The snow is slowly melting off and here’s a view from the back door. Taken this week, hopefully it’s a sign of spring to come! See those willows poking out right in the center of the photo? Usually they are covered this time of year. Happy Friday!

Taken with a Canon Digital Rebel Xsi, 50mm 1.4 fixed lens. I’m far from knowing what I’m doing here with my camera, just having fun with the lens and some mad photoshop skillz.

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.