animated gif help needed

February 3rd, 2005, 1:28 pm

I'm having a hard time making an animation in Adobe Image Ready. So far I have done everything right except when I do Save optimized as (there is no other options) it comes out the wrong colours. Its only 2 frames I want to make

Is there anyway to save it not optimized or something?

Both images are gif's saved at 256 and 128 - I cant think of anything else to do!

Help!

[ATNO/TW]

February 3rd, 2005, 2:16 pm

A little hard to know exactly what you're doing musik. Can you give us a little bit of play by play on the steps you are taking?

February 3rd, 2005, 2:22 pm

yep, I have two small banners in seperate gif files, I open them both in Image Ready then press Cnt A to copy one and paste it over the other open file so it has two layers. Then in the animation box (the arrow) I click that and do Make frames from layers.

I set the animation to forever and each frame its time, then I go to File and Save Optimized As and name it.

Then when I view it its all washed out and the colours all wrong. Ive tried a lot of different ways of saving it, I have had this problem before but cant for the life of me how I got around the auto optimization

[ATNO/TW]

February 3rd, 2005, 2:31 pm

It should be as simple as this.

Make your layered image in Photoshop then jump to IR. Get your image into the animation. Hide layer two. Then move to a second frame (Top right arrow of your animation pane - select new frame). With your layered image still selected hide your first layer, and unhide your second layer. Save as optimized and you should be good to go.

February 3rd, 2005, 2:37 pm

that worked perfectly, thanks so much ATNO

*big hugs*

[ATNO/TW]

February 3rd, 2005, 2:39 pm

No prob! In fact, I'm glad you had the problem. Before this I had never made an animation in Image Ready. Thanks to you, now I know how too *lol

It's all black and white *wink

February 3rd, 2005, 2:57 pm

February 3rd, 2005, 3:02 pm

You know what else is pretty cool.... Try doing some animated gifs using flash. I have made a few in the past and the colors came out fine.
Just an idea.

enjoy.

February 3rd, 2005, 3:06 pm

funny you should say that, I just got a copy of flash because a website I work for uses it and I need to update images sometimes, I am not very familiar with it but I'm learning. I will keep that in mind as well, cheers!

February 3rd, 2005, 4:53 pm

there is a window with the gif optimisation options "optimize". it allows you to pick the colours, dithering etc just like exporting a gif in photoshop.

January 4th, 2007, 6:14 am

ATNO/TW wrote:

It should be as simple as this.

Make your layered image in Photoshop then jump to IR. Get your image into the animation. Hide layer two. Then move to a second frame (Top right arrow of your animation pane - select new frame). With your layered image still selected hide your first layer, and unhide your second layer. Save as optimized and you should be good to go.

i tried doing all of that. but im still confused.
do you mind explaining a little more?

[SB]

January 4th, 2007, 6:26 am

You know, this is quite freaky. Until last night i hadn't played about with animations on Imageready. My more recent effort is my new signature. If you are prepared to wait 30 mins (or so) dontcryoutx33 then i will create a tutorial for you. Failing that you could check out this website...

http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/un ... f_ab.shtml

If the tutorial on that website dosn't help you then please let me know and i'll knock something up for you.

Welcome to Ozzu.

January 4th, 2007, 6:30 am

okay thank SB you i'll definitely check that out!
but umm i dont know how to make/build layers.
will it show me how?

:]

[ATNO/TW]

January 4th, 2007, 6:51 am

in photoshop you start with your first layer. You can see your layers in the layers panel circled in the bottom right of this screen shot

http://www.atnoproductions.com/ozzu/layers.jpg

You start with one layer. To add a new layer on top of that select from the top menu
Layer>New>New Layer

or just press shift+ctrl+n on your keyboard.

Layers can be hidden or made visible by toggling the little eye icon in the layers panel

[SB]

January 4th, 2007, 6:51 am

No, okay. I will give you a quick tutorial here.

If you open up Photoshop (whichever version you are using) and start with a blank document at the size you wish to work on. By default at the bottom right corner of the screen on Photoshop you should have a box called "Layers". This box will automatically have a layer in it called "Background". What you need to do is create a layer for every item you are going to have animated on your animation.

For example...

You want the text "Hello", "My", "Name", "Is...", to appear after each other. What you would need to do is create 4 new layers. To do this you click on "Layer">"New">"Layer..." - you will see the "Layer" option at the top along from the "File" and "Edit" buttons.

Your background layer must always be left as it is. When you create the new layers you might have chosen a name for them, or by default they will be called "Layer 1" (up to 4, if you copy my example). At the "Layers" box on the bottom right you will have new layers. Click on "Layer 1", when you have done that select the "text" tool (which is the "T" on your tools pallet at the left hand of your screen). Then type in what you want to type ("Hello", if you are going by my example). Do the same for the other layers...remember you need to click on the different layers (Layer 2 etc etc) to add the text for that layer.

Once you have done this, you need to then click on the button at the bottom of your pallet which takes you to Imageready. This will open up (if it isn't already opened) Adobe Imageready. This should show you what you have done in Photoshop including the layers. The layout of Imageready is very similar to Photoshop. There are a couple of small differences though. What you need to have on your screen in Imageready is a section called "Animation". If you do not already have this open go to the "Window" option (at the top of the screen) and click on the "animation" bit. This should open up the animation section which will then allow you to start animating.

What you need to do now (following on from my example from before) is click on the "tween" button at the bottom of the animation bit that popped up. This brings up an option asking you how many frames you wish to create, by default it says "5", however if you continue on from my "hello my name is..." example then you want to change this to 4 (change this to however many you need, you can always add more at the end if you don't have enough). Do not change any of the other options at the moment, they should be set at "tween from previous frame" and "All Layers" should be selected as well as all boxes at the bottom being ticked.

I will add more after this in a moment. I think this should help you get started in the mean time... let me know if this helps in any way.