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Making Animated Gifs in CS4
Make
in CS4 (i think its also translateable to CS3 and CS5 but i have no idea)
Also how to move onto icon-sized. (both the long way and the short way)
ONE
Firstly, make sure you have your animation toolbar open. You can find this in the window section, and you just click on it to make it appear.
if your toolbar doesn't look exactly like mine, try clicking the square button next to your scroll bar :
TWO
Collect your screencaps. You need to screencap all the caps from your scene, and you can do so using the framestep tool. This will depend what media player you use. i use windows media player classic, but you'll need to find the option that fits yours. Virtualdub also does frame by frame.
You'll end up with between 40 and 150 or so caps. Gifs in photoshop with more than 100 frames don't really work. Here are two of my frames :
THREE
Paste your screencaps as new layers.
FOUR
Then click a little button in the right hand top corner of your animation toolbar, with lines on it. it'll give you a menu for a bunch of things including make frames from layers which you should click.
FIVE
Make the appropriate delays on your caps. For my actual caps i usually put it as 0 secs, for my black base layer i use 0.5secs or 1 sec, depending on how long the gif is.
SIX
-- > resize as you normally would an image. It will resize all the frames for you, but make sure you keep the aspect ratio.
-- > add any colour correction layers you'd like. I added a curves layer and a vibrance layer. as long as you add them on top of your layers, they will affect the whole gif.
That's you pretty much done. To save this give go to file >> Save for web and devices. I don't play around much with this screen, i think i changed my quality to bicubic smoother but i'm not sure. Feel free to play around a bit lol.
Any gif more than 5mb (you can see the size in the bottom left corner) won't upload to tinypic or photoshop.
TO MAKE AN ICON
- resize as small as you can, this will normally be smaller than 100x100, more like 30x40
- creat a canvas by going Image --> Canvas Size --> 100x100 PIXELS
- Ensure its less than 50kb (you can see the size in the bottom left corner when you save)
THE FAST WAY
This only works for some folk. And it only works if you have a certain plug in which i no longer remember where to get. But try it, because it cuts time off your gif making process if you use it.
go to file ---> import ---> Video frames from layers. select an .avi file. If you get a white screen, you'll need a plug in or s just type "*" in the 'open' box for importing frames.
If you get a black screen, you can scroll along and find your scene. CTRL BUTTON to highlight your selection. you'll usually get about 500 layers and will be able to cut down from there.
THE TOOLBAR
you'll see that it has a number of buttons under the track bar.
you've got your gif looping (forever)
then your rewind/play/forward type buttons
the next three buttons are important though!
the three circle down is your fade option so you can fade to black. Just click your last frame and your black frame and then use this button to fade it. play around to get what you want, but i recommend starting with five frames.
next up you have a little square with another square in it this is your add a frame button, click to duplicate the frame you've selcted.
and finally your little bin is the delete button. This removes the frame from your animation but it DOESN'T remove it from your layers.
Make
in CS4 (i think its also translateable to CS3 and CS5 but i have no idea)
Also how to move onto icon-sized. (both the long way and the short way)
ONE
Firstly, make sure you have your animation toolbar open. You can find this in the window section, and you just click on it to make it appear.
if your toolbar doesn't look exactly like mine, try clicking the square button next to your scroll bar :
TWO
Collect your screencaps. You need to screencap all the caps from your scene, and you can do so using the framestep tool. This will depend what media player you use. i use windows media player classic, but you'll need to find the option that fits yours. Virtualdub also does frame by frame.
You'll end up with between 40 and 150 or so caps. Gifs in photoshop with more than 100 frames don't really work. Here are two of my frames :
THREE
Paste your screencaps as new layers.
FOUR
Then click a little button in the right hand top corner of your animation toolbar, with lines on it. it'll give you a menu for a bunch of things including make frames from layers which you should click.
FIVE
Make the appropriate delays on your caps. For my actual caps i usually put it as 0 secs, for my black base layer i use 0.5secs or 1 sec, depending on how long the gif is.
SIX
-- > resize as you normally would an image. It will resize all the frames for you, but make sure you keep the aspect ratio.
-- > add any colour correction layers you'd like. I added a curves layer and a vibrance layer. as long as you add them on top of your layers, they will affect the whole gif.
That's you pretty much done. To save this give go to file >> Save for web and devices. I don't play around much with this screen, i think i changed my quality to bicubic smoother but i'm not sure. Feel free to play around a bit lol.
Any gif more than 5mb (you can see the size in the bottom left corner) won't upload to tinypic or photoshop.
TO MAKE AN ICON
- resize as small as you can, this will normally be smaller than 100x100, more like 30x40
- creat a canvas by going Image --> Canvas Size --> 100x100 PIXELS
- Ensure its less than 50kb (you can see the size in the bottom left corner when you save)
THE FAST WAY
This only works for some folk. And it only works if you have a certain plug in which i no longer remember where to get. But try it, because it cuts time off your gif making process if you use it.
go to file ---> import ---> Video frames from layers. select an .avi file. If you get a white screen, you'll need a plug in or s just type "*" in the 'open' box for importing frames.
If you get a black screen, you can scroll along and find your scene. CTRL BUTTON to highlight your selection. you'll usually get about 500 layers and will be able to cut down from there.
THE TOOLBAR
you'll see that it has a number of buttons under the track bar.
you've got your gif looping (forever)
then your rewind/play/forward type buttons
the next three buttons are important though!
the three circle down is your fade option so you can fade to black. Just click your last frame and your black frame and then use this button to fade it. play around to get what you want, but i recommend starting with five frames.
next up you have a little square with another square in it this is your add a frame button, click to duplicate the frame you've selcted.
and finally your little bin is the delete button. This removes the frame from your animation but it DOESN'T remove it from your layers.