Animation Types Part 3: Flashing & Color change

This is the tutorial on the third and fourths types of animation in Photoshop. This will focus on how to make objects flash (Part A) and change color (Part B). It is recommended that you view my previous animation tutorials before viewing this one. 

Part A: Flashing

I am starting out with a plain white document (size 600x100) with a black heart in the center. 

Now make two more slides by clicking the new slide icon. On the second slide, hide the heart by clicking the eye icon in the layers palette. Leave the third slide as is.

Adjust the time for each slide. I am going to use .5 seconds per slide.

Select the first 2 slides by holding control and clicking both of the slides. Use the "tween" button like in previous tutorials. Leave settings on default and click "Ok". 

Now you will see that there are five more slides added to the palette between the selected slides. I changed the time of the new slides to 0.2 seconds; you can adjust it to your liking. The shorter the time, the faster the animation.

Do the same thing with the last two slides. Once again, I changed the time to 0.2 seconds for the new slides.

When you press play, the heart should fade out and then back in, giving it a "flashing" effect. This is what it should look like:

Part B: Color Change

Starting out with the same black heart as above, make one new slide.

One this new slide, click the layer styles icon (shown below) and choose "Blending Options".

From the box that pops up, click on the area that says "Color Overlay".

Now, choose a color that you'd like the heart to change to. If you want to change the color of something with more details, you might want to choose a different blending mode like "Multiply", "Color" or "Overlay" from the drop down box in that section. For the purpose of this tutorial, I am going to keep it at red and on "Normal". Click "Ok".

You should now see that the second slide has a red heart instead of a black one. Select both slides and use the "tween" option like before. Adjust the time intervals to your liking. I chose one second for the two original slides and 0.2 seconds for the new slides.

Press "Play" and the black heart should transition into a red one. You can repeat this same process with more layers and colors if you choose. 

Animation Types Part 2: Fading

This is the tutorial on the second type of animation in Photoshop. This will focus on how to animate text/images to fade from one slide to another.  It can get confusing so I'll try to explain it as well as I can. It is recommended that you view the Animation Basics Tutorial and/or the Animation Types Part 1 Tutorial before going on to this one because this is a continuation of the previous ones.

For this tutorial, I am starting out with a plain white background with a heart on one side and a star on the other. Both shapes are on separate layers so that they can be manipulated separately.

Open the animation palette as shown in the previous tutorials.

For the moment, there is one slide and both shapes are shown. Click the eye symbol next to the star layer in the layers palette so that the layer will not be visible on this slide.

Create a new slide, hide the heart layer as you did with the star and make the star layer visible by clicking the eye icon again. You should only see the star on this slide.

Set the time increment as desired on the two slides (see previous tutorial for instructions on how to do this). I used 2 seconds for each slide. Once that is done, use the "tween" as in previous tutorial. Leave everything on the default settings and click "Ok".

Now you will see that there are five more slides added to the palette. The Tween action added the new slides in between the two selected slides so that they will transition into each other smoother. I set the time increment of the new slides to 0.2 seconds.

Now, if done correctly, the heart will fade out as the star fades in when the play button is pressed. It should look like this.

If you are making a siggy and you want the animation to repeat over and over again, click on the dropdown box in the bottom left corner and choose "Forever" if it isn't already selected. If you don’t want it to repeat, choose "Once". 

To save your animation, go to File/Save for Web & Devices.

A window will pop up showing your animation slide by slide. There are several options to save it as(in a drop down box underneath the save, done and cancel buttons). I usually use the "GIF 128 dithered" because it is the best quality.

A little warning about gif images: they are HUGE files compared to jpgs or pngs. If you plan on uploading a lot to a photo-hosting site, you can use up your size limit really fast. From my experience, gifs will not upload to Tinypic or Imageshack, so I usually use Photobucket.  

Hopefully this wasn't too confusing for you guys. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Animation Types Part 1: Moving /Scrolling Text or Images

Hello! 

This is the first tutorial on animation in Photoshop. This will focus on how to animate text/images to "scroll" on or off the document.  It can get confusing so I'll try to explain it as well as I can. Please view the Animation Basics Tutorial before going on to this one because this is a continuation of that one.

Open the animation palette as shown in the previous tutorial.

 Make a new slide by clicking the icon that looks like a piece of paper with a corner turned up (as explained earlier). After clicking that, a new slide will appear next to the first one. 

The slide should look exacting like the first one. With the new slide selected, use the move tool or arrow keys to move the text down until it is just out of view. When animation is complete, your text will scroll downward, out of sight. This type of animation will work with any direction (up, down, left, right, diagonal, etc.) with both text and images.

Now, with the first slide seleced, hold control (or command if on Mac) and click the second slide so that they are both selected. Change the time at the bottom of one of the slides to 1 sec (this can be changed later). Because both slides are selected, the time for both of them will change.

 

Now for the actual animation part of the tutorial. Select both slides and click on either the icon that has four circles. This is called the "Tween" button. 

 

A box will pop up that looks like this:

Leave everything on the default settings and click "Ok".

Now you will see that there are five more slides added to the palette. The Tween added the slides in between the two selected slides so that they will transition into each other smoother.

Select all the slides except the first and last ones and change the timing to 0.2 seconds.

Now click on the first slide and hit the play button on the bottom of the palette. It should show the text sliding out of sight. 

If you are making a siggy and you want the animation to repeat over and over again, click on the dropdown box in the bottom left corner and choose "Forever" if it isn't already selected. If you don’t want it to repeat, choose "Once". 

It should look like this when the animation is played

To save your animation, go to File/Save for Web & Devices.

A window will pop up showing your animation slide by slide. There are several options to save it as(in a drop down box underneath the save, done and cancel buttons). I usually use the "GIF 128 dithered" because it is the best quality.

A little warning about gif images: they are HUGE files compared to jpgs or pngs. If you plan on uploading a lot to a photo-hosting site, you can use up your size limit really fast. From my experience, gifs will not upload to Tinypic or Imageshack, so I usually use Photobucket.  

Hopefully this first part wasn't too confusing for you guys. And sorry for the lack of pictures for the last part, my computer wouldn't screencap it for me :/ As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Animation Basics

First, I am starting out with a plain white document with black text for tutorial purposes.

To open the animation palette, go to Window/Animation.

 

The palette will pop up. It should be at the bottom of the screen. It looks like this: 

If it looks a little different, make sure the tab called "Animation (Frames)" is selected.

The box at the bottom of the palette that looks like a piece of paper with the corner turned up will give you a new slide (it works pretty much the same way as a layer). The trashcan icon next to it deletes slides. 

In the main part of the palette, you can see the slides that will be used to animate. Think of the slides as a flipbook. The first slide will "flip" into the next and so on.

The numbers on the bottom of each slide that says "0 sec" is where you can set how long that slide will appear before changing to the next.

Now you are ready to start animating. Go to this page for a tutorial on the first type of animation.