Photoshop CS Timesaving Techniques For Dummies [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Creating an Animation Using Layers

When you run the animation created with the following steps, it looks like an image is moving from one side of the browser window to the other side. This type of GIF animation uses an image on a transparent layer with another layer behind it that contains a background color or background texture. Here’s what you need to do:

Create an image that has two layers.

The bottom layer contains a background color or texture and the upper layer contains the image that will move from one side of the window to the other.

For my example, shown in Figure 60-2, the image contains a White layer that is used for the background and a Puffer layer containing an ornery looking puffer fish.




Figure 60-2: Using the Animation palette, this puffer fish is going to swim from left to right in the image window.






Choose Window>Animation to display the Animation palette.





In the Layers palette, select the layer that contains the image that will move.

In this example, I selected the Puffer layer.





Using the Move tool, move the image to the left side of the image window.

In the Animation palette, Frame 1 updates to display the moved image.





Click the Duplicate Current Frame button at the bottom of the Animation palette.

A new frame labeled 2 appears selected in the palette.





With Frame 2 still selected in the Animation palette, use the Move tool to move the image to the right side of the image window.

Frame 2 in the Animation palette updates to display the moved image, as shown in Figure 60-3.




Figure 60-3: After you move the image to the right side of the image window, the Frame 2 thumb-nail in the Animation palette updates to display the moved image.






With Frame 2 still selected, click the Tween button at the bottom of the Animation palette.

Use the Tween dialog box to create the frames in between the selected frames in the Animation palette. In this example, I add three frames between Frame 1 and Frame 2.





Use the Tween With drop-down list to select Previous Frame.

This option sets ImageReady to create frames with progressive motion across the image window.






Enter a number of frames in the animation in the Frames to Add text box.





In the Layers area, select whether to copy All Layers (even layers that don’t change) or only copy Selected Layers to copy pixels from the currently selected layers.





In the Parameters area, select the items that the frames in between modify: Position, Opacity, and/or Effects. (Effects are layer styles applied to the image. For more about applying layer styles to an image, turn to Technique 20.)







Click OK to close the Tween dialog box.

ImageReady automatically generates the frames in between Frame 1 and Frame 2. In this example, I added three frames, so Frame 2 is automatically renumbered Frame 5, as shown in Figure 60-4.




Figure 60-4: ImageReady creates frames between Frame 1 and Frame 2. Because three frames were added between Frame 1 and Frame 2 in this example, Frame 2 is renumbered Frame 5.


That’s it! You’ve just created an animation. Click the Play button on the Animation palette to watch your animation in action.