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.