GIFs have a bit of a low brow reputation from being deployed on silly websites in the 90s, but they can be used for more sophisticated purposes. Our GIF will show the unwrapping of gift that could be used in an online ad. After I make the image, one of our resident Photoshop expert will show the actual process of animating the image sequence into a GIF for posting online.
Before You Begin
This is a 2-part tutorial. Don't forget to head over to our Photoshop site when you are done to see how to quickly turn the photos you shoot in this tutorial into an animated GIF.
How to Create a Holiday-Inspired Animated GIF Using Stop Motion Photography
1. What is a GIF?
GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format, a very early lossless-compressed web image format for displaying simple graphics. As the pixels are only eight bits of data, GIFs display only up to 256 colours, saved into a colour lookup table within the file, from the 24-bit, 16.8 million colour spectrum.
Probably its most popular property is that it can save animations, and as of the second revision (GIF89a, 1989) the delay in milliseconds between frames could also be designated on a per-frame basis, as well as looping commands (transparency was also supported with this revision). Each frame within the animation can use a different colour table too, so a wider spectrum of colours can be displayed over the course of an animation.
The cadence of GIFs usually isn't ultra-smooth, as most browsers support only up to 19 frames per second at full speed, after which they slow the animation down. This tends to give them an endearingly jerky quality, like old hand-cranked film footage, adding to their simplistic appeal.
2. What Is Stop Motion Animation?
Recording moving images in real time means capturing still frames of live action in the range of 15-60 frames every second. High-speed, slow-motion capture can go up to several thousand frames per second.
Stop motion animation flips this on its head, being the process of taking a long series of still images over any time frame, simulating live action by moving the subject just a small amount between successive photographs.
Its most popular iteration has generally been "claymation," or using miniature sculpted clay models in place of actors. Cel animation is similar, where each individual frame is hand-painted on acetate, before being photographed a frame at a time to become the motion picture. In its heyday, like the traditional Disney animations, the cels would have been shot on a film camera capable of shooting a single frame at a time (a popular feature for budding filmmakers on 8mm Bolex-like cameras).
3. Why Should a Photographer Make Stop Motion GIFs?
Nowadays, stop motion is seeing a revival as short-form creative video becomes an artistic and commercial outlet in its own right. Whether you're helping your own or a client's branding, being able to shoot for GIF output is becoming increasingly relevant.
Just like filmmaking a few years ago and 3D design in the coming years, it's likely that this will be a necessary skill to add to the roster in order to stay competitive. Vine, Instagram and TwitPic all support video and/or animated content, and are rapidly becoming the social outlet du jour for brands trying to connect with fans in fun and unusual ways.
Besides the potential commercial benefits of stop motion, it's actually really fun. You can do anything: full-on claymation, bringing inanimate objects to life in a short story, a quick humourous unboxing video, little behind-the-scenes snippets using motordrive, whatever you can think of.
4. Festive Promo, for Photographers Or Clients
A gift unwrapping animation like I'm doing works as a festive promotional image for anyone's social media use. It could even be adapted and lengthened to show something inside the box, if you wanted to promote a specific thing, say a photo book for wedding photographers. Or perhaps a comedic version could be created with multiple nested boxes inside the box, revealing something much smaller.
It's simple, fun, and slightly hypnotic. It's perfect for keeping viewer's eyes where you want them. Offering it to a client you're already working with for social holiday imaging could be quite a coup, offering value exceeding expectations.
So, we know what it is and why it's good, so how do you do it?
5. Base Materials
This is fairly straighforward. Obviously you'll need your box. If it's to be opened, make sure it looks nice inside, or use an actual gift box. If it's for a client, you could use their standard shipping packaging. Then you'll need wrapping paper, and some kind of complementing ribbon to untie. That's it!
For shooting, you'll need a sturdy work surface that won't get easily knocked out of place, and if you're doing it against a white background like me, some form of white seamless paper and supports. This doesn't need to be the expensive 9-foot stuff unless your box is big enough for a person (another idea!), 4-foot seamless paper is pretty cheap in short lengths.
Once you have that, it's just the usual camera and lighting gear. This is what I'm using, for a fairly flat light:
Just make sure your camera platform is good and sturdy. Everything except the ribbon needs to be kept in place for the animation, or there may be a lot of tedious alignment in post. Do this work in post sometimes doesn't even work, so it's best to keep everything as locked down as possible.
6. Build Your Set
Because I'm just doing this from a fixed position on white seamless, there isn't really much in the way of set-building to do. If you were to do a more advanced GIF, with motion or focus pulls or anything like that, or if you're doing something with more narrative, then a "real" set would be useful.
I've filled the box with 18lb of cast weights, to ensure it doesn't move if the crepe ribbon catches on it as I'm moving it around.
Once I've taped these inside, I can wrap it up.
The wrought iron dining room rable is a fairly solid surface, around which I set up my seamless, light, reflector and camera. I'm using just one light, an Einstein on Color mode to ensure frame-to-frame consistency. If you use a speedlight, you need to make sure you let your flash full recharge its capacitor between frames.
The only addition I've made to the "set" is to add four body caps under the corners of the box, which will allow me to pull the ribbon around underneath without moving the whole box.
Camera Settings
Much like shooting a time lapse or panoramic, you want to keep each photo as consistent as possible. You need to flip your camera to manual mode. Pick your aperture, shutter speed and ISO, and keep them locked down throughout the shoot. You'll also want to lock down your focus. You can use manual focus, or just make sure your setting don't allow the camera to refocus between shots.
Finally, you'll want a consistent white balance. I'm suggest pick a manual color temperature to match your flashes. However, doing a preset white balance would also work.
7. Cadence and Shooting
I'm using wireless triggering because I can use the same transceivers to remote-trigger the camera as well. All I'm touching is the ribbon as I move it between frames.
I'm aiming for a final frame rate of about 17fps. For it to last around four seconds, with half of it being a reverse-playback to its starting frame for smooth looping, I'm looking at shooting about 35 frames.
Before starting, I have to break these 35 frames down into sections of action and determine how long each section should be, essentially, choreography. For this example, they would be "untying," "ends out," looping under," "twisting," "pulling away," and "leaving the frame."
This is six sections, but they may not break down into an even six frames per section. Some might be quite fast, like "ends out," and some may be slower with intermediate steps, like "untying." How many frames each of these sections lasts determines the speed of motion, or how far I should move the ribbon between frames. It needs to be fairly uniform in order to maintain a smooth cadence.
I'm planning carefully so that it can hopefully go off in a single take, without having to reset. That would be a hassle on a project like this, even more so with crinkly paper and heavy weights rolling around.
That said, instead of trying to get it perfect in-camera just for a demo, I'm going to apply the above sections in post. The actual action will be slower and more methodical, moving around an inch per frame, and then parts can be sped up by dropping frames as necessary. This seems to be a more reliable method, if a little extra work.
Now it's time to start shooting, so let's capture our first frame.
I started at about one inch movement intervals, so the second frame wasn't too different.
I continued this way until the bow was completely untied and I was getting into the actual ribbon. Here it was going very slowly due to the length of the ribbon, so I started moving it around three inches between frames. This seemed to progress much more smoothly, until the twist underneath the parcel snapped due to the friction between the fragile ends of the crepe ribbon. Here's a pro tip: use real ribbon if you're duplicating this project.
I thought this might be a deal-breaker, but continued for the rest of the take until the ribbon was completely out of frame. It turns out that it didn't ruin anything. Now that I have the image sequence of RAW images, what next?
8. Batch Processing
Since we need to keep all of the images as identical as possible, the solution to processing and exporting a large number of files in exactly the same way to the same place is, of course, batch processing. For me, this consists of three distinct steps.
Process
Process the first image in the sequence in Camera Raw or Lightroom. For me, that was ensuring the contrast was sufficient and saturation levels, particularly in the red channel, were under control.
A little auto lens correction and mild white vignetting to bring up the background, and I'm done. Since I'm in Camera Raw and don't need to bring the image into Photoshop proper, I can just hit Done.
Bridge
Now I need to duplicate all of these processing settings to the rest of the sequence. So I fire up Bridge, right click on the first image that I've already processed, then go to Develop Settings > Copy Settings.
I can then select all the other frames in the folder except that first one, then go back into Develop Settings and hit Paste Settings.
Organisation is the key to smooth processing of bulk files. In Bridge, I can quickly batch rename the frames, so it's easier to see what's going on during animation than with, say, "_MG_5937." So I highlight all the frames, go to Tools > Batch Rename, and set up the new filenames and folder for them to go into. I used a simple "Frame_XX.CR2" syntax.
Scripting
Next I need Photoshop to open those CR2s, convert their colour profiles and bit depths from my usual defaults, and resize them before outputting as JPGs. This is quite simple with a custom action and the Image Processor.
First I create my action. I open one of the frames at random, and then go to the Actions Palette, create a new action and hit Record. First, I go to Edit > Convert to Profile and set up a conversion from AdobeRGB, which I usually shoot and process in, to sRGB, the default colour space of JPG.
Then I go to Image > Mode > 8 Bits/Channel, which converts it from a 16 bit RAW import to the 8 bit colour of JPG. Then I hit Ctrl-Alt-I to resize, and for this I'm going to resize to 600x400 for reasonably quick load times of the final GIF. Then I hit stop in the actions palette.
Now I have my action, I close the file without saving and go to File > Scripts > Image Processor. Here I set it to open the CR2 files in the subfolder I created, and output the JPGs at 10 quality to a subfolder within that folder. At the bottom under preferences, I get it to run the custom action I just created, and then I just hit Run.
9. Final Results
Once image processor has done its thing, I have a folder full of processed, resized JPGs that can be used for the final animation.
I can quickly check the general look of them by simply previewing the first frame in Bridge, and holding right arrow to fly through them.
10. Now Over to the Experts
That's all from me, I hope this has been a helpful guide to getting consistent batch results, whether or not you're animating them. And if you are, hopefully I've provided you with some considerations to mull over before getting started.
It's certainly been fun for me, the process is quiet and methodical which is a welcome change from the sometimes-hectic world of people-shooting.
If you do make an animated social media "card" this holiday season, please share it in the comments so we can all be inspired!
And, as always, questions or thoughts? Hit up the comments below!
Create an Animated GIF
Part 2 of this tutorial can be found on our Photoshop website below.