This tutorial touches on a few of the basic animation tools that you can combine to create some pretty powerful animations in Photoshop. Photoshop allows the creation of basic frame animation and provides some tools to help cut the tedium out of the process.
The animation bar can be opened by accessing the WINDOW pull-down menu and selection ANIMATION and place the ANIMATION bar where you are comfortable. Your screen would look something like this.
One frame of animation will be visible. To make a new frame select the DUPLICATE FRAME tool as indicated by the arrow. I selected the second animation frame (active frame has blue border) and then in the image, I moved the red box from one corner of the screen to the other. Now you can see the red box in two different locations in each of the animation frames. If you click the PLAY button (triangle) in the animation button, you will see the box jump from one corner to the next.
Since I want the box to move instead of jump, I need frames showing the box between the beginning and ending locations. I do not have to manually make these frames. I selected the TWEEN tool (indicated by the arrow) and a dialog box opens. Since the first animation frame is active, I selected "TWEEN WITH NEXT FRAME" (If the second frame was active, I could change this to "TWEEN WITH PREVIOUS FRAME" and get the same result.). The dialog box allows us to have the tween show changes to all layers or just the current layer and you can select what effects to tween. You can also increase or decrease the number of frames to be created and this will change the smoothness of the animation.
After selecting OK, you will see that the TWEEN tool has created 3 frames between the two originals. If you select the PLAY button on the animation menu you will see the box move across the screen. Adjust the speed you animation plays by changing the time of one or more frames by selecting the time menu located on the bottom of each frame.
To save our file, select SAVE FOR WEB AND DEVICES from the FILE pull-down menu and you will get a screen that looks like the photo below. Select GIF as the file type and use the setting shown. Click the SAVE button and place to your working directory.
The saved GIF file should look something like this.
If you wanted the file to appear to bounce between locations instead of jumping back to the original location, you would duplicate the first animation frame and then move the duplicated frame to the right end of the animation frames. Tween between the last two frames to make the box appear to move back to the original location instead of jumping.
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Opacity Effects
Here we start with the same red box and two animation frames. The box is in the lower left of the first frame and moved to the upper right in the next frame.
With the second animation frame active, I lowered the opacity of the second frame to 0 so the red box disappears.
When I tween between the images, you can see that PS has created 3 frames that vary the location and the opacity of the red box. When you click PLAY on the animation menu the box will move and fade away.
The saved GIF file would look like this
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Animating Layers
You can change the state of layers in each animation frame to create more effects. Here I have a red box on one layer and a cyan box on another layer. I have created two animation frames. Select Animation Frame 1 and turn off the cyan box layer and turn on the red box layer. Select Animation Frame 2 and reverse the layers so the red box layer is off and the cyan box layer is on.
Save the GIF file and you will have a blinking color change between the boxes.
If you do not want the file to blink you can use the TWEEN tool to create the animation between the two color frames and you will have an animation menu that looks like this.
The color change animation can look like this
These are just a few very basic effects that you can apply in endless ways to create some very cool animations. Get Creative.
Linear Mode
