HOWTO: Create captions

Hi everyone!

Someone asked me about how to create captions using GIFs, so I thought, why not write an entire post about how to create captions.
Hope you'll find it useful and that some of you will create their own blog :)

By the way, if you're a new captionner, feel free to comment on this post and contact me if you'd like to use Open TG Captions. I think it can be a good way to start/improve your captions!

Creating captions

1. Come up with an idea, a situation.
   If you find it hard, take it step by step: who becomes who, how, why…
2. Find the perfect image!
   Everyone has their preferences concerning images, but I like the images posted on Smutty and Luscious. The images are generally of quality.
3. Import it in your favourite image editor.
   I use Photoshop, because I also use it for other work.
4. Now, that's the technique I use, you can do however:
   I increase the canvas size by 55% on the right, fill it with a color and type text (justified, Open Sans, if you really want details ^^)
5. I save it as a .psd (in case I want to come back to it) and as a .jpg, to post it

Creating captions with gifs

Basically the same as above. You only need to save the .gif and import it in Photoshop (sorry, I'm using this software so I have no idea how to do it with another)

Once it's imported, add your text (step 4 above), and when you want to export it, choose

File > Save for web… > Save

That way you've got your pretty gif ready to be posted :)

One thing you need to consider when doing gif captions is the layers. Your text must be visible at all times for instance (basic stuff, I know, but it got me crazy in the first place).

Hope this helps, and as I said above, you can comment the link to your caption blog and ask me about Open TG Captions if you're interested! ;)

MT