An Animated GIF is a GIF file with multiple images or frames. When a gif file is opened in a browser, the frames can be played back in sequence. This GIF file includes a Graphics Control Extension which enables a single GIF file to store multiple frames. These GIFs are popular to display motion and liven up websites.
Steps to create an Animated GIF using Photoshop:
1. Creating the GIF:
- Open the video in Photoshop by selecting File -> Import -> Video Frames to Layers. This will convert the video into a series of images with one image per layer. The top layer contains the last frame and the bottom most layer contains the first frame.
- Go to Window -> Animation. This will display a series of frames in your GIF.
2. Editing the GIF:
- Click the menu at the bottom of the left side under frames and select ‘Forever’ for looping a GIF.
- Go to Image -> Crop to reduce the image size of the GIF and the resulting image can be resized.
3. Save the GIF:
- Go to File -> Save for Web to convert the image to an animated GIF which can be ready to share on the Internet.