Someone I know wanted to know how to do this, so I made this up for him.
First make a new document:
and then paste in a background (if you want to have a background on your animation, such as a planet as in my example). After you have pasted in your background, delete the background layer (normally white in color) so that you are left only with the layer with your personal background image.
Next, paste in a foreground object (the part you want to animate), for this example I put in a x-wing :)
Next, duplicate the background layer many times as frames you want to have in your animation (I will have three frames in this animation, so I duplicated the background twice so I have three total, one for each frame). Also, you will want to duplicate the foreground object you are going to animate, so you have one copy for each frame (again three for my purposes).
Once you have duplicated all the items you are going to animate, then move the objects you would like around the way you want to animate them. For this example, I moved the three x-wings to be in a row, so in the animation the x-wing would fly through the picture.
Next, Ctrl click one background and one foreground element (one planet, and one x-wing for my example), and then right click and choose “Merge Layers.” Do this for every frame of your animation (make sure all the layers are “visible” before you do this – you should be able to see the eye next to each layer).
Once you have merged the layers, you should have one layer for each frame of your animation. Also, make sure they are in the order you want them to be for the animation, the first layer being first in the animation, and the top layer, being last in the animation. You then should be able to see only one copy of your foreground object (as pictured below), with the other frames underneath (which you can view by making the current layer invisible).
Then click “File” -> “Save for Web…”
Set the presets as below (making sure it is on GIF and that “Animate” is selected.
And you then should be able to preview your animation and set preferences in the lower right hand corner of the window like so:
And then save the file and use as desired! Here is the example animation in all its glory:
And that’s it!
October 4, 2008 at 9:09 am |
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October 14, 2008 at 6:54 am |
Thanks for this simple explanation. I had thought my Elements wouldn’t be up to the job, but it’s great. I’m going to design some banners for someone, so now I can animate them! Maybe I’ll make some for our church website too ;)
November 13, 2008 at 12:57 am |
Cool., thanks for sharing the information! I found it very helpful!
November 16, 2008 at 9:17 pm |
didn’t work for me you didn’t put enough information i got lost in between
November 17, 2008 at 10:09 am |
Hi Maly,
Sorry you got lost – if you let me know where you got lost I can try and walk you through it.
December 31, 2008 at 10:02 am |
I did this but it didn’t work for me. I didn’t get lost; I did what you said but it just didn’t work. When I click on the animation in my files to play it, it’s just a picture. I clicked the animate button while I was making it too.
January 16, 2009 at 6:07 pm |
Sorry you are having trouble. Make sure each layer has something different on it. If the layers look the same, there will be no animation seen.
January 30, 2009 at 4:44 pm |
i know how to do the animation but if u have an animation with a name on it how do u make the name show up on the final photo
April 25, 2009 at 9:02 am |
ok, very cool and thanks alot but when i try to save a big gif file as a 1024×767 it sais its too big to animate. is it any way to avoid this?
April 25, 2009 at 9:11 am |
Thanks,
I’m not sure – I’ve never tried to save an animation that big (they are normally for websites, and that would quite big…). If it’s saying it’s too bit it probably doesn’t support it. You might try something with flash…but that would be another program.
Sorry!
-nathan
May 25, 2009 at 9:14 pm |
I want to take a photos of an object. I want the object to turn around so that a person can see it from all sides. The background must move with it so all the shadows will be correct. I am going to place the item on a plate and turn it slightly taking a picture everytime I turn the tray. How can I do this?
June 6, 2009 at 5:34 pm |
Just put each picture on a new layer (as 1 frame of the animation) and it should work fine.
May 30, 2009 at 2:16 pm |
Thanks for the tutorial! Very easy to follow…. :)
June 6, 2009 at 5:34 pm |
Glad it helped :)
September 12, 2009 at 3:09 pm |
Thanks for this tutorial. It was great!
September 26, 2009 at 1:05 pm |
Thanks. Very simple and now I am addicted to making them.
October 31, 2009 at 1:55 am |
thanks for the tutorial – its all working great, but I don’t have the option to change the delay speed…When I click on the dropdown menu, it won’t let me change it from 0.2 – any ideas why that may be? I’m gonna try a restart :)
October 31, 2009 at 2:06 am |
Ok – so I figured out that if I just copy my 3 layers, it will achieve the same effect. That it, the animation had 3 layers, now it has 2 copies of each layer making it last longer :)
November 2, 2009 at 11:14 am |
Found this really helpful thank you. Good old google for ranking this top and rightly so!