There are probably other ways of making GIFs but this is just the way that I learnt, so I’ll try my best to make the steps simple so you can all understand. To make my GIFs I use Photoshop CS3 and for this tutorial (making a GIF from a Youtube vid) I use Keepvid to download those videos.

DOWNLOADING YOUTUBE VID:

• Copy the url of a Youtube video.
• Go to keepvid.com and paste url into the search bar and then click ‘Download’.
• If a security warning comes up, just click ‘run’.
• You’ll need to download the video that says Download MP4
• And save it somewhere you’ll remember (example: Videos)

Once you’ve done that you’ll need to open Photoshop. Then go to File>Import>Video Frames To Layers. Then open the video from where ever you saved it to. So it looks like this:

You’ll need to make sure the ‘Selected Range Only’ + ‘Limit To Every’ is selected and I suggest you either put 3 or 4 frames. The lower the number, the smoother the GIF, but the more frames it will have. You can’t have too many frames otherwise it’ll be too big and won’t upload on Tumblr. Once you’ve done that you’ll need to select the bit you want to GIF and hold down the ‘Shift’ key and click to arrows on the bottom right corner of the video. Then click ‘OK’.

• If you don’t already have the Animation bar open, you’ll need to open it by going to Window>Animation.

The first thing you need to do is make sure you don’t have too many frames, between 8 - 12 frames should be okay, if you have too many just delete it from the animation bar (bottom bar) and also from the layers (right bar). Then you’ll need to change the speed of the layers. You need to click the down arrow on the animation bar (top right corner) and then Select All Frames:

• Choose any of the layers on the animation bar and click on the little down arrow and then change the time to whatever you wish. I usually set it to somewhere from 0.15 - 0.18 (to do that click ‘other’ and type it in)

Then you’re probably going to need to change the size of the GIF. Go to Image>Image Size and then change the Width to 500 pixels:

OPTIONAL COLOURING/SHARPENING:

• If you want to sharpen you GIF you’ll need to sharpen it layer by layer, as far as I know there isn’t a way you can sharpen all of the layers together.
• Select the first layer on the animation bar + layers
• Then go to Filter>Sharpen>Sharpen:

• You’ll need to select the same frames everytime.
• Frame 2 on the animation bar + Frame 2 on the layers + Sharpen
• Frame 3 on the animation bar + Frame 3 on the layers + Sharpen
• ETC, ETC.

COLOURING:

• Select the first frame on the animation bar and the last frame on the layers.
• At the bottom on the layers, click on the black and white circle.
• Then Brightness/Contrast:

• And then mess around with the brightness and contrast until you like it.

SAVING YOUR GIF:

• Go to File>Save for Web & Devices
• You need to make sure you GIF is under 500k before you save it:

• If it is over 500k, you’ll need to delete some frames or reduce the colours.
• Then just click ‘Save’ and you’ll have a GIF: