Am I the only one whos always wondered how gifs were made? Or how you're supposed to pronounce it?
Upon arriving to class, my professor showed us numerous different gifs and then proceeded to tell us that we would make one. I was excited to make one because I feel like there is just so much we could do with it!! We were first going to create a simple bouncing ball gif, sounded pretty easy!
First we opened up Photoshop and a new document (command "n"). A box popped up with a numerous amount of options to choose from, we clicked "Web", Web Small" and unchecked a box that said "Art Board". Next we added one new layer onto our new document, clicked on the elliptical tool, and then to create a perfect circle you hold down the shift key, click and drag. Then there is was, a perfect circle! In order to fill the circle, we clicked on the color panel at the bottom and chose a color, pressed "edit", "fill", "source" and "foreground color". So far I thought it was pretty easy, especially since I haven't worked with Photoshop before.
After filling the ball with color, we deselected the ball (command "d") so that there was no more moving dotted lines around it (also known as the "marching ants"!). In order for the ball to move, we had to first place it in it's beginning or starting spot. I dragged the ball in the bottom left corner so I could make it bounce back and forth between the bottom left and top right corners. Now that we had it's first position, we had to create it into a Frame Animation Timeline. We clicked on tools, timeline, then create frame animation timeline. This will allow the ball to move between frames once we placed it in it's end point. or position. In order to place it in it's ending position, we had to go to window, "new thing" icon, then frame 2. After that, w then moved it to it's ending position (top right corner).
Top make it move, we clicked on "tween animation" at the bottom of Photoshop (this added 5 frames inbetween the beginning and ending frame with the ball in all of the middle positions) and then hit the play button. The ball moved from one end to the other, BUT it didn't move back! That's because we must select all the frames, copy and paste them after the last frame and click on reverse. This way the ball would go back to its starting position. After this w finished, we deleted any duplicate frames in the middle of the sequence. Then we were able to decide how many times we wanted the ball to go back and forth and how fast! In order to save it, You must save it as a file under ".psd" (file, export, save from web (legacy) and then it was finished!!!
After learning the process of how exactly to make a GIF we were able to make our own and play around/experiment with the other various tools available (mine shown above!!). I think this is a great lesson or exercise for students who are first starting to learn about, and experiment with Photoshop. They are able to learn about a variety of tools, different uses for Photoshop, and use their imagination and creativity to create their own GIF. Once they understand the basics, they are able to explore even farther into Photoshop and begin to make even more unique online art pieces.
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