1. I highly recommend that you download a program called The KMPlayer. Go ahead and install that. Go on. I can wait.
2. Installed? Great! Open the program up and you should get something that roughly looks like this. Don’t freak out, my KMPlayer will look different from yours, mine is an older build so that I can screencap DVDs. This tutorial is going to focus on capping from a digital file.
3. Open up the video file you wish to screencap. (I’m using MysteryGuitarMan). Right click on the window, go to Capture > Frame: Extract (CTRL+G), and you’ll get this handy little window
4. These are the settings that I use. I’m pretty comfortable with them, but I recommend tinkering around to find what is right for you. I find that the ratio of 1:4 (one capture for every four frames) can still give a pretty seamless animation.
5. Create a folder wherever you want to house your screencaps. Use the drop down menu, as seen here, to the left of the open button, navigate to your folder and set that as the destination for the output.
6. Once you’re ready, click start. In the “information” box, a timer will start, it will tell you the number of frames that you have gone through, and let you know how many frames you have captured. Hit play on your video to start capturing images. Take a look here to see what I mean.
TIP: You don’t have to capture the WHOLE video. If you just want a part of it, navigate to that part and click start there. Once you’ve got the scene you want, hit the Stop.
7. Now, if you go to the folder you specified as a destination, you should see that it has populated with a lot of frames.

1. So, pick your caps and drop them into photoshop. I like to load them all into one document, so open up the first cap that you want (using file > open, or drag and drop into photoshop) and then you can simply add the rest by selecting them in windows explorer (use ctrl/shift/whatever the equivalent is on a Mac) and drag and drop them on top of the first cap. This should happen. Just keep hitting enter until all your layers are placed.
2. Right click the “Background” layer (the one at the bottom of your list) and select Layer from Background. You’re going to get a dialogue window, just click OK. The layer should now say “Layer 0”.
3. Notice how the rest of the layers have a funny little icon at the bottom right of the thumbnail? Right click any one of those and click Select Similar Layers (or you can ctrl + click them all). Right click on any one of them again and, this time, select Rasterize Layers. Icons should be gone now.
4. Time to resize our images. I generally use a width of between 75-80 pixels. It depends on how large the cap is. Also depends on the ratio. For example, setting a width of 80 on an image that is 640 by 480, will have a different height than an image that was originally 1920x1080. Play around, find what is right for you. Also, consider cropping the document first before resizing, especially if you don’t want your focus to become teeny tiny after resizing.
5. Go to Image > Canvas Size and change the size of your canvas to 100 x 100 pixels. (You may have to change the size type from cm to pixels using the little drop down menus. For some reason, cm’s is a default for me.)
6. Now, do whatever you want to the image and canvas. Don’t go too crazy, though! Remember, we need to keep it under 20 KB. Here is what I have.
7. Now, the animation part. Go to Window and click on Animation to turn it on. It should have a little check mark beside it and you’ll see a bar appear at the bottom. (If you notice, it’s been turned on the entire time for me).
Now, if you get this window, don’t worry. Just click the button at the bottom right (highlighted) and you’ll get the one we need for this tutorial.
8. Click the drop down menu on the animation toolbar (highlighted), and select Make Frames from Layers. It does exactly what it says: turns all your layers into individual frames. What Photoshop does is that it turns the visibility off for all but ONE layer. For example, the first frame is the first layer (first layer is at the bottom, fyi). It keeps the visibility on for that one, but turns off the visibility of the rest. The second frame turns the visibility of the first layer off, turns the second layer on, and keeps the rest of them off. Does that make sense?
9. Now, the first two frames for me are just the background layers. I don’t need those frames, so I’m going to delete them. Highlight them and click the little trashcan (highlighted). You’ll get a dialogue box, click Yes.
10. Also, you’ll notice the last two frames are empty. These two frames hold my adjustments layers. I can get rid of those frames as well. Now, we are left with the frames we want.
11. Hold up, what about the stuff we added? Do not worry, we’re going to turn those back on. HUGE TIP: if you are going to add anything or adjust anything, make sure you have the first frame selected! If you don’t, the changes will only affect the frame you have selected and the ones after. Having the first frame selected ensures that our changes will apply to ALL the frames. Also, you may have to toggle your first layer on and off a couple times before it’ll apply to all the frames. Photoshop is weird like that. So, here are my frames with the proper added layers turned on.
12. Open that drop down menu again and, this time, choose Select all Frames (or ctrl+click all the frames.)
13. You see that little time parameter on each of the frame boxes? Has a little upside down triangle beside it? Click that. You should see a list of times. 0.1 sec, 0.2 sec, etc. Choose a time. (I usually start with 0.2 seconds). Also, if you have to, there’s a little box to the bottom left that says “Once”. Click that triangle and select “Forever”. Now, your animation will run over and over and over..FOREVER.
14. Hit the little play button to see your animation in action! If you think it’s too slow, play with the timing until you feel it is just right. For example, I thought mine was a little too slow, so I adjusted the time to 0.15 seconds. Feels a lot better.
15. Save the animation. File > Save for Web and Devices. Now I got super lucky, my animation falls under the 20KB limit on my first try (also, there’s no dither on it, so that kind of helps.) This will not be the case every time. Here is where you really need to play around.
Dither - No dither, diffusion, pattern, and noise. These help the colours blend together better in your gif. I recommend you have it on. It will raise your file size, but there’s one other thing you can play with to lower it again...
Colors - You’ll notice that mine is set at 256. You’ll also notice that my file size is 22.05KB which kind of sucks. If you lower the number of colors that are in your gif, the file size will decrease. For example, if I select 128 colors, my file size drops to 18.15 KB, which is good! Also, to me, there is no noticeable difference between that and when 256 colors is selected.
16. Once you’re satisfied with your settings and your gif, go ahead and save it.