How To Make An Animated GIF In Photoshop [Tutorial]
9. Save and Export Your GIF. If you've spent any time on the internet at all, you've probably come in contact with an animated GIF. It's an image file that allows you to feature animated images, which makes it seem like the image is moving. Think of them as a hybrid between a still image and a video.
Why are GIFs great additions to your marketing, They're easy to consume, provide a new way to capture your viewers' attention, and can have a serious emotional impact. And since content that makes us feel something encourages us to share, these tiny animations are worth experimenting with. The best part about GIFs is that they aren't too hard to make.
If you have access to Photoshop and a few minutes to spare, you can create an animated GIF in no time. In the following tutorial on making animated GIFs, I'm using the Creative Cloud 2015 version of Photoshop, but the steps should be similar in other versions. Alright, let's get started.
Step 1: Upload your images to Photoshop. Gather the images you want in a separate folder. Load Files Into Stack. Then, select Browse, and choose which files you'd like to use in your GIF. Photoshop will then create a separate layer for each image you've selected. Once you've done that, skip to step two. Create each frame of the animated GIF as a different Photoshop layer.
Be sure to name your layers so you can keep track of them easily when you make your GIF. To name a layer, go to the Layer panel on the bottom right of your screen, double-click on the default layer name, and type in the name you want to change it to. Press Enter when you're finished. Once you have your layers in there and you've named them all, you're ready for step two. E (Windows). Photoshop will create a new layer containing the merged content, which you should also rename. Step 2: Open up the Timeline window.
Timeline. The Timeline will let you turn different layers on and off for different periods of time, thereby turning your static image into a GIF. The Timeline window will appear at the bottom of your screen. If it's not automatically selected, choose it from the dropdown menu -- but then be sure to actually click it, otherwise the frame animation options won't show up.
Step 4: Create a new layer for each new frame. Then, click the menu icon on the right of the Timeline screen. From the dropdown menu that appears, choose Create new layer for each new frame. This will make each layer a frame of your GIF. Step 6: Under each frame, select how long it should appear for before switching to the next frame.
To do this, click the time below each frame and choose how long you'd like it to appear. In our case, we chose 0.5 seconds per frame. Step 7: At the bottom of the toolbar, select how many times you'd like it to loop. The default will say Once, but you can loop it as many times as you want, including Forever.
Click Other if you'd like to specify a custom number of repetitions. Step 8: Preview your GIF by pressing the play icon. Satisfied with your GIF, Next, choose the type of GIF file you'd like to save it as under the Preset dropdown. If you have a GIF with gradients, choose Dithered GIFs to prevent color banding. If your image employs a lot of solid colors, you may opt for no dither. The number next to the GIF file determines how large (and how precise) the GIF colors will be compared to the original JPEGs or PNGs.
