Today I just want to show you what I have learned lately, how to make a GIF using Photoshop. I’m sure you want to learn that too!
Make a GIF Using Photoshop – Have your layers ready:
First you have to create all the desired images. In this case I wanted to have some screenshots of beautiful websites that were made by old WCB students in order to promote one of our courses.
I had different screenshots put in a Mac screen:
In this case I had not to forget to save the picture in the PNG format so there will be no background.
Note: I just updated Photoshop to its last version (yes I am that fancy!) and I discovered that they removed the “Save for Web” option and it seems like now you have to use “export as” option I am very unhappy I’ve been learning to use this function for the last months and my world just collapsed.
Actually if you look closely “Save for web” is still available in the export as option but they had the word “legacy”. Does it mean that it will soon disappear?
Anyway. Now you have all the wanted images created and you put each of them in a different layer:
Bravo! I’ll say that you did the hard work here.
Make a GIF Using Photoshop – Create the frame animation with your layers
Now you have to create what Adobe called the timeline.
So click on Window and selection Timeline:
You can choose between “create video timeline” and “create frame animation”. Select the second one please:
If you missed this dropdown selection you can play on the bottom left corner to move from the video the the frame animation:
From video to frame animation:
From frame to video animation:
Perfect! Then you have to select all the layers. You can click on the small arrow on the top right corner of the animation windows and select “Make Frames from layers”.
And they will all appear:
If you changed your mind and there is a layer you don’t want anymore you can just click on it to select this one and delete it.
Make a GIF Using Photoshop – Change the timeline of each layer
You can see that there is a timeline for each layer.
You can choose from 0,1 to 10 seconds and even more:
I’ll use 2 seconds, don’t ask me why, I just think 1 is too short and 3 is too long (and I like even numbers)
That’s starting to look good!
Now we want to put some love in our Gif and don’t have images that will instantly change without a transition:
Make a GIF Using Photoshop – Create a nice transition between the layers
So what we can do is select the first layer and click on this button:
You can choose how many layers you want to add for the transition: Let’s go for 4
You can see that your layers were added but think to change the timeline for them or they will use the same for the others. Let’s be crazy and try 0,1 seconds.
Repeat the same thing for each layers as you want the pretty transition between all of them.
If you want your Gif to be played forever (I will go to that point in a minute) don’t forget to add a transition between the last layer and the first one. You only have to select “First frame” inside the “tween” box: – and don’t forget to also change the time line for the transition layers.
Almost done!
Now let’s choose how many time we want to play the Gif. Just click on this button: 24 and select how many time you want to play it. I want to be crazy again and play it forever.
Make a GIF Using Photoshop – Save your creation as a GIF file
Last step but not the least, let’s save our Gif file. You can click on “Save for the Web” and you’ll have plenty of complicated options or for Photoshop 2015 you can just use the Export as option.
Et voila ! We just created our first Gif. Let’s have a drink!