Okay, for those of you that requested this here’s the written out directions. I’d put the difficulty level at about easy/medium due to the fact that a knowledge of layers in photoshop will be helpful. If anyone is interested in photoshop tutorials please let me know, I’d be happy to help if I can!
Creating an animated GIF in Photoshop (beginner, should have experience using layers):
1> create a new image preferably under 350×350 pixels for web streaming.
2> place/paste each image into it’s own layer (layers palette) and label/organize them in the order of appearance. (if you can’t find your layers palette then click on “window” in your menu bar and scroll down until you find layers > click and it will open with the rest of your palettes).
3> In the “window” menu, select Animation Palette, it should open below or somewhere on your screen.
4> In your Animation Palette options, click “Make Frames From Layers.” Your layers should then appear in the animation palette.
5> Rearrange if necessary from left-right the order of appearance. By clicking on the time below (0.0 sec) you can change the time allotted to each “frame”
6> You can press play to review your animation.
Once you are ready to save, follow closely:
A> Click File menu > Export > Render Video
B> Name the file and select a folder/location to save it.
C> Under File Options select “QuickTime Export”. Click on settings for QuickTime Export and select settings again. Click “animation” and then click okay.
D> Under Range select All Frames, leave everything else the same.
E> Click Render.
You can now open your movie from where you saved it and it’ll play! Yea!
NOTE: If you’d like to keep it as a .gif file instead of turning it into a .mov file you can just rename the file after it’s exported and use a .gif extension instead of .mov extension. This will not change the file in any way except by appending the file extension.
