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More Simple Animation Techniques with Photoshop CS3

// April 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tutorial

Colour animation, Filtered animation, motion animation and re-sizing animation. To begin with we will create a re-sizing animation.

Create a new file, 150 X 150 pixels on a transparent background.

Select the Elliptical Marquee tool.

In the options bar, go to the Style pull down at the top and select Fixed size.

Again, in the options bar, enter 150 px for Width and Height.

Click on your canvas to execute Marquee and drag until centered. Fill now with your choice of colour, then click outside the circle with the marquee tool in normal mode to deselect it.

Go to Layer > Duplicate Layer. (Repeat process until there are 4).

Making sure nothing is selected, Click on bottom layer 1 and go to Edit > Transform > Scale. Now in the top options bar set the width to 20% and click the lock icon next to it, this locks in the height aswell so it’s in proportion.

Now do the same to the other layers, but at 40%, 60% and 80%.
When finished, the Layers should look like this:

Now, We will work with the Animation palette. If not visible at present, Go to Window/Animation’.

Click the hidden menu on the upper right of the palette and Go to Make Frames from Layers.

Select frame 5 by Clicking on it and select the New Frame button. (A duplicate will be created.)

Next, in the Layers palette, Click top Layer and adjust the Opacity of the frame. (I used 43%, the object here is to lighten the image).

Set times. Click and hold on “0 sec” on each frame to set delay times.

You may now view your animation by pressing Play in the Animation palette.
Now try changing the timings and sizes until you are happy with your animation. Then save your original and “Save for web and Devices” to save your animated gif. To test insert on a webpage in Dreamweaver.

Motion and Tweening

For motion and tweening animation we will simply animate a circle around a canvas.

Create a new document 350px by 350px. Then using the paint brush just ‘colour in’ a circular shape on a new layer towards the top left of your camvas.

Now making sure your animation palette is set to ‘Frames’ click the new frame icon.

Then using the move tool, move the shape you have just created over to the right.

Create another new frame, and move the shape again to the bottom right.

Create a final frame and move the shape to the bottom left of your canvas.

Now if you play your animation you will see a really fast animation with your shape moving around the canvas. You can set this to loop if you click where it says ‘Once’ at the bottom left of your animation palette, and select ‘Forever’. Play again.

Tween It

Now we are going to add some tweening to your animation to smooth out the transitions between frames. Tweening is a process by which you select one or two frames (holding down shift) and then tell Photoshop how to animate between the two frames.

So to do this with our animated shape;

Select the first frame of your animation. Then go to the animation menu and select ‘Tween..’

The default settings that come up are fine as they are.

Please have a look at the different options, as you will see in the first drop down you can have a couple of layers selected as it gives the option ‘Selected Frames’. Also the parameters decide the kinds of animation to apply. In this instance Position is the only thing we are actually using, but it doesn’t matter that the others are switched on.

Now play your animation.

Now you need to do the same to your other original frames, the first one of which is now Frame 7. To navigate frame by frame you can use the icon next to the play button, which is the ‘Select Next Frame’ button.

Once complete your animation should be 19 frames.

Opacity Animation

This short exercise will illustrate how the opacity parameter works.

Create a new document 350px by 350px.

Use your paint brush to create a red circle.

Create a new layer and use your brush to create a green square.

Now in the animation palette;

Go to the animation menu and select ‘Make Frames from Layers’

Then select your first frame and select ‘Tween..’ from the menu.

Making sure Opacity is ticked (again it doesn’t matter if everything is ticked) Click ‘OK’ and play your animation.

Slideshow Effect

The final exercise will show you how to use layer effects aswell to manipulate how the animation is created. Open 2 jpg files of photographs into Photoshop. They can be ones we’ve used in previous tutorials, they can be saved from the web.

Now drag and drop one of the photographs on to the other, so they are both within the same document.

Now again in the animation palette select ‘Make Frames from Layers’.

Unlock your background layer (if it is locked), then create a duplicate of the first frame, by selecting the first frame and hitting the ‘New Frame’ icon.

Now with the new first frame selected, go to your layers palette and change the opacity of the visible layer to 0%. You will find that your second frame goes blank too, just click the frame and turn the opacity in the layer back up to 100%.

Now tween the first frame with the second.

On the new Frame 7 change ’0 Sec’ to ’2 Sec’.

You have now faded in your first slide.

Now create the same effect with Frame 8, duplicating it first, making the first ones opacity 0%, then making sure the second one is at 100%, then tween. Then finally set the final frame to 2 Seconds.

You could put some finishing touches on this animation, as it could fade out at the end before it begins again.

You have now covered all the frame based styles of animation.

Animation with Photoshop CS3

// April 8th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Tutorial

Frame based animation is what is used to create animated gifs. These are an image format that is used for really basic graphics that can have a transparent element. And also multiple frames, with each frame lasting along as you decide.

There is also Timeline based animation, but we will come on to that later.

Countdown Animation

We are going to be creating a basic animation of a countdown from 5 to 1. Each frame will last 1second long, and it will have a white background. The numbers will appear in the centre of a red circle as below.

You will see from the above graphic that the circle is constructed by using a shape layer, with an effect of ‘Stroke’ to give it the thick red outline.

There are also 5 number layers, and at the moment the only one switched on is the ’1′ layer.

So to begin I would like you to recreate the circle and number layers. Start with a New document at set it to 350 pixels wide and 350 pixels high.

Once you have something similar to the above its time to animate it!

Converting Layers into Frames

Once you have a series of frames it’s possible to tell Photoshop that you want to convert them into frames.

Go to ‘Window/Animation’ this will reveal the animation palette.

It should default to Animation [Frames] if not, there is a little icon in the bottom right of the animation palette that will switch it to Frames.

Then there is a hidden menu on the top right of the animation palette indicated by the below icon.

Click this icon and then select ‘Make Frames from Layers’.

Now you will notice that your background doesn’t go across all your layers. In order to sort this out you need to click each frame, and click the visibility icon on your background layer in the layers palette.

Now you will notice that your first frame of animation has no number in it. So you need to remove this frame. So simply single click on the first frame and then put it in the ‘Recycle Bin’, which is the same icon on the animation palette as it is for the Layers palette.

Press Play

Click the ‘Play’ icon on the animation palette and you will see that your animation plays really fast. So to slow it down;

Click your first frame, then hold down shift and click the final frame.

With them all selected go to the bottom of the first frame and click where it says ’0 Sec’.

Select ’1 Second’.

Now press play and you have your first animation complete. To save go to ‘File/Save’ to save the original psd file. Then go to ‘File/Save for Web and Devices’ to save the animated GIF. Select ‘gif’ from the file format dropdown, also try and reduce the number of colours used and see what you can get the file size down to without losing any quality. The image below shows that my example’s file size is 7.408K

Timeline Animation

Now we are going to use the same graphics to create the same animation, but with the ‘Timeline’ animation palette rather than ‘Frames’.

To start with we will use the history palette to go back to point just before you ‘Made Frames from Layers’. To open the history palette go to ‘Window/History’. It hit this icon next to the layers palette

Now on the Animation palette hit the Timeline icon at the bottom right of the window. Now we need to set the length of each frame. To do this we need to change how many frames per second are played. By default this will be set to 30 fps.

Go to the hidden menu at the top right of the animation palette and select ‘Document Settings’ from the menu.

Make the duration 5 Seconds, and the fps 1 second. Now we select the frames that we want to animate. In the animation palette select all the text layers by clicking the first one, holding down shift and then clicking the last one (or the top one). Then from the hidden menu select ‘Make Frames from Layers’.

The saving procedure is the same as previously, as you are still saving an animated gif.