How do I make a GIF animation in Photoshop?

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steveminchington
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How do I make a GIF animation in Photoshop?

Post by steveminchington »

A GIF animation is a great way to compare two images as it can switch between the two in the same frame and is much easier than looking from one to the other.

This is Rik's How-To for Photoshop users. I hope you don't mind me posting this here but I thought it would be useful for others to see.


In the current Photoshop CC, the recipe goes like this:
1. Create a layered image containing one layer for each frame you want to show.
2. If necessary, select all layers and do Edit > Auto-align Layers.
3. Open the Timeline window and select Create Frame Animation. (In earlier versions of Photoshop, I believe the Timeline window was named Animation.)
4. In the upper right corner of the Timeline window, click on the little pulldown menu box and select Make Frames From Layers.
5. Select all frames in the animation, then hover over the "0 sec." label, right-click, and select the delay time (number of seconds that each image is to be shown). I generally prefer a slow animation, say 2 seconds per frame, so that the viewer has enough time to do a little thinking while each frame is shown.
6. In the toolbar at bottom of the Timeline window, change Once to be Forever.
7. Test the animation by pressing the play button (right-pointing triangle, tooltip "Plays animation").
8. Adjust timing and frame contents as necessary.
9. In the upper right corner of the Timeline window, click on the little pulldown menu box and select Optimize Animation. Be sure that both boxes are selected and click OK.
10. In the main Photoshop menus, select File > Save for Web. Select GIF and be sure the Looping Options are set to Forever, then press "Save..." and place the file.

Note that with GIF there is nothing like the JPEG compression quality to adjust file size. To fit within 300 KB (or whatever) it is necessary to resize the image. In the current Photoshop this can be done "on the fly" as part of the Save for Web dialog.

crazybread
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Post by crazybread »

Thanx for posting. This is great.

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

If you want to host a fairlly large animated gif somewhere without drama, imgur.com works.
There is no guarantee that they won't delete images though, so please make a version small enough to upload to this site. That will probably have to be less than about 350 pixels square (for 2 frames) to be under the 300kB size limit.
You can use the format

Code: Select all

[url=imgurdirectlink][img]pmnet_uploadedsmallfilelink[/img][/url]
to provide a pmnet-hosted animated image which brings up the larger image on a mouse-click, while it lasts.
Chris R

crazybread
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Post by crazybread »

Thank You Chris. :D

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