Ranting since 2009

As I said yesterday, it’s now possible to create animated gifs directly with Photoshop (since CS3). Although you wouldn’t use these directly in a game, you might still want to create some animated spritesto show on art feedback forums, or maybe you just want to rock the hell out of everyone with a cool avatar, or… I don’t know. Anyway, here’s how to do it.

Please, forgive me, my Photoshop is in Spanish, although the instructions will be given in the more suitable Imperial tongue.

(Click to show full size)

First you’ll need to enable the animation tab, which is hidden by default. To do so, click on “window” and then on “animation”. You should get something similar to the image above.

Then, just work with photoshop as usual. Create the whole animation cycle in the same image, using different layers. Once you have them all, you’ll need to create more frames, and show/hide the layers as needed to create the animation:

With the small square you’ll duplicate your current frame. Once selected, any changes you make on the image won’t affect the state it had in the rest of the layers. With the bin you can, of course, remove an unwanted layer. You can change the duration of each frame by clicking on the small arrow next to the time, right below the frame thumbnail.

With the small reproduction controls you’ll be able to check your animation on the main view. You can save your progress using the PSD file format.

Once you think your work is done, you want to save it as an animated gif. To do so, click on “File…” and then on “Save for Web and Mobile Devices…”, or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S. You’ll get the usual window, but take a closer look at the part highlighted in the following picture:

Here you have once again the reproduction controls for the preview, and the loop options. You will be able to select whether the gif should loop forever, or just run once. Normally you’ll want the first option. Photoshop defaults to the second.

When everything is ready, just click save and… there you are!