Animation in Photoshop

I was looking through my Archive Tutorials and discovered something! Animating in Photoshop in 2020 is very different from what it was back in the early aughts! So here is how it’s done now.

As you work through this little tutorial, you’ll learn and practice these useful Photoshop techniques:

• Using Layers
• Turning a Brush
• Using the Window menu
• Using the Timeline
• Creating frames from layers
• Timing an animation
• Saving an animation

To make an animation in Photoshop, you need to begin with a layered image. Each layer will become a frame for your animation. You can do this in one of (at least) 3 ways, depending upon what your output is to be:

1. If you have a photo video, you can make its frames into layers to make your animation: File > Import > Video Frames to Layers. Open the Video File and click OK to make the frames into layers in your file. This is how you would process a video in Photoshop.
   
   After you have worked through this tutorial, you’ll be able to do this. I will not be covering this process in this tutorial.
   
2. Begin with a collection of photos you want to put into an animated collection: File > Scripts > Load files into Stack. Browse for your photos. Hold Ctrl as you click to select them. Then Click OK to load your stack. Each photo will become a layer in your new file. This is a good way to make a mini slide-show of your photos.
   
   The downside of this is that the file-size gets huge very fast! That’s because you’re putting photographic images into GIF format — rarely a good idea.
   
   I’ve done a short example of this to the right. I will not cover this process in this tutorial, but you’ll be able to figure it out, once you’ve finished this tutorial.
   
3. Create your layers yourself in Photoshop. This is how you’d do it if you wanted to do an animated graphic image. That’s what we’ll do in this tutorial.

As stated above, you will be making a layered image, and each image will become a frame in your animation. So here we go:

1. Plan your work. This is actually an important step. I’ve done these projects both with and without planning, and I’ll let you benefit from my wisdom: Plan your work.

I plan to do the footprints around the canvas till they get to a point and then have the duck come out. And I want the footprints to be different colors.

I want the ones already made to show along with the new ones. And I want the footprints to be pointed in the direction that the dog is going, unlike the prints in my black & white sketch above.

So how do you change the orientation of a brush? The dog footprint was facing up, and, to make it rotate, use the arrow keys on the keyboard.

2. Make a layer for each would-be frame of your animation. For mine, I’ll create the first layer with the first red footprint. Then, because I want the second frame to include the red one, I’ll duplicate that layer and make the orange footprint.

Duplicate that layer and add the yellow footprint, duplicate, add green print… and so on. 19 times.

Why not just put a new footprint onto each layer? Well, because I can’t figure out a way to keep the background. If you figure out a way to keep the background, please do let me know!

I found out that this kind of animation is more easily done if you do it backwards. That is, go on and put in all the duck prints on one layer. Then duplicate the layer to make as many frames as you need. Then erase one more footprint on the succeeding layers. You may have to reverse the frames, if you do it this way.

Then I had to figure out when to add in the duck’s appearance and added him in at the appropriate time, having him appear gradually.

3. Now that you have your frames made, it’s time to make your animation test.

Window > Timeline. A timeline will appear at the bottom of your window. Click Create Frame Animation .

But there is just one frame! Go to the little at the far right of that panel. Click it and choose Make Frames from Layers. And there you are. Your Timeline is populated with images which should correspond to your layers.

4. Test it. Press that Play button just below your timeline. Zip! It’s done! And it’s either horrible or terrible, depending on how careful you were with your planning and execution.

If the animation goes backwards, fix that by clicking the at the right on the Timeline and choose Reverse Frames.

5. Time it. At the bottom of each frame in your timeline, you’ll see “0 sec.” You will likely want to change that.

If some or all of your frames are all to be shown for the same length of time, click one, then Shift-click or Ctrl-click to select more of them. Then click the drop-down arrow for one of these selected frames and choose a different time.

5. Tweak it. Make it so that different frames have different timing, if you want. Alter things on your layers.

And you can Tween it. Select two or more of your frames, holding Ctrl, and then press the Tweening button. You can choose how many “in between” transition-type frames to add. Play around with this.

6. Save it. File > Export > Save for Web. You can control the size and number of colors as well as the size of your image and how many times the animation goes.