Basic Animation in Photoshop
Animation is something that is pretty overlooked in Photoshop. There are no articles on abduzeedo, so I thought I’d break the ice. I bet there are some people who don’t even know Photoshop animation exists! Well it does, and if you never worked with animation in Photoshop, this tutorial will help you learn some pretty basic techniques. I will show you 1 easy photo animation. Well, let’s get started.
Step 1- Choose a picture
I used this nice picture that I found on stock exchange(http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=1071533) You can of course use any picture you want. Resize the picture; you can do it at the very end if you want. It helps with the animation.
Step 2- Make it look more suitable.
Now to make a picture have an interesting, dark effect, I like to achieve that by loading the luminosity of the image as a selection and an alpha channel. To do that go to your channels palette. Next ctrl, or command click on the rgb thumbnail to load the luminosity. With that selected, create a new alpha channel.
Now, with that still selected fill it with white,
Then go to Select>Inverse and fill it now with black.
First deselect, next we invert it, Image>Adjustments>Invert, or simply press ctrl or command “I”.
Now, switch back to your rgb layers, create a new layer, go to Select>Load Selection make sure it is set to Alpha 1, click ok.
You should now have a selection, with the new layer selected, fill it with black. Ok, play with the opacity to your liking, merge the two layers.
Step 3- Create rain
First create a new layer, fill it with a 50% gray or whatever color you want. Now add 400% noise, check Gaussian, and monochromatic. Now rotate the layer 90 degrees. Then go to Filter>Blur>Blur. After that go to Filter>Stylize>Wind. Choose Blast. Run the filter one more time if you like. Rotate the layer back to the original place. To get the white rain drops, simply invert the layer ctrl I
Alright, to make it look like a never-ending pattern, go to Filter>Other>Offset. Depending on your image the settings may vary. Get rid of the line with the clone stamp, or even the patch tool. Now define the layer as a pattern. We are now done creating the rain.
Step 4 - Animation
Ok, now define the rain as a pattern so go to Edit>Define Pattern. Now you don’t need that layer anymore since we saved it as a pattern, delete it or hide it if you want.
Create a new layer, fill it with any color you want, double click on the layer to open the layer styles, choose pattern overlay, the rain you created should be the last on the list. I used soft light for the blend mode, and changed the opacity to 60%. Then go back to the blending options change the fill opacity to 0%.
Alright, time for the actual animation. Go to Window>Animation to open up the timeline.
Click the little clock right next the rain layer name. For me it is called layer 3. That will insert a keyframe, open up the rain layer style box.
Now, hold down shift and drag down a couple of times to simulate the rain fall. Now move the slider to your desired stop time. For me I set it to 3 seconds. With the slider at the end of your animation do the EXACT same thing you did to the first key frame. Doing so will insert a key frame automatically so don’t worry about that.
Almost done, move your slider left to right and you should see the animation. It will be choppy because the frames are not rendered. To render the frames just hit the space bar. It may take a while, but you should get a smooth animation simulating rain fall, I recommend making the image smaller.
Conclusion
Ok that pretty much covers it. Pretty quick, and easy. If you want to change the direction of the rain, just convert the layer to a smart object and rotate it. You can even add a fade in, but I will show you how to do that in another tutorial:). Play around with it, have fun.
Basic Animation in Photoshop from fabio sasso on Vimeo.
Downlad the PSD File
Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial
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39 Comments
I knew there was animation. With Imageready!
hehe, i was just beginning to experiment with animation, in hope of maybe creating a tutorial. This is great.
WOW, this is so cool
I never knew you could make animations in photoshop, I thought it was only for .gif files
Awesome stuff, perfect for those who are new to this
One thing I ask, how do you make that effect you had on the video where the text has a sort of shine that goes from left to right and how do you save it in a video format?
Nice tutorial! *Bookmarked for future reference* :)
This is a really nice animation.
But I still prefer After Effects... =P
I can't believe this has been achieved in photoshop. Good work.
Funny! Never knew this was possible with Photoshop!
Nice animation, I love animations. two thumbs up for this one.
I also would like to know how you did the animation with the text.
Nice Tutorial. Btw: only work with Phostoshop CS3 Extended, not with normal CS3 version.
Spider
Great Tutorial.
Mr. Eyes
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Mr. Eyes
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Sorry about the double post. I did not see it at first.
Mr. Eyes
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A Cool Place To Kick
Had heard about animations in Photoshop, was cool to try it out myself!
But how do you save the animation as a video format?
great tut mate nice and sweet one
((hold down shift and drag down a couple of times to simulate the rain fall))
this is the only part that i couldnt do, what to drag exactly?
How do you export this kind of picture, is ImageReady necessary or can you export it out of PS as well.
Great tut btw, thanks!
How do I create a new alpha channel?
To create a new alpha channel, just switch to the channels palette, and click the new channel/layer button at the bottom.
@Fulcrum[BE]
I don't understand your question. Sorry.
You should have a demo page of all tutorials, this would REALLY help. Im suprised you havent already. And if you have, than make it more obvious because I can't see them
@Fulcrum[BE] and everyone else who doesn't know how to save the movie in PS.
You can just export this as a mpeg-4 file from Photoshop just go to File and click on export and then just render video.
Thanks nice tut, +1 for doing a tut on the logo effect it looks awesome.
Nice tutorial. Can you make another one? I really like to learn how you animated the logo. It's really hard searching for good tutorials in the internet. Wish you could post it. Thanks in advance.
great deal!! i love photoshop and i never imagine that it has that aplication, ha ha! crazy and so cool!!
@codz
I will see if I can come up with another animation tutorial and get the ok with Fabio.
So keep an eye out for it.
Thanks for the comments guys.
Keep photshopping and learning new things.;)
hy pls tell me how you make the text animation:)
@Petya take a ook on this tutorial http://abduzeedo.com/photoshop-quick-tips-2-neon-effect-with-animation
@Petya take a look on this tutorial http://abduzeedo.com/photoshop-quick-tips-2-neon-effect-with-animation
Great stuff!
How do you save the file though? When I save it as .gif it "flattens layers and discards animation"
I want an animated .gif...
I have same problems like calla, that's y my animation doest work.
((hold down shift and drag down a couple of times to simulate the rain fall)) --> what to do for this?
Thanks!
Hi,
I learned a lot from your tutorial, but how do you actually
make a movie from all those frames?
Greetz!
@nana when ur finish making the rain fall. go to window animation then under the rain layer that you did, then click the little clock near the style then a color yellow diamond will appear at teh right side. then just drag that for example at 01:00f. then you will notice that the diamond shape near the clock, at the center of the < > to be exact will disappear. just click it to turn it on.. then at the layer pallete on d blending option of the rain layer click the patter overlay then hold shift and scroll ur mouse down at the psd document. thats it.. ^^.
@papalicious: I have got what you have mentioned so far...but dint get the last part where you have mentioned about the "hold shift and scroll ur mouse down at the psd document"...can u elaborate as to what i have to scroll..and do we have to make changes to position as well...cos its just stagnant(rain). Thankz
@joseph. how can i save the animation that i made in a video format.. when i go to file export render video.. under the image sequence scroll bar, i dont see a mpeg format there just what filmon said... my document is a bit larger and i cant save it as a .gif file.. can you help me out??? tnx in advance
@joseph. how can i save the animation that i made in a video format.. when i go to file export render video.. under the image sequence scroll bar, i dont see a mpeg format there just what filmon said... my document is a bit larger and i cant save it as a .gif file.. can you help me out??? tnx in advance
@designnomaniac.. click on the rain layer at the layer pallete then click the pattern overlay. once you've done that. go to ur document, (example i made a new document with 1000x1000pixels and i named it animation sample) get it ????.. at ur document just hold shift then drag it from bottom to top.. you can see that the rain inside your document is going up. but when you play the animation, the rain is going down.. you can click the convert to animation frame found at the bottom right of the animation box... hope this can help you out...
Umm... when I'm in the aimation part, I got Animation(Frames). How do I get Animation(Timeline)? Please help! >_<
My Photoshop is Photoshop CS4, and the window Animation doesnt exist x.x
can you help me?
Hi, i followed every step, but for some reason, i couldn't get only rain itself to fall down. Instead, the rain along with the background were moving altogether. I don't seem to know what i did wrong. Could u please let me know if i did anything wrong, or if there's anything else i can do. Thank u :)
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