Creating simple animations in Photoshop

You can create simple animations in Photoshop using the ‘Animations’ pallete.

The animations pallete works with the layers you have. You select layers to be part of a a frame, then build a collection of frames into an animated process. You can do this by,

Moving an image in a layer then creating a new frame, move, image, create new frame etc
or
you can create two frames with two different states and then get the animation panel to ‘Tween’ them’

‘Tweening’ does not turn you into a 12 year old. What Tweening does, is that it takes two frames and inserts frames inbetween those two frames to make a transition

This kind of animation is often referred to as animated Gifs as that is the file you will eventually save your animation as. The good thing about Gifs is that they can be viewed in any internet browser. You can even upload it to your mobile phone and use it as a screensaver.

Once you have constructed you Gif you can save it in the File menu under ‘save for web’ option. Be sure to choose ‘GIF’ and not JPEG. Once the file is saved open it with a browser such as Safari or Firefox (Control click>open with>firefox)

Gifs work well when they are made small (under 1000 pixels) and looped. 

An example of a looped animation are a ball bouncing, something flashing, something turning around.

You can make Gifs from

• scanned drawing
• Computer drawings/art
• Photos
• Film

http://www.cloudyco.com/SCRATCH/MonsterGifs.htm 
http://www.senorgif.com