Technique 60: Making GIF Animations
Save Time By
Moving graphics across the Web page
Making text fade in and out
When you make a GIF animation, images contained in frames play back in a specific order and speed, creating the impression of motion. It’s just like creating a mini-movie. You see many types of animations, but you can create two basic types easily with ImageReady: text or an image moves across a Web page, and text or an image fades in or out.Create animations in ImageReady using the Animation palette shown in Figure 60-1. This palette contains all the tools necessary to mark the first and last frames of the animation, create the frames in between (called tweening), and play back the animation for testing.

Figure 60-1: The Animations palette contains all the tools you need to create great animations.
This technique takes you through creating two types of GIF animations: The first uses layers to create the animation, and the second uses the Layer palette’s opacity slider to make text fade in and out. So, pull out a Web graphic, launch ImageReady, and create an animation. Animations are really quite easy. After you get the hang of it, use your imagination to come up with variations and your own ideas.