Creating Simple Animations in Photoshop
Although Adobe Photoshop is not the best and most elegant tool for creating animations, if you’re familiar with the interface, it’s relatively straightforward to create a short animation without the headache of having to learn another piece of software.
Steps to Creating Your First Video
Most of the animation work in Photoshop uses the Timeline Window. To enable the Timeline Window
Go to the Window / Timeline Window to make this visible.
Next step is to select ‘Create Video Timeline‘ this is usually at the bottom (middle) of the Timeline Window.
Set your Timeline Frame Rate. I usually use 30 for this. This can be found in the top right corner of the Timeline Window.
You then add elements to your video/animation. When adding elements, you need to make sure they are converted to Smart Layers so you can apply transformations (animate) items on your Timeline.
You need to first specify the start and end points on items you want to animate. At the end point, you can perform the transformation, eg, rotation, scale, move, etc.
Once performed, the Timeline Window applies the animation between the start and end points.
Exporting Your Animations, GIFs and Videos
To export your completed animation as an mp4 video, you go to File / Export / Render Video
To export as an animated GIF, you need to use the Save For Web option.
