HARDWARE-RELATED PERFORMANCE OPTIMISATION:

— The recent versions of Photoshop require at least 8GB of RAM. If you have less RAM, it will still work provided you have enough scratch disk space. For better performance, it’s best to close other applications when you’re using Photoshop.

— The recent versions of After Effects require at least 16GB of RAM. If your machine has less RAM than this, there are some workarounds to prevent your machine from hanging:

Essential: close other applications that you’re running on your computer

Resize your gif down to Tumblr dimensions & sharpen it before importing to After Effects.

Install an older version of AE

8) Bonus: Some known software + hardware issues, and workarounds

KNOWN ISSUES ON PHOTOSHOP:

I currently have minimal issues in my giffing workflow, but I’ll nevertheless outline a few common known Photoshop issues for anyone who needs some workarounds.

— Video Timeline interface missing: this affects Apple Silicon Macs (i.e. M1 / M1 Pro / M1 Max / M1 Ultra / M2 / M2 Pro / M2 Max)

Update to newer version of Photoshop (updated 2022 or 2023)

Open Photoshop with Rosetta

— Scratch disk full error: This is a common issue with machines that lack RAM & have nearly used up internal storage. Editing video layers in the timeline interface uses a lot of memory hence will require a lot of scratch disk space.

Make sure that you have enough free storage space while using Photoshop. Alternatively you can use an external hard drive as a scratch disk.

KNOWN ISSUES ON AFTER EFFECTS:

These are a few issues that I have personally ran into over the course of giffing on multiple devices & multiple versions of After Effects.

Note: Inputs from M1 / M2 Mac users with regards to experiences on using the After Effects Rotoscoping tools are welcome!

— Rotobrush 2.0 set to “Best” quality model causes AE to crash: this affects anyone who’s using MacOS Ventura

I’m currently experiencing this issue on my M2 Mac. The workaround right now is to change the Roto Brush 2.0 quality setting to Standard.

This is due to some software compatibility issues on Adobe’s side specifically with MacOS Ventura. Fingers crossed that they will properly fix this bug in the future updates!

— Cannot re-open project files with Rotoscoping: this affects anyone using the initial release of After Effects 2020 (I had installed this on an Intel-based machine and it sucked)

The only option here is to update to a later version of After Effects.

8) More useful Rotoscoping resources

Rotoscoping + Keyframes Tutorial by @jenna--ortega

Rotoscoping + Masking Tutorial by @usergif

Rotoscoping For Beginners in After Effects | Motion Graphics Tutorial

I hope you enjoy reading this! If you have any questions / need any help related to this tutorial, feel free to send me an ask!

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indestinatus · 3 months

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The silent art of gif making

The gif above has 32 layers plus 6 that aren't shown because this is part of a larger edit. I wanted to share it to give everyone a glimpse of the art of gif making and how long it usually takes for me to make something like this. This one took me about an hour and a half but only because I couldn't get the shade of blue right.

I use Adobe Photoshop 2021 and my computer doesn't have a large memory space (I don't know what to call it) so usually most of psds get deleted because I'm too lazy to get a hard drive. It doesn't really bother me that much because I like the art so when it's done, it's done. Off to somewhere else it goes.

Here are the layers:

Everything is neat and organized in folders because I like it that way. I prefer to edit it in timeline but others edit each frame. There's a layer not shown (Layer 4 is not visible) and it's the vector art. Here it is:

Now it is visible. I don't plan to make this a tutorial, but if you're interested I'd love to share a few tricks about it. I'm pretty new to the colors in gifmaking but the rest is simple to understand. Here, I just want to show how much work it takes to make it.

I opened Group 2 and here's the base gif. I already sharpened and sized it correctly but that's about it. Let's open the base coloring next.

Yay! Now it looks pretty! The edits are in Portuguese but it doesn't matter. There's a silent art of adding layers depending on how you want the gif to look but you get used to it. The order matters and you can add multiple layers of the same thing (for eg. multiple layers of levels or curves or exposure).

This was pretty much my first experiment with coloring so I don't know what I'm doing (this happens a lot with any art form but gifmaking exceeds in DIYing your way to the finished product) but I didn't want to mess up his hair, that's why the blue color is like that. Blue is easy to work with because there's little on the skin (different from red and yellow but that's color theory). I painted the layers like that and put it on screen, now let's correct how the rest looks.

I was stuck trying to get the right teal shade of blue so yes, those are 10 layers of selective color mostly on cyan blue. We fixed his hair (yay!) we could've probably fixed the blue on his neck too but I was lazy. This is close to what I wanted so let's roll with that.

BUT I wanted his freckles to show, so let's edit a little bit more. Now his hair is more vibrant and his skin has red tones, which accentuates the blues and his eyes (exactly what I wanted!). That lost Layer 2 was me trying to fix some shadows in the background but in the end, it didn't make such a difference.

This was part of an edit, so let's add the graphics and also edit them so they're the right shade of blue and the correct size. A few gradient maps and a dozen font tests later, it appears to be done! Here it is:

Please reblog gifsets on tumblr. We gifmakers really enjoy doing what we do (otherwise we wouldn't be here) but it takes so long, you wouldn't imagine. Tumblr is the main website used for gif making and honestly, we have nowhere to go but share our art here. This was only to show how long it takes but if you're new and want to get into the art of gif making, there are a lot of really cool resource blogs in here. And my ask box is always open! Sending gifmakers all my love.

#gif making #gif tutorial #resources #completeresources #y'know what that post yesterday got me into this #i love creativity so i send all my love to gifmakers #this is HARD #my tutorials #tutorials

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mikelogan · 3 months

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gif tutorial

i was asked to make a tutorial for this set i made, so let's get right into it!

first things first, i downloaded the music videos from youtube in 1080p using 4k video downloader. unfortunately, the quality of youtube videos always seems... not great, to put it simply. plus these music videos are from the 90s, so they've been upscaled to 1080p after the fact. all of this works against us, but i've definitely worked with videos of lesser quality than these, so at least there's that!

when i gif, i import video frames to layers rather than screencapping. this comes down to personal preference. after everything has loaded, i group all my layers together and set the frame delay to 0.05. i then cropped my gif to 540x500.

the next step in my process is sharpening. i did play around with my settings a bit given the quality of the footage and the dimensions of the gif. i compared both @hellboys low-quality video gif tutorial to my regular sharpening action and my vivid sharpening action and in this case, i preferred my normal vivid sharpening action. i used this tutorial to create the action for myself, and you can find other sharpening tutorials here. this action converts my frames to video timeline and applies sharpening.

once my gif is sharpened and i'm in timeline, i begin coloring. i wanted to simplify the amount of colors used in these gifs, again because of the video quality -- i knew it wasn't going to have the crispness i would normally like for my gifs. here are my coloring adjustment layers and their settings (not pictured: my first layer is a brightness/contrast layer set to screen) (explanation in alt text):

all of these layers and their settings will vary depending on your footage and its coloring (and obviously, feel free to make the gradient map whatever colors you like if you aren't going for this exact look).

pretty basic coloring, especially with just slapping a gradient map on top (my beloved), but at this point, i still didn't like the quality of the gif, so i added a couple textures/overlays.

i put the left one down first and set the blending mode to soft light and the opacity to 8%. depending on what look you're going for, you could increase or decrease the opacity or play around with different blending modes. i like using this texture with lower quality footage because even when it's sized up a bit, it adds some crispness and makes things feel more defined. for the second texture, i set it to overlay and 75% opacity. we love and respect film grain in this house.

now for the typography! sometimes i really enjoy typography and other times it's the bane of my existence for the sole reason of just how many fonts i have installed. anyway, here are the settings i used for this set:

make sure the color of your font is white and then set the blending mode to either difference or exclusion. i can almost never see a difference between the two, but for this set, i used exclusion. below are the blending options (double click on your text layer to bring up this menu or right click and select blending options).

now we have to add the warp effect. with your text tool still selected, click this icon at the top of your screen:

from the dropdown menu, select twist. these were my settings, but feel free to play around with different warp options and their settings. the ones i use most often are flag, fish, and twist.

this last step is completely optional, but it's an effect i use in most of my sets with typography. duplicate your text layer (select the layer and ctrl+j), turn off the layer effects (click the eye icon next to effects), and set the blending mode to normal. right click on the layer and select rasterize type. right click on the layer icon itself and choose select pixels.

at this point, you should see the moving black and white dotted line showing that only your text is selected. then go to edit > stroke. here are the settings i almost exclusively use.

this is what your text should look like now:

using ctrl+T, move the layer off the canvas so you can't see any of the text anymore. you should be left with only your outline. click anywhere on your canvas to de-select the text we just moved. use ctrl+T again as well as your arrow keys to nudge the outline over to the left 2px and up 2px. this is personal preference as far as the positioning, but i almost never move it any other way. you can leave it like this, which i sometimes do, or you can set the blending mode to soft light like i did for a more subtle effect.

and that's it! rinse and repeat for each gif in your set or use a different warp effect on each gif to switch it up! if you have any questions about this tutorial or would like me to make one for anything else, please feel free to ask any time!

#gif tutorial #my tutorials #gifmakerresource #completeresources #dailyresources #chaoticresources #userdavid #coloring tutorial #typography tutorial #tutorial #photoshop tutorial

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celestialspritz · 3 months

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The Sims 2: An ultimate guide for letting the bodyshop slay in 2024 by celestialspritz

Here's my comprehensive guide to overhauling bodyshop! You guys really wanted to know how to get SRWE and Reshade working, so here it is :D

#my tutorials #ts2 #ts2 bodyshop #ts2 reshade

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surely-sims · 6 months

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youtube

▶ POSE CREATION WORKSHOP VOD

Everything I know about creating poses starting with the default rig from S4S and ending on a detailed overview of @vyxated's most excellent Rig Helper. originally streamed on 11/09/23 on twitch

#my tutorials #sims 4 tutorial #Youtube

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disdaidal · 18 days

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how do you sharpen your gifs???? they're insanely high quality!

Hello, Anon dearest, and thank you so much! ✨ To answer your question properly, I would first have to know which gifset(s) of mine you're referring to because I've made a lot over the years and I often change my sharpening settings, too. It totally depends on what I'm working with at the moment, to be honest. 😅

But, as for the last few sets of mine (this, this, and this in particular), I used these settings:

After converting my frames/layers into a smart object, I applied the settings above. Remember to click on the gear icon in the upper right corner and check both 'Use Legacy' and 'More Accurate' as well. This will make your sharpening look more 'natural' and less cakey imo.

Below is a comparison of before and after:

Note: This Geralt screenshot was taken from a 4K (2160p) video. Most videos I work with are at least 1080p or 720p because quality matters.

And here's the final result: colored, brightened, and sharpened.

—

I hope this answers your question. If not, feel free to send me more questions about this kind of stuff. I'm always happy to help out :)

#replies #anon #photoshop #tutorial #resources #ps help #sharpening #gifs #giffing #completeresources #allresources #chaoticresources #my gifs #my tutorials

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backslashdelta · 6 months

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How To Gif: Glass Shatter Effect

By popular demand (ie, 7 people who voted in this poll), here is a tutorial on how to do the glass shatter effect I used to create the first gif in this set.

I use Photoshop CC 2015 (yes I know it's old) for my gifmaking, but you should be able to apply everything to newer versions of Photoshop. For this tutorial I'll be assuming you know the gifmaking basics, but if not, I would recommend this tutorial, which is the process I use to make gifs. Note that this particular process involves saving all of the frames, importing those frames into Photoshop, and then using an action to convert to a smart object.

Keep reading below the cut to learn how to do this effect!

Before I could start making this gif, I needed three things; the two scenes that I wanted to use, and a video of the glass shattering effect. I already knew the scenes I wanted, so then I took to YouTube to find a video which I can't for the life of me find again, but it looked like this:

Something like this is what you want. Ideally the green part would be entirely white, but as long as there are two clearly different colours you can usually work with it.

This looks a lot slower than the gif that I made, but that's not because of the frame rate - which is exactly the same above as in the final gif - it's just because there are extra frames in this slower one that I cut out. In the video I used, the glass shattering happened very slowly. I didn't want that, so I ended up skipping several frames when I loaded the frames into Photoshop before using my gifmaking action. I just did this by manually selecting one frame, skipping the next several before selecting another frame, and repeating this until I had selected 60 frames.

After using my gif action, I had a smart object of the glass shatter effect that looked like this:

That's a much better speed! It still wasn't quite where I needed it to be though. I needed this in black and white, so I slapped a hue/saturation adjustment on the smart object and set the saturation all the way down to -100.

Okay great, I could start putting the gif together now.

First, I made a copy of the glass shatter smart object, because I'll need that later. Then, I pulled in frames from the scene that I wanted to appear in the hole after the glass shatters, and I used those to create a new smart object with my gif action (we'll call it Scene-bg). I pulled Scene-bg into the same window as the glass shatter objects. Then I created a new smart object by combining one of the glass shatter objects with Scene-bg, which I did by selecting both layers right clicking, and selecting "Convert to Smart Object".

I renamed this smart object to Shatter-fg. I opened it by clicking on the little icon next to the layer name in the layers window here:

The most important thing here is that the shatter effect object should be the top layer, and I set the mode to "lighten". This will make sure that the lightest colour of either this layer and the layer behind it is displayed; that means that anywhere that's white in our shatter animation will still show up, but anywhere that's black we'll see what's in the layer(s) behind it.

Then I threw some adjustment layers between them to get the colouring I wanted. I used a curves layer, a hue/saturation layer, and I also added text with an outer glow layer effect. Here's what the layer order looked like and the settings I used for each layer:

After this process, Shatter-fg looked like this:

Okay nice, this is starting to look like something! I saved this and went back to the main file with the other glass shatter object.

I needed to invert that other glass shatter object. There's a weird quirk with the version of Photoshop that I use where it doesn't like it when I apply specifically an invert adjustment to a smart object (it appears correctly when editing, but not on export) so I did this by creating a new smart object which included a separate invert layer, but if you have a newer version of Photoshop you can probably just apply the invert adjustment directly. Just note that you'll need to do one of these options; it won't work if you add a separate adjustment layer in the main file, it needs to be applied specifically to the smart object (which we'll now be calling Shatter-bg). It looked like this after I inverted it:

Once that's done, I made sure Shatter-fg was the layer directly above Shatter-bg, and set the mode of Shatter-fg to "darken" and Shatter-bg to "lighten". Since Shatter-fg is set to darken, it will be visible only when it is darker than the layer behind it. By setting Shatter-bg to lighten, I've guaranteed that the layer behind it will always be lighter (ie, white) in the places we want Shatter-fg to be visible, and will be black otherwise. Once I update those settings, this is what the gif looked like:

This is all there is to the glass shatter effect itself. Next I pulled in frames from the second scene to fill in the black areas. This layer needed to go below both glass shatter layers, so that it only shows through where the black. Then I added adjustment layers and some text. I used curves, hue/saturation, and vibrance adjustment layers, and I also added the "archer" text below the glass shatter layers so that it would be hidden to reveal the "prey" text. The other text I added above all of the layers, since I wanted this to be visible all the time. Here is the layer order and all of the settings I used for each of the layers:

I also grouped Shatter-bg and Shatter-fg and shifted them on the timeline so there would be some time to see the background gif before the shatter effect starts.

And that's all! Then it''s just a matter of exporting the finished product:

This is the first gifmaking tutorial I've ever made, so I hope I was able to be reasonably coherent and helpful! I'd love to hear if you make anything by following these steps, or even if you just feel like you've learned something reading through this. And if you have any outstanding questions, feel free to reply or send me an ask and I'd be happy to answer!

#gifmaking #tutorials #gifmaking tutorial #gif tutorial #photoshop #photoshop tutorial #usergif #gleesource #my tutorials #mine #how to gif #tw mark salling #mark salling tw #not tagging as glee because it's not actually about that but wanted the tw tags just in case #this was so much more effort to put together than I thought it would be lmao #I was like oh yeah I've already made the whole gif I just need to go back and explain how I did that...#it took A WHILE #anywayyyy it was fun though so I'm glad I did it #would love to know if anyone finds this helpful or interesting or tries out the effect or something similar!#you can also just grab the black/white gif I included above if you want to do the effect since I can't find the video... sorry lol #but yeah you have my permission to steal the black/white gifs for gifmaking purposes if you would like #just don't like. post your own tutorial claiming you made it or something?? but like you don't need to credit me or anything obviously.#ANYWAYYYY #I feel like... a LITTLE pretentious thinking I'm good enough at making gifs to be qualified to make a tutorial #but like it's fineeee everything is fine #gonna finally post this now enjoy byeeee

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petricorah · 4 months

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Heya! As a baby artist I was just wondering how long it typically takes you to draw a character? And if you have any tips for getting the lines to look so clean :-) I love your art sm it always makes me smile

Hi! Ah, I'm so glad my art makes you smile! :')

I have...several possible answers for you, lol. First of all, the time it takes for me to draw a character varies. Something I’m working on to speed up my process is learning anatomy. Most of my time is spent trying to get the anatomy of a drawing down, and the more you know it, the quicker it can go.

But as for lineart, the number 1 way I've found for having clean lines is having a detailed sketch.

While the sketch was messy, around the face especially, all the lines were "in place." I wasn't having to resize things or change the shape. This makes lineart completely mindless for me, and that means I don't have to do as many corrections while drawing, keeping my lines clean.

However, when I first started out, it was hard to get here. If you're starting out, your art may look like this, with a bunch of short strokes:

There are two ways I've found to combat this (and it's honestly something I'm still working on...) Short strokes like this tend to happen when you're unsure of what you're drawing, which happens a lot when you're starting out. Planning out a drawing in your head and knowing where you're going to end each line when you start is helpful. (I.E. "I know the side of the face needs to go down enough to reach where a chin should be, so I'm going to try to do it in one stroke instead of seven). Proko has a good video about this here.

You can also practice drawing longer strokes just on their own. Lots of drawing books will tell you to start by practicing ellipses and lines from different directions to help you get used to longer motions. Becoming more confident in drawing full lines will help!

But, as you're learning, tools can help. I draw with a tapered pressure sensitive pen, which allows me to have some shorter strokes while hiding the results of it. (Although it's still good to practice avoiding this, because it'll help your drawing even with a brush that hides it a bit better.)

i hope this was helpful!

#asks #my tutorials #i still have a problem with this tbh which is why i love my brush but i'm trying to grow out of it lmao.#lineart #sometimes drawing a character takes fifteen minutes and bam it's done and sometimes i wrestle with a simple pose for days. it is how it is.#i think i have some better sketch to lineart examples. because sometimes my sketch is so detailed that it's sometimes a waste of time for m #to do lineart because it's almost redundant #by lineart's my favorite thing so i always do it anyway #except for the second turtle duck comic lol. some of those i didn't line and i just cleaned up the sketch so i probably should have used th #that as an example but i think this illustrates my point

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attleboy · 27 days

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ooh wait do you have a tutorial on how you draw ragatha? i struggle so much with her hair its unreal

@lyradraws alright, so i feel i'm a bit less qualified for this one but yknow what, it's good practice and good reference for me as well so i gave it a go!! :D

here is my unofficial guide to our darling ragatha <3 MAIN SHAPES:

CHARACTER ACTING:

HAIR:

MISC:

note sure what exactly was meant by comparison to pomni but hopefully this + the shape comparison at the beginning can help?

if you haven't seen it already, or you just want to revisit them, here are my pomni studies!! and also, an important note for IF i do any more of these: do NOT expect this level of detail for the other characters!! pomni and ragatha are my favorites so they get special treatment... if i do the rest it'll probably just be a couple slides of pointers but eh, who knows with me... (shrug)

#i hope you guys know you don't have read all my notes in these i just like yapping... ^-^;#the amazing digital circus #tadc #ragatha #pomni #my tutorials #my art #ask response

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celestial-fang · 1 year

Text

Painting process

#my art #my tutorials #digital art #original character #artists on tumblr

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antoniosvivaldi · 3 months

Text

Neural Filters Tutorial for Gifmakers by @antoniosvivaldi

Hi everyone! In light of my blog’s 10th birthday, I’m delighted to reveal my highly anticipated gifmaking tutorial using Neural Filters - a very powerful collection of filters that really broadened my scope in gifmaking over the past 12 months.

Before I get into this tutorial, I want to thank @laurabenanti, @maines , @cobbbvanth, and @cal-kestis for their unconditional support over the course of my journey of investigating the Neural Filters & their valuable inputs on the rendering performance!

In this tutorial, I will outline what the Photoshop Neural Filters do and how I use them in my workflow - multiple examples will be provided for better clarity. Finally, I will talk about some known performance issues with the filters & some feasible workarounds.

Tutorial Structure:

Meet the Neural Filters: What they are and what they do

Why I use Neural Filters? How I use Neural Filters in my giffing workflow

Getting started: The giffing workflow in a nutshell and installing the Neural Filters

Applying Neural Filters onto your gif: Making use of the Neural Filters settings; with multiple examples

Testing your system: recommended if you’re using Neural Filters for the first time

Rendering performance: Common Neural Filters performance issues & workarounds

For quick reference, here are the examples that I will show in this tutorial:

Example 1: Image Enhancement | improving the image quality of gifs prepared from highly compressed video files

Example 2: Facial Enhancement | enhancing an individual's facial features

Example 3: Colour Manipulation | colourising B&W gifs for a colourful gifset

Example 4: Artistic effects | transforming landscapes & adding artistic effects onto your gifs

Example 5: Putting it all together | my usual giffing workflow using Neural Filters

What you need & need to know:

Software: Photoshop 2021 or later (recommended: 2023 or later)*

Hardware: 8GB of RAM; having a supported GPU is highly recommended*

Difficulty: Advanced (requires a lot of patience); knowledge in gifmaking and using video timeline assumed

Key concepts: Smart Layer / Smart Filters

Benchmarking your system: Neural Filters test files**

Supplementary materials: Tutorial Resources / Detailed findings on rendering gifs with Neural Filters + known issues***

*I primarily gif on an M2 Max MacBook Pro that's running Photoshop 2024, but I also have experiences gifmaking on few other Mac models from 2012 ~ 2023.

**Using Neural Filters can be resource intensive, so it’s helpful to run the test files yourself. I’ll outline some known performance issues with Neural Filters and workarounds later in the tutorial.

***This supplementary page contains additional Neural Filters benchmark tests and instructions, as well as more information on the rendering performance (for Apple Silicon-based devices) when subject to heavy Neural Filters gifmaking workflows

Tutorial under the cut. Like / Reblog this post if you find this tutorial helpful. Linking this post as an inspo link will also be greatly appreciated!

1. Meet the Neural Filters!

Neural Filters are powered by Adobe's machine learning engine known as Adobe Sensei. It is a non-destructive method to help streamline workflows that would've been difficult and/or tedious to do manually.

Here are the Neural Filters available in Photoshop 2024:

Skin Smoothing: Removes blemishes on the skin

Smart Portrait: This a cloud-based filter that allows you to change the mood, facial age, hair, etc using the sliders+

Makeup Transfer: Applies the makeup (from a reference image) to the eyes & mouth area of your image

Landscape Mixer: Transforms the landscape of your image (e.g. seasons & time of the day, etc), based on the landscape features of a reference image

Style Transfer: Applies artistic styles e.g. texturings (from a reference image) onto your image

Harmonisation: Applies the colour balance of your image based on the lighting of the background image+

Colour Transfer: Applies the colour scheme (of a reference image) onto your image

Colourise: Adds colours onto a B&W image

Super Zoom: Zoom / crop an image without losing resolution+

Depth Blur: Blurs the background of the image

JPEG Artefacts Removal: Removes artefacts caused by JPEG compression

Photo Restoration: Enhances image quality & facial details

+These three filters aren't used in my giffing workflow. The cloud-based nature of Smart Portrait leads to disjointed looking frames. For Harmonisation, applying this on a gif causes Neural Filter timeout error. Finally, Super Zoom does not currently support output as a Smart Filter

If you're running Photoshop 2021 or earlier version of Photoshop 2022, you will see a smaller selection of Neural Filters:

Things to be aware of:

You can apply up to six Neural Filters at the same time

Filters where you can use your own reference images: Makeup Transfer (portraits only), Landscape Mixer, Style Transfer (not available in Photoshop 2021), and Colour Transfer

Later iterations of Photoshop 2023 & newer: The first three default presets for Landscape Mixer and Colour Transfer are currently broken.

2. Why I use Neural Filters?

Here are my four main Neural Filters use cases in my gifmaking process. In each use case I'll list out the filters that I use:

Enhancing Image Quality:

Common wisdom is to find the highest quality video to gif from for a media release & avoid YouTube whenever possible. However for smaller / niche media (e.g. new & upcoming musical artists), prepping gifs from highly compressed YouTube videos is inevitable.

So how do I get around with this? I have found Neural Filters pretty handy when it comes to both correcting issues from video compression & enhancing details in gifs prepared from these highly compressed video files.

Filters used: JPEG Artefacts Removal / Photo Restoration

Facial Enhancement:

When I prepare gifs from highly compressed videos, something I like to do is to enhance the facial features. This is again useful when I make gifsets from compressed videos & want to fill up my final panel with a close-up shot.

Filters used: Skin Smoothing / Makeup Transfer / Photo Restoration (Facial Enhancement slider)

Colour Manipulation:

Neural Filters is a powerful way to do advanced colour manipulation - whether I want to quickly transform the colour scheme of a gif or transform a B&W clip into something colourful.

Filters used: Colourise / Colour Transfer

Artistic Effects:

This is one of my favourite things to do with Neural Filters! I enjoy using the filters to create artistic effects by feeding textures that I've downloaded as reference images. I also enjoy using these filters to transform the overall the atmosphere of my composite gifs. The gifsets where I've leveraged Neural Filters for artistic effects could be found under this tag on usergif.

Filters used: Landscape Mixer / Style Transfer / Depth Blur

How I use Neural Filters over different stages of my gifmaking workflow:

I want to outline how I use different Neural Filters throughout my gifmaking process. This can be roughly divided into two stages:

Stage I: Enhancement and/or Colourising | Takes place early in my gifmaking process. I process a large amount of component gifs by applying Neural Filters for enhancement purposes and adding some base colourings.++

Stage II: Artistic Effects & more Colour Manipulation | Takes place when I'm assembling my component gifs in the big PSD / PSB composition file that will be my final gif panel.

I will walk through this in more detail later in the tutorial.

++I personally like to keep the size of the component gifs in their original resolution (a mixture of 1080p & 4K), to get best possible results from the Neural Filters and have more flexibility later on in my workflow. I resize & sharpen these gifs after they're placed into my final PSD composition files in Tumblr dimensions.

3. Getting started

The essence is to output Neural Filters as a Smart Filter on the smart object when working with the Video Timeline interface. Your workflow will contain the following steps:

Prepare your gif

In the frame animation interface, set the frame delay to 0.03s and convert your gif to the Video Timeline

In the Video Timeline interface, go to Filter > Neural Filters and output to a Smart Filter

Flatten or render your gif (either approach is fine). To flatten your gif, play the "flatten" action from the gif prep action pack. To render your gif as a .mov file, go to File > Export > Render Video & use the following settings.

Setting up:

o.) To get started, prepare your gifs the usual way - whether you screencap or clip videos. You should see your prepared gif in the frame animation interface as follows:

Note: As mentioned earlier, I keep the gifs in their original resolution right now because working with a larger dimension document allows more flexibility later on in my workflow. I have also found that I get higher quality results working with more pixels. I eventually do my final sharpening & resizing when I fit all of my component gifs to a main PSD composition file (that's of Tumblr dimension).

i.) To use Smart Filters, convert your gif to a Smart Video Layer.

As an aside, I like to work with everything in 0.03s until I finish everything (then correct the frame delay to 0.05s when I upload my panels onto Tumblr).

For convenience, I use my own action pack to first set the frame delay to 0.03s (highlighted in yellow) and then convert to timeline (highlighted in red) to access the Video Timeline interface. To play an action, press the play button highlighted in green.

Once you've converted this gif to a Smart Video Layer, you'll see the Video Timeline interface as follows:

ii.) Select your gif (now as a Smart Layer) and go to Filter > Neural Filters

Installing Neural Filters:

Install the individual Neural Filters that you want to use. If the filter isn't installed, it will show a cloud symbol (highlighted in yellow). If the filter is already installed, it will show a toggle button (highlighted in green)

When you toggle this button, the Neural Filters preview window will look like this (where the toggle button next to the filter that you use turns blue)

4. Using Neural Filters

Once you have installed the Neural Filters that you want to use in your gif, you can toggle on a filter and play around with the sliders until you're satisfied. Here I'll walkthrough multiple concrete examples of how I use Neural Filters in my giffing process.

Example 1: Image enhancement | sample gifset

This is my typical Stage I Neural Filters gifmaking workflow. When giffing older or more niche media releases, my main concern is the video compression that leads to a lot of artefacts in the screencapped / video clipped gifs.

To fix the artefacts from compression, I go to Filter > Neural Filters, and toggle JPEG Artefacts Removal filter. Then I choose the strength of the filter (boxed in green), output this as a Smart Filter (boxed in yellow), and press OK (boxed in red).

Note: The filter has to be fully processed before you could press the OK button!

After applying the Neural Filters, you'll see "Neural Filters" under the Smart Filters property of the smart layer

Flatten / render your gif

Example 2: Facial enhancement | sample gifset

This is my routine use case during my Stage I Neural Filters gifmaking workflow. For musical artists (e.g. Maisie Peters), YouTube is often the only place where I'm able to find some videos to prepare gifs from. However even the highest resolution video available on YouTube is highly compressed.

Go to Filter > Neural Filters and toggle on Photo Restoration. If Photoshop recognises faces in the image, there will be a "Facial Enhancement" slider under the filter settings.

Play around with the Photo Enhancement & Facial Enhancement sliders. You can also expand the "Adjustment" menu make additional adjustments e.g. remove noises and reducing different types of artefacts.

Once you're happy with the results, press OK and then flatten / render your gif.

Example 3: Colour Manipulation | sample gifset

Want to make a colourful gifset but the source video is in B&W? This is where Colourise from Neural Filters comes in handy! This same colourising approach is also very helpful for colouring poor-lit scenes as detailed in this tutorial.

Here's a B&W gif that we want to colourise:

Highly recommended: add some adjustment layers onto the B&W gif to improve the contrast & depth. This will give you higher quality results when you colourise your gif.

Go to Filter > Neural Filters and toggle on Colourise.

Make sure "Auto colour image" is enabled.

Play around with further adjustments e.g. colour balance, until you're satisfied then press OK.

Important: When you colourise a gif, you need to double check that the resulting skin tone is accurate to real life. I personally go to Google Images and search up photoshoots of the individual / character that I'm giffing for quick reference.

Add additional adjustment layers until you're happy with the colouring of the skin tone.

Once you're happy with the additional adjustments, flatten / render your gif. And voila!

Note: For Colour Manipulation, I use Colourise in my Stage I workflow and Colour Transfer in my Stage II workflow to do other types of colour manipulations (e.g. transforming the colour scheme of the component gifs)

Example 4: Artistic Effects | sample gifset

This is where I use Neural Filters for the bulk of my Stage II workflow: the most enjoyable stage in my editing process!

Normally I would be working with my big composition files with multiple component gifs inside it. To begin the fun, drag a component gif (in PSD file) to the main PSD composition file.

Resize this gif in the composition file until you're happy with the placement

Duplicate this gif. Sharpen the bottom layer (highlighted in yellow), and then select the top layer (highlighted in green) & go to Filter > Neural Filters

I like to use Style Transfer and Landscape Mixer to create artistic effects from Neural Filters. In this particular example, I've chosen Landscape Mixer

Select a preset or feed a custom image to the filter (here I chose a texture that I've on my computer)

Play around with the different sliders e.g. time of the day / seasons

Important: uncheck "Harmonise Subject" & "Preserve Subject" - these two settings are known to cause performance issues when you render a multiframe smart object (e.g. for a gif)

Once you're happy with the artistic effect, press OK

To ensure you preserve the actual subject you want to gif (bc Preserve Subject is unchecked), add a layer mask onto the top layer (with Neural Filters) and mask out the facial region. You might need to play around with the Layer Mask Position keyframes or Rotoscope your subject in the process.

After you're happy with the masking, flatten / render this composition file and voila!

Example 5: Putting it all together | sample gifset

Let's recap on the Neural Filters gifmaking workflow and where Stage I and Stage II fit in my gifmaking process:

i. Preparing & enhancing the component gifs

Prepare all component gifs and convert them to smart layers

Stage I: Add base colourings & apply Photo Restoration / JPEG Artefacts Removal to enhance the gif's image quality

Flatten all of these component gifs and convert them back to Smart Video Layers (this process can take a lot of time)

Some of these enhanced gifs will be Rotoscoped so this is done before adding the gifs to the big PSD composition file

ii. Setting up the big PSD composition file

Make a separate PSD composition file (Ctrl / Cmmd + N) that's of Tumblr dimension (e.g. 540px in width)

Drag all of the component gifs used into this PSD composition file

Enable Video Timeline and trim the work area

In the composition file, resize / move the component gifs until you're happy with the placement & sharpen these gifs if you haven't already done so

Duplicate the layers that you want to use Neural Filters on

iii. Working with Neural Filters in the PSD composition file

Stage II: Neural Filters to create artistic effects / more colour manipulations!

Mask the smart layers with Neural Filters to both preserve the subject and avoid colouring issues from the filters

Flatten / render the PSD composition file: the more component gifs in your composition file, the longer the exporting will take. (I prefer to render the composition file into a .mov clip to prevent overriding a file that I've spent effort putting together.)

Note: In some of my layout gifsets (where I've heavily used Neural Filters in Stage II), the rendering time for the panel took more than 20 minutes. This is one of the rare instances where I was maxing out my computer's memory.

Useful things to take note of:

Important: If you're using Neural Filters for Colour Manipulation or Artistic Effects, you need to take a lot of care ensuring that the skin tone of nonwhite characters / individuals is accurately coloured

Use the Facial Enhancement slider from Photo Restoration in moderation, if you max out the slider value you risk oversharpening your gif later on in your gifmaking workflow

You will get higher quality results from Neural Filters by working with larger image dimensions: This gives Neural Filters more pixels to work with. You also get better quality results by feeding higher resolution reference images to the Neural Filters.

Makeup Transfer is more stable when the person / character has minimal motion in your gif

You might get unexpected results from Landscape Mixer if you feed a reference image that don't feature a distinctive landscape. This is not always a bad thing: for instance, I have used this texture as a reference image for Landscape Mixer, to create the shimmery effects as seen in this gifset

5. Testing your system

If this is the first time you're applying Neural Filters directly onto a gif, it will be helpful to test out your system yourself. This will help:

Gauge the expected rendering time that you'll need to wait for your gif to export, given specific Neural Filters that you've used

Identify potential performance issues when you render the gif: this is important and will determine whether you will need to fully playback your gif before flattening / rendering the file.

Understand how your system's resources are being utilised: Inputs from Windows PC users & Mac users alike are welcome!

About the Neural Filters test files:

Contains six distinct files, each using different Neural Filters

Two sizes of test files: one copy in full HD (1080p) and another copy downsized to 540px

One folder containing the flattened / rendered test files

How to use the Neural Filters test files:

What you need:

Photoshop 2022 or newer (recommended: 2023 or later)

Install the following Neural Filters: Landscape Mixer / Style Transfer / Colour Transfer / Colourise / Photo Restoration / Depth Blur

Recommended for some Apple Silicon-based MacBook Pro models: Enable High Power Mode

How to use the test files:

For optimal performance, close all background apps

Open a test file

Flatten the test file into frames (load this action pack & play the “flatten” action)

Take note of the time it takes until you’re directed to the frame animation interface

Compare the rendered frames to the expected results in this folder: check that all of the frames look the same. If they don't, you will need to fully playback the test file in full before flattening the file.†

Re-run the test file without the Neural Filters and take note of how long it takes before you're directed to the frame animation interface

Recommended: Take note of how your system is utilised during the rendering process (more info here for MacOS users)

†This is a performance issue known as flickering that I will discuss in the next section. If you come across this, you'll have to playback a gif where you've used Neural Filters (on the video timeline) in full, prior to flattening / rendering it.

Factors that could affect the rendering performance / time (more info):

The number of frames, dimension, and colour bit depth of your gif

If you use Neural Filters with facial recognition features, the rendering time will be affected by the number of characters / individuals in your gif

Most resource intensive filters (powered by largest machine learning models): Landscape Mixer / Photo Restoration (with Facial Enhancement) / and JPEG Artefacts Removal

Least resource intensive filters (smallest machine learning models): Colour Transfer / Colourise

The number of Neural Filters that you apply at once / The number of component gifs with Neural Filters in your PSD file

Your system: system memory, the GPU, and the architecture of the system's CPU+++

+++ Rendering a gif with Neural Filters demands a lot of system memory & GPU horsepower. Rendering will be faster & more reliable on newer computers, as these systems have CPU & GPU with more modern instruction sets that are geared towards machine learning-based tasks.

Additionally, the unified memory architecture of Apple Silicon M-series chips are found to be quite efficient at processing Neural Filters.

6. Performance issues & workarounds

Common Performance issues:

I will discuss several common issues related to rendering or exporting a multi-frame smart object (e.g. your composite gif) that uses Neural Filters below. This is commonly caused by insufficient system memory and/or the GPU.

Flickering frames: in the flattened / rendered file, Neural Filters aren't applied to some of the frames+-+

Scrambled frames: the frames in the flattened / rendered file isn't in order

Neural Filters exceeded the timeout limit error: this is normally a software related issue

Long export / rendering time: long rendering time is expected in heavy workflows

Laggy Photoshop / system interface: having to wait quite a long time to preview the next frame on the timeline

Issues with Landscape Mixer: Using the filter gives ill-defined defined results (Common in older systems)--

Workarounds:

Workarounds that could reduce unreliable rendering performance & long rendering time:

Close other apps running in the background

Work with smaller colour bit depth (i.e. 8-bit rather than 16-bit)

Downsize your gif before converting to the video timeline-+-

Try to keep the number of frames as low as possible

Avoid stacking multiple Neural Filters at once. Try applying & rendering the filters that you want one by one

Specific workarounds for specific issues:

How to resolve flickering frames: If you come across flickering, you will need to playback your gif on the video timeline in full to find the frames where the filter isn't applied. You will need to select all of the frames to allow Photoshop to reprocess these, before you render your gif.+-+

What to do if you come across Neural Filters timeout error? This is caused by several incompatible Neural Filters e.g. Harmonisation (both the filter itself and as a setting in Landscape Mixer), Scratch Reduction in Photo Restoration, and trying to stack multiple Neural Filters with facial recognition features.

If the timeout error is caused by stacking multiple filters, a feasible workaround is to apply the Neural Filters that you want to use one by one over multiple rendering sessions, rather all of them in one go.

+-+This is a very common issue for Apple Silicon-based Macs. Flickering happens when a gif with Neural Filters is rendered without being previously played back in the timeline.

This issue is likely related to the memory bandwidth & the GPU cores of the chips, because not all Apple Silicon-based Macs exhibit this behaviour (i.e. devices equipped with Max / Ultra M-series chips are mostly unaffected).

-- As mentioned in the supplementary page, Landscape Mixer requires a lot of GPU horsepower to be fully rendered. For older systems (pre-2017 builds), there are no workarounds other than to avoid using this filter.

-+- For smaller dimensions, the size of the machine learning models powering the filters play an outsized role in the rendering time (i.e. marginal reduction in rendering time when downsizing 1080p file to Tumblr dimensions). If you use filters powered by larger models e.g. Landscape Mixer and Photo Restoration, you will need to be very patient when exporting your gif.

7. More useful resources on using Neural Filters

Creating animations with Neural Filters effects | Max Novak

Using Neural Filters to colour correct by @edteachs

I hope this is helpful! If you have any questions or need any help related to the tutorial, feel free to send me an ask 💖

366 notes · View notes

peytonsawyers · 10 months

Text

This quick tutorial will go over how to make gradients, from simple gradients to multicolor ones.

give this tutorial a like/reblog if it helped you out

end result & tutorial under the cut

if questions should arise, feel free to send a message!

Chapters:

how to make a basic gradient

adding colors with brushes

softening & adjustments

What you´ll need:

any version of photoshop (I use CS6, mine is in german because I bought it years ago in germany)

very basic photoshop knowledge

i. how to make a basic gradient

Open a new document in your desired size.

There are several ways to make gradients. I always use the new fill layer option, right next to the new layer or new group buttons on the right side.

Click on it and select the second option.

Adjust the angle however you wish, and then click on the gradient to bring up the next window

Select any colors you want by clicking on the little droppers highlighted above. I used #ff27f2 on the left and #d58dfa on the right. Once you´re done click OK until your new gradient is on your document.

ii. add colors with brushes

add a new layer & select a big brush with no hardness and low opacity.

select any color to paint with, I´ll be using #e50051 & #770dfa & plain white. Start painting on that new layer in slow strokes. You can add as many colors as you want. Mine now looks like this:

Now we merge our layers by selecting them, then righ click and selecting merge

iii. softening & adjustments

Go to filters -> blur > motion blur

Depending on the gradient you´ll have to select different variables, but for this one I used the numbers below:

Sometimes I add Gaussian Blur too to blend it even more, but didn´t do that for this gradient.

Now for the adjustments I only added a brightness and vibrance layer. This is the finished gradient:

#completeresources #dailyresources #photoshop tutorial #gradient tutorial #photoshop help #usernelly #userireland #ps asks #mine: tutorial #my tutorials #my resources

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mikelogan · 3 months

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Hi, I love your blog and your edits. I was wondering if you could do a tutorial on how you combine multiple gifs into one in the first gif of yours MIKELOGAN’s 5K FOLLOWER CELEBRATION || GET TO KNOW ME MEMEFAVORITE ACTORS [2/10]Colin Firth (September 10, 1960) set? Thank you for reading this and helping me.

thank you so much, that's so kind!! this is the post in question (which was inspired by this gorgeous set) and i'll break down how to do it step by step below the cut!

i ended up saving this gif as a psd because i remember it taking me so long and being really frustrating, i just wasn't sure why. for reference, i posted that set back in september, just over four months ago. looking at the psd, i can see just how far i've grown as a gifmaker bc that thing is a hot mess. i made it about 3x more complicated than it needed to be, so let's do this the right way lol note: i was still using 0.07 frame rate at this point. i have since switched to 0.05 for smoother, quicker gifs.

what we're going to do is create all of these gifs separately and put them together at the end. in total, there are 6 individual gifs. let's start with harry.

i gif by importing video frames to layers, but if you prefer to screencap, load those in instead. because this ends up being a pretty large gif, both in size and length, i kept it to 20 frames per clip.

once you're satisfied with the frames you've chosen, crop your canvas to 540px x 540px. this is what i'm left with

this is when i sharpen my gifs. everyone's process is a little different. i created my own sharpening action, which converts my frames to video timeline and then sharpens.

the next step is to color your gif. if you're going for the overall look in mine, here were my layers:

a brightness/contrast layer with brightness set to 31 and contrast to 5. this will depend on the scene you're working with

a levels layer using the black and white eyedroppers. the top one is your black eyedropper. to use it, click it and select the blackest part of your gif. do the same with the white eyedropper and select the lightest part of your gif. you may need to play around with selecting different points depending on your scene and the original coloring

finally, a simple black & white gradient map layer on top

now we're going to add the thin rectangular border in the middle of the gif. i use the rectangle shape tool for this (press U on your keyboard) and these are my settings (x and y coordinates don't matter):

to center it perfectly, i use ctrl+T and drag it until it snaps into place with both the vertical and horizontal guides.

next, let's add the "choose your gentleman" text that goes at the top of the border. here is the font i chose and its settings:

once again, press ctrl+t and drag this to the vertical center of your gif and to the center of the top of the border. you should feel and see it snap into place. this is what we have now:

now, we're going to use a layer mask on the border so we can read the text. select the rectangle layer and click the layer mask button

with the layer mask selected (as shown in the second image), use the rectangular marquee tool (M on your keyboard) to draw a rectangle around your text, taking care to keep it just a little larger

as you can see, you'll know when you're perfectly centered through your text layer and vertically on the entire canvas. select your brush tool without deselecting this rectangle (B on your keyboard) and paint the selection with a black brush. this masks that part of the border!

let's add the small square gif that goes at the bottom of the border now. i think the easiest way of doing this is to use the rectangular shape tool (U) again. the size of this gif is 110x110, so create a black square of that size with no stroke. Use ctrl+T to drag it to the center of the bottom of the border (the x and y coordinates don't matter):

now duplicate your original gif layer (ctrl+J) and drag it to the top of the layer panel. right click on it and create clipping mask. this will make it so the gif only appears within the confines of the square we just created. resize your gif by using ctrl+T and, making sure the proportions are locked, drag the corners to the edges of the square.

this gif is not colored at all as we only duplicated the gif itself and not the coloring layers. i duplicated those as well and dragged them on top of our small gif, but it's important to make sure those are using the clipping mask as well. you can click this on the properties layer of each adjustment layer to make sure they do.

you'll know you've been successful when you see the small arrow next to each of your coloring layers. this keeps them from affecting the coloring of the larger, main gif.

we're going to change the gradient map adjustment layer from black & white to black & lime green (or the color of your choosing). click on that layer and then on the map. this will bring up the gradient editor. click on the small white color stop at the far right end of the gradient and then on the color picker, choose a new color.

the hex code i used for the lime green is #00ff0c

our last steps are the angle brackets on either side of the gif and harry's name in the center. here are the settings i used for those (angle brackets on the left and harry on the right):

the layer styles for harry's name (double click on the text layer to call up this menu OR right click > blending options):

and for the angle brackets:

by now, you know how to utilize ctrl+T to move these layers where you'd like them. harry's name is centered horizontally and vertically and rotated at a bit of an angle and the angle brackets are centered horizontally and i just eyeballed where to put them in relation to the space between the border and the edge of the gif.

this is the complete first gif. what i would do for your own sanity since you have two more of these two create is 1) save it as a psd just in case something crashes and 2) don't convert it to a smart object until you have all 3 gifs completed and are ready to put them together.

the nice part about having the first one done is you've ultimately done the hard part. create your two other gifs, but you'll be using at least roughly the same coloring and all the same text, just with the colors adjusted, so you can drag those layers from your completed first gif to your others as you work on them.

once you have all 3 gifs completed and still on 3 separate canvases (and saved as psds bc this is adobe friggin photoshop and shit breaks all the time), convert all layers on all the gifs to smart objects. this will simplify the final gif and make things much easier.

then, bring gif #2 and gif #3 both onto gif #1's canvas. this is what it will look like at first on the timeline and in your layer panel:

(full disclosure, i'm not making the other two lmao, i'm lazy and i already did it once in a way harder way 😂)

to get the gifs to play after one another rather than simultaneously, you just have to drag them after one another on the timeline!

a little bit hard to show the actual process, but you're just clicking the bertie layer and dragging it down to harry's line after the harry layer. then do the same with the jamie layer, dragging it down to the harry layer after bertie. when you're done, it should look like this:

btw, the little slider i circled is what enlarges or shrinks the timeline view, so if you need to see something broken down a bit more/slower, drag it to the right. if you need to zoom out, drag it to the left.

and that's it! export and save your gif!

if you have any questions or anything is at all unclear about this, please let me know! i'm happy to help!

#answered #Anonymous #gif tutorial #my tutorials #gifmakerresource #completeresources #dailyresources #LISTEN. the way i did this 4 months ago was SO FUCKED #i made it SO SO much harder than it needed to be #you know what that is? growth.

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