Make a CINEMAGRAPH in Photoshop Tutorial and Make a GIF
Hey Cafe crew, it's Colin Smith here from PhotoshopCAFE.com and today, I'm going to
show you how to create a cinemagraph.
A cinemagraph is basically a living photo and it's not really new.
It kind of made a resurgence over the last couple of years and become really popular
right now.
But I remember, back in 2005, I actually wrote a tutorial on how to do this in my How To
Wow Photoshop for the web book and I actually called it a living picture back then.
It was 11 years ago.
So you know things go around, they come around, go around.
So I'm going to show you how to do it here using a video.
So here's a video that I shot just recently of Tiffany.
Actually, this was last week at Adobe Educators Summit.
So, here we go.
We can see, we've got a kind of standing there in the breeze.
I'm just playing the video back right now, and this was shot on a Canon 5D Mark III and
we can just kind of see there's a lot of video going on.
So the goal here is to freeze this into a photograph and just kind of have her hair
and the tassel moving, and then, we can loop it, and then, you can upload it to a website
as an animated gif or whatever, via small file size, and it can endlessly loop and create
this movement.
It's kind of a cool effect.
So, as you can see, we've got 16 seconds here; it's way too long.
Now, just to let you know, if you don't see the timeline here, you go up under Window,
Timeline, and you'll see the timeline there.
Now, this tutorial will work in Photoshop CS 6 or CC.
Earlier versions have different animation engines.
Now, to get the video in here, you just choose File, Open, and then, you just choose the
video and it will open here, and then, we've got the timeline.
So what we want to do is first thing, is break this down to a short loop where the action
is happening.
So we're going to grab the play head here and just pull it across.
This is known as _[00:01:47].
So what I'm doing is I'm looking at the movement around here in the tassels, and around here
in the hair.
In also noticing she's blinking about once a second.
So let me just play this back.
And what we're looking for is a consistent loop where the wind is blowing about the same.
Notice as we get near the end of the clip here, the wind starts to pick up a little
bit; really starts to whip things around, which is good.
So what we want to make sure is, one, her eyes are looking in the same direction.
We don't want them when they're looking in different directions.
We don't want her blinking and we want a consistent movement here with the body.
So we're just kind of looking at it, so as you can see there, we want to pick that up
right on a blink.
So we don't want her blinking, so we're going to say about here is good.
So we're going to trim the beginning, just click, and drag it across, and then, release
and that will bring it to the end there.
So let's have a look and see what we've got now.
So we're just looking for a short little loop there, maybe right after her blink there.
Let's pull that back.
So we've got a couple of seconds there.
Now we want to check this to make sure that it's looping correctly.
First thing we can do is just expand our timeline a little bit.
This is not changing the direction of the video at all.
All its doing is just giving us a little bit more to play with here on our timeline.
Now if you want to know more about video, I have a two actual full training tutorials
on working with video on Photoshop.
I have a free one on YouTube and then, I have a couple of more in-depth courses.
So, anyway, let's have a look here.
What we're going to do is click this and we're going to choose Loop Playback.
Now, by doing this, this will enable us to look at our loop.
So when it gets to the end, it will go back again, so make sure that's turned on.
And then, when we hit the Play, notice it's going to go all the way through, and then,
play again.
So let's just watch that and what we're looking for is just any sudden jumps.
So you can see I've got a little bit of a jump there.
And, in fact, you can use grids.
I'm just going to hit Ctrl R for rulers, and then, I can actually pull out a grid and we
can put that right on the side of her face to measure that to see if she moves.
So we can see her head is pretty good.
That's pretty consistent.
We got a little backwards and forwards, but it's not too bad.
But I'm noticing here in certain areas, her hair is kind of coming out a little bit.
So if we go here, we notice at the beginning there.
Oops.
Go back here.
Let's just measure that again.
So the main bulk of her hair is about there.
So let's move across, and notice her hair comes in and out a little bit, and then, when
we get to the end, that's not too bad, actually.
It's not too bad at all.
I'm just going to pull it back a little bit and let's see how this loop looks.
Yeah, we got a bit more of a consistent loop there.
So just don't be afraid to use these guides to help you measure things and find a nice
loop.
So that's a good base video for use to use.
So the next thing we want to do now is we want to freeze this into a photograph and
that's super easy.
What we're going to do is just find a nice frame that we like, where her expression is
good, which is right there.
That looks good.
So we're just going to duplicate this layer.
So you can hit Ctrl J or Command J on Mac for jump, or just drag into the New Layer
icon, and that's going to duplicate that video.
Now we don't want this to be a video anymore.
We want this top layer to be an image, so we just right click and then choose Rasterize
Layer.
Now, we'll convert it to an image.
And if you'll look at our timeline, notice it's right after the other one.
We want this on top of each other though, not one after the other, and you might find,
if you click and drag, you can't drag that above.
What you need to do is remove it out of the video group.
So take that layer, which is an image, and click it and drag it above, and see that little
line will appear there.
Release and notice, now, it's on a layer above the video.
So let's just click and drag this across and we're just going to make it match.
So, now, if we play it, notice there's no movement because what we have now is we're
looking at our picture with our video underneath.
All right, so we're almost there.
Now, what we need to do is just reveal the areas that we want to have movement and we
can do that by using a layer mask.
However, it's going to be quite difficult to see where we've masked that because both
of these layers look the same.
If I hide that, you'll look underneath, and as we scrub through, it's pretty hard to tell,
you know, what's video and what's an image.
So what we're going to do is we're going to put a temporary effect on this video so we
can see clearly where we're masking it.
So I'm just going to hide our layer, I'm going to grab our video group there, just our video
layer, and I'm going to apply a Hue and Saturation Adjustment.
So with the Hue and Saturation, I'm just going to drag this across and just give us some
crazy colors, which we can hide later on, but now, we can see where we're masking, because
we just want to mask around the hair and around here, and, maybe, the tassels.
So let's grab our layer, which is the image, and we're going to apply a layer mask.
Now this layer mask is filled with white so it has no effect.
Now we want to paint the white parts of the photograph to allow the video to display underneath.
So we're going to just click there, make sure we got black for the foreground color, grab
a brush, Opacity is set to 100, and I'm actually, even just going to turn off pen pressure for
there, because I don't want to have any, you know, partial transparency.
I want to just have a solid transparency, although you could blend it nicely with that,
but not everybody has a tablet.
So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to paint around here so we can see the area
of the hair.
So we're just going to paint around.
I'm just going to go over a little bit because we know that hair is going to blow around
and we don't really need to go into her face.
We don't want to do that because we don't want to get any blinking or anything like
that.
This just kind of goes around here and I know this is going to move around.
This feather is definitely going to move a little bit, and her hair here is definitely
going to blow around, so let's just give it a little space over here for it to move into.
And let's have a look now, and what we're going to do is just hide this Hue and Saturation
Adjustment Layer and I'm just going to play, and we can see, now, we've got our hair and
the feathers moving quite nicely.
Notice up here, it kind of warps a little bit if she's breathing; see in there?
That looks, maybe, a little odd.
We can fix that.
So what we're going to do is we're just going to turn this back on again so we can see that.
And then, what we're going to do is I'm just going to hit the X key and what I want to
do is just paint with white for the areas in here that I don't want this area to move
at all in there.
So let's have a look and see how that looks.
We'll hide that.
There we go.
See that's looking nice.
We just got that little feather blowing around a little bit and some of her hair here.
Now this doesn't quite match there.
You see that?
That feather kind of stops blowing there.
Actually, let me see where does it stop blowing?
Yes, it doesn't stop blowing to about here.
So what we could do is we could trim these two.
So let me just open this up a little bit.
Now you can spend as much time as you want noodling around to get this perfect.
I'm going to select both of these, and then, just pull that across.
I don't think they're both going to move at the same time, so I'm going to go to there
and then, just, Oops.
I'm going to undo that, make sure that they're lined up nicely like that.
So let's try the looping again, see how that looks.
Oh, look at that, that's looking much better; much more realistic now.
And once again, you know, you can spend as much time noodling as you want to get this
perfect, but what I'd like to do now is I'd like to get a little bit of movement going
in these tassels, so I'm just going to turn on our Hue and Saturation Adjustment again
so I can see what's going on, make sure I select black, maybe make this brush a little
bit larger, and I'm just going to paint over these tassels because I want to see these
move around in the wind.
I think it's going to add a really nice effect, and okay.
So let's hide that, and, now, when we play this back, look at that.
We've got some really nice movement going there and we've created our basic cinemagraph.
Now, I'll show you how to export this out because what you want to do is you want to
export it out as a gif, as an animated gif.
Some people call it a gif, so I call it a gif.
Personally, I like to call it a gif, but it doesn't matter what you call it.
So we're just going to choose Export and we're going to go to Save for Web.
Now, when we go to Save for Web, right now it's at 1920 by 1080, you can choose whatever
size you want.
I'm going to keep this and I'm going to set this to 650 width because, maybe, I want to
put it on a Wordpress blog, so I want it to be this big.
Make sure you choose gif and not jpg.
All right, so there we go, and we can see what we've got there, so make sure you're
not under Original, but you're under Optimized, and this lets you see what we've got there.
We've got 67 frames in here.
We can hit the Play button, and, look, we can actually preview that gif right in here.
This will play smoother, of course, once it's all rendered, but right now, we're just in
the Safe for Web view while we're looking at it.
Okay, so we're just going to hit Stop there.
And then we set the Tone in 256 colors, which is the maximum.
We pretty much want to do that and whatever settings you've got here, we don't really
need transparency, but it doesn't really hurt to have it on or off.
And, so, what we can see here is we're looking at Looping Options.
We want to change this to Forever because you want this to loop entirely.
And let's click the preview and have a look in the browser and see what our gif is actually
going to look like.
So you can see up here, that's exactly what it's going to look like.
It's going to look quite nice.
It's going to play well.
Now, as you can see, it's still quite big.
We can reduce this by reducing the amount of colors, but once again, loading up 6 megs
is a lot less than what you get for a video, especially if this is going to loop forever,
so you really just kind of decide about that.
But in this case, I'd like to go for the full size, and then, we're just going to hit Save.
All right, so we've got it here and we're just going to call this cinemagraph.gif and
we're just going to hit Save, and then, we're going to save this out.
All right, so we've saved it, let's find it.
All right and here's our gif there, so we can just hit the Spacebar to preview it and
you can see that it's completely done.
Okay, so if you want to just play this on your website, you can upload this right now,
or if you want to display it on Facebook, you've got to upload it to your website, and
then, link it or upload it to a site like giphy and I'll give you the link to giphy
where you can upload it there and then, you can play it.
So I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
I have a new tutorial every single week.
Now, if you'd like to become part of the Cafe crew, hit the Subscribe button right now and
you'll get a new tutorial every week.
Once again, guys, thanks for watching.
I hope you enjoyed this, smash that Like button, give us a comment, and I'll see you at the
CAFE.