Locked lesson.
About this lesson
When reality is just not interesting enough you can always rely on Photoshop to spice it up. This unit is a good introduction to GIF creation.
Exercise files
Download the Photoshop file used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Animated GIF on MARS.psd24.9 MB
Quick reference
Topic Animated GIF on Mars
Pop an Alien into the Mars Landscape
When to use
When reality is just not interesting enough you can always rely on Photoshop to spice it up. This unit is a good introduction to GIF creation.
Instructions
Activate the timeline
- Menu/Workspaces/Timeline.
- Press the ‘Create Video Timeline’ button, select ‘Create Video Timeline’.
Create magnification layer
- Select ‘Rectangular Marquee Tool’ and create a small square selection around the object to be magnified.
- Duplicate selection as a new layer by clicking Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) + ‘J’.
- Convert to Smart Object.
Animate magnification layer
- In ‘Timeline’ expand the new layer, click on the ‘Transform’ stopwatch icon.
- Go to frame 15.
- Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) +‘T’ for Transform.
- Alt or Option-Shift to expand selection and press return.
- Menu/Filter/Pixelate/Mosaic, set cell size to 2.
Duplicate magnification layer with pixilation
- With magnification layer selected, Menu/Layer/Duplicate Layer.
- Double click the ‘Mosaic Filter’, set cell size to 2.
- Go to Frame 7, click on the ‘Opacity’ stopwatch icon and set to 0%.
- Go to Frame 15, set opacity to 100%.
Sharpen layer
- Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) + ‘J’.
- Remove Mosaic Filter.
- Set start of layer at frame 20.
- Menu/Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask.
- Amount: 45
- Radius: 21
- Threshold: 0
- Click on the ‘Opacity’ stopwatch icon and set to 0%.
- Go to Frame 30, set opacity to 100%.
Alien Scull
- Bring in new image.
- Convert to Smart Object.
- Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) + ‘T’ to resize and adjust perspective then press return.
- Line up the alien with sharpen layer.
- Click on the ‘Opacity’ stopwatch icon and set to 0%.
- Go to frame 30, set opacity to 100%.
Adjust alien scull blending
- Add layer mask and paint in black to hide sections.
- Add adjustment layer, brightness and contrast.
- Clip it to previous layer.
- Add adjustment layer, hue and saturation.
- Clip it to previous layer.
- Menu/Filter/Gaussian Blur, set to 1.3.
Finish animation
- Go to Frame 60 (or 2 seconds).
- Drag endpoint (on top of timeline layers) to frame 60.
- Menu/File/Save for Web.
- Mask sure that GIF is selected.
- Switch ‘Looping Options’ to forever.
- Save to computer.
- 00:04 Hey everyone.
- 00:05 Howard Pinsky here with a very fun Photoshop tutorial where
- 00:08 we're gonna be creating an animated GIF from this photo that was
- 00:11 released recently by NASA that's making it's way around the internet.
- 00:15 Mainly because if you take a look right up here at the top middle,
- 00:18 there's this object that no one really knows what it is.
- 00:21 It looks like some metallic object, and
- 00:24 some say it fell off the Rover as it was descending,
- 00:26 some say it's a natural piece of metal like iron that's in the Mars surface.
- 00:30 Or some people say, well, it's an alien articraft.
- 00:33 So we're gonna be creating an enhancement GIF, kind of like you see in CSI and
- 00:37 all those other TV shows.
- 00:38 Obviously, this technology doesn't really exist, but we're gonna pretend.
- 00:42 Cuz, that's what Photoshop is for.
- 00:43 So let's go ahead and begin.
- 00:45 So to start off this project, we wanna go ahead and
- 00:48 reveal our timeline, as that's where we're gonna be doing our animation.
- 00:52 And you can do this in one of two ways.
- 00:53 You can either double-click on the Timeline tab at the bottom of
- 00:56 your workspace.
- 00:57 Or you can activate it under the Window menu at the top of your screen.
- 01:01 And once the timeline is visible, you wanna go ahead and
- 01:03 press the Create Video Timeline button.
- 01:05 Now you may see, Create Frame Animation.
- 01:08 If you do, press the arrow to the right.
- 01:10 And press on the Create Video Timeline option.
- 01:12 Now I will note, cuz I do see this issue come up a lot, if your computer isn't
- 01:17 strong enough, if your graphics card doesn't have enough memory, or if
- 01:20 your drivers are out of date, you may not have this option available to you at all.
- 01:24 So go ahead and try and update Photoshop, update your drivers and
- 01:27 then try again, otherwise your computer may just not be strong enough to
- 01:30 handle the features that are available in Photoshop CS6.
- 01:33 So let me go ahead and press Create Video Timeline, and
- 01:36 here is the timeline where we're gonna be doing our animation.
- 01:39 All of our layers will appear here, and we can go ahead and
- 01:41 expand it to see exactly what they contain.
- 01:44 I'm gonna go ahead and collapse this just for now.
- 01:46 And what we wanna do first is create the first layer that we're gonna be
- 01:49 working with.
- 01:50 And that layer is going to be the magnification of that shiny object that's
- 01:54 appearing at the top.
- 01:56 So to do that, I'm gonna start with my Rectangular Marquee tool.
- 01:59 Which I can find in my Tools bar to the left.
- 02:01 And I'm gonna make a simple square selection by holding down my
- 02:04 Shift key around this object.
- 02:06 Right about here, and
- 02:07 I can hold down my Spacebar at any time to move that selection around.
- 02:11 So I'm gonna leave that selection right about there.
- 02:14 And when the selection has been made, I wanna turn this into a layer.
- 02:18 And I can very quickly do that by holding down my Cmd key on the Mac.
- 02:21 Ctrl key on Windows, and then pressing the J key on my keyboard,
- 02:25 and you can see in the Layers panel we now have Layer 1.
- 02:28 And if I go ahead and
- 02:29 move it you can see that it only contains what was inside that selection.
- 02:33 That's exactly what we want in order to animate this layer, and
- 02:36 before I animate anything I always like to convert those layers into a smart object.
- 02:40 This just ensures that the original pixels are saved just in case we have to
- 02:44 go back to them and make changes later on.
- 02:46 And I can do that by right-clicking on the layer in the Layers panel and
- 02:49 choosing the Convert to Smart Object option.
- 02:52 And you can see, there's the smart object icon right on the layer, so
- 02:56 now it's perfectly ready to start animating.
- 02:58 This first animation will be composed of two layers.
- 03:01 One of the simple magnification.
- 03:03 And one that's gonna add a little bit of pixelation to give it a little bit more of
- 03:06 a realistic feel.
- 03:08 So let's start with the simple magnification.
- 03:10 Over here in our timeline we wanna go ahead and
- 03:12 expand this layer, which is Layer 1.
- 03:14 And we wanna look for Transform.
- 03:16 That's what we're gonna be animating first.
- 03:18 And to start that animation, you wanna click on the stopwatch icon to the left.
- 03:22 That'll add a first key frame.
- 03:24 And now you can scrub to the location where you want the animation to stop.
- 03:28 I'm gonna leave it right about there.
- 03:29 And now we can go ahead and make the first transformation.
- 03:32 So I'm gonna hold down Cmd or Ctrl and
- 03:34 press the letter T on my keyboard to enter Free Transform mode.
- 03:38 And with my alter option and Shift key held down, I'm gonna enlarge this layer,
- 03:41 nice and large, right about there, and press Return or
- 03:44 Enter on my keyboard to accept the changes.
- 03:46 I'm also gonna move it somewhere around the top left corner of this image.
- 03:50 So that's the first animation.
- 03:51 If I go back and scrub through it,
- 03:53 you can see it starts there and it enlarges to there.
- 03:57 So that's a good start, but I wanna add something a little bit extra to give it
- 04:00 a little bit more of a realistic feel.
- 04:02 We're gonna add a mosaic filter.
- 04:04 We're gonna first add it to this layer with a cell size of zero.
- 04:07 And then when we duplicate this layer, we're gonna increase it later on.
- 04:11 It's a little bit tricky, but it'll probably make sense in a few minutes.
- 04:13 So we're gonna go up to the Filter menu, down to Pixelate, and then choose Mosaic.
- 04:18 Now again, for this one, we're gonna set the cell size as low as possible.
- 04:22 Two is the lowest number we can go right now,
- 04:24 which is basically a cell size of zero.
- 04:25 You can't see much pixelation.
- 04:27 We're gonna press OK.
- 04:28 And now we wanna go ahead and duplicate the layer.
- 04:31 Usually when you wanna duplicate a layer, just Cmd or Ctrl+J.
- 04:35 But the problem there, is if I go ahead and
- 04:37 expand this layer you'll notice that my transformation has disappeared.
- 04:41 So we don't wanna duplicate it that way.
- 04:42 That's basically a layer via copy.
- 04:45 You wanna duplicate it by going up to the Layer menu and
- 04:47 then choosing Duplicate Layer.
- 04:49 And when I press OK, if we go ahead and
- 04:51 expand this, you'll notice I now have my transformations.
- 04:54 Which is gonna save us a lot of time.
- 04:56 Now in this layer, I'm gonna go ahead and double-click on the Mosaic filter.
- 04:59 This is another reason why you should use smart filters cuz you can always go
- 05:02 back and change those filters later on.
- 05:04 And I'm gonna increase my cell size, let's say to around 20.
- 05:07 I'm gonna press OK.
- 05:09 And now If I scrub back, you're gonna see a little bit of a problem.
- 05:12 We don't want the pixelation to start right from the get go.
- 05:15 We want it to kinda fade in over time.
- 05:17 So we want to now animate the opacity.
- 05:19 I'm gonna scrub over a little bit, right around there.
- 05:22 We'll have the opacity start animating there.
- 05:24 And we wanna press the stopwatch right beside Opacity.
- 05:27 And when we do that,
- 05:28 a new key frame is added and here the opacity should be set to 0%.
- 05:33 In Photoshop CS6 you can very quickly do that by pressing zero twice on
- 05:37 your keyboard and then we wanna scrub to the end point, right about there.
- 05:41 And now we wanna set the opacity back up to 100%,
- 05:43 which can be very simply done by pressing zero once on your keyboard.
- 05:47 And now it's at 100% and we now see the pixelation.
- 05:50 So if we scrub back to the beginning you'll see it starts out normally and
- 05:53 then right about there the pixelation starts to fade in really nicely.
- 05:57 So far so good, now at this point we wanna start the enhancement,
- 06:00 which is gonna be done on another layer, but it's not gonna be a duplicated layer,
- 06:04 it's gonna be a layer via copy.
- 06:06 Cuz this time we don't wanna bring over the animations that we've already set.
- 06:09 So, now we can simply do Cmd or Ctrl+J on the keyboard.
- 06:13 And that'll create a copied layer right above with no animations which is
- 06:16 exactly what we want.
- 06:18 Now it does contain the mosaic filter,
- 06:20 again because we're using smart filters we can always edit this.
- 06:23 I'm gonna simply drag this filter right down into the trash.
- 06:26 And now we can start editing this layer.
- 06:28 I'm gonna start off by moving it over to the right just a little bit.
- 06:31 That'll give it a little bit of a pause right after the magnification completes.
- 06:34 Now in this layer, we're gonna be adding a sharpening filter.
- 06:37 And to do that we're gonna go up to Filter.
- 06:39 Down to Sharpen.
- 06:40 And then Unsharp Mask.
- 06:42 And we're gonna over enhance it just a little bit.
- 06:44 I'm gonna set the amount somewhere around, let's say,
- 06:47 forty five percent, the radius around twenty pixels, the threshold at zero.
- 06:51 I'm gonna press OK.
- 06:53 Now obviously it shouldn't just appear sharpened.
- 06:55 It has to fade in gradually.
- 06:57 So we're gonna be animating the opacity on this layer.
- 06:59 So I'm gonna go ahead and expand this new layer.
- 07:01 I'm gonna press on the stopwatch beside Opacity to add a first key frame.
- 07:05 I'm gonna set the opacity at zero by pressing 0 on the keyboard twice.
- 07:08 I'm gonna scrub a little bit to the right, and
- 07:11 I'm gonna press 0 to set the opacity back at 100%.
- 07:13 So now, let's take a look at the animation.
- 07:16 Again it starts off normally, pixelation comes in,
- 07:19 there's a little bit of a pause, and then the sharpness starts to appear.
- 07:23 But you will notice a little bit of the mosaic is still peaking out from behind.
- 07:27 So on that layer, if we scroll down just a little bit in our timeline,
- 07:30 I'm gonna scrub back to where the sharpening starts, right about there,
- 07:33 I'm gonna make sure this layer is selected, the layer with the mosaic on it.
- 07:36 I'm gonna add a key frame, I'm gonna scrub to the end,
- 07:39 and I'm gonna set the opacity to zero.
- 07:42 So now the mosaic will fade out as the sharpening is coming in, so one more time,
- 07:46 it starts out normally.
- 07:47 Pixelation comes in, pause and then sharpen.
- 07:51 And if I scrub back and
- 07:52 press the spacebar it'll all happen at once which is looking really nice.
- 07:56 But, we're gonna add one more fun little effect.
- 07:58 Let me go back up to the top of my timeline and
- 08:00 we're gonna add a little bit of an artifact.
- 08:02 We wanna figure out what this metallic object is.
- 08:05 So over at shutterstock.com I found this image of an alien's skull.
- 08:08 Obviously, not a real alien's skull.
- 08:10 Which I've already extracted from the background and I'm gonna go ahead and
- 08:13 move it over to this document, place it right about there.
- 08:16 Now, that's obviously way too big, I'm gonna go ahead and
- 08:18 convert it into a smart object so I can preserve those pixels.
- 08:21 And I'm gonna transform it down quite a bit Cmd or Ctrl+T.
- 08:25 Cmd+0 to make sure I can see everything.
- 08:27 And then transform downwards.
- 08:29 Let me zoom in so I can see what I'm working with.
- 08:31 I'm gonna place it somewhere right around there.
- 08:33 I don't want it too big.
- 08:36 That looks pretty good, right there.
- 08:38 And I can also go ahead and adjust the perspective.
- 08:40 Cmd or Ctrl+T one more time.
- 08:41 I'm gonna hold down Cmd or Ctrl.
- 08:44 And simply adjust the perspective as necessary.
- 08:47 Just like this.
- 08:50 Now obviously this metal object is probably not an alien skull but
- 08:53 we can always pretend, so I'm gonna leave it, let's say, right about there.
- 08:57 I'm actually gonna wanna transform it down just a little bit more, right there.
- 09:02 And now we can add some animation to it.
- 09:04 And we want the animation to happen as the image is sharpening.
- 09:07 So I'm gonna make sure in the timeline to line it up with the previous
- 09:10 layer, right there.
- 09:11 I'm gonna go ahead and expand this layer and we want again to animate the opacity.
- 09:15 I'm gonna turn on opacity there, set the opacity at 0% again, double press on 0.
- 09:21 Scrub to the end point which you can see down here in the timeline and
- 09:25 press 0 again.
- 09:26 So now, starts normal, pixelation, pause and sharpen with the skull.
- 09:32 Now as you can tell it doesn't look very realistic so
- 09:35 we're gonna make a few changes.
- 09:36 We're first gonna add a layer mask to blend it in a little bit with
- 09:39 the bottom here.
- 09:40 We can add a layer mask at the bottom in your Layers panel right down there.
- 09:43 There's our little layer mask.
- 09:44 I'm gonna press the B key on my keyboard to enter my Brush tool and
- 09:47 paint in black which will hide some of the areas of that skull to make it
- 09:51 look like it's kind of embedded in the sand.
- 09:54 Good, once that's done let's add a few adjustment layers to blend it in
- 09:57 a little bit more with the background.
- 09:58 I'm gonna go ahead and
- 09:59 add an adjustment layer, let's add a brightness and contrast,
- 10:03 I'm gonna decrease the brightness a little bit, and increase the contrast.
- 10:06 Now you're noticing, it's applying it to everything.
- 10:08 We don't want that.
- 10:09 So we wanna click on this icon right here,
- 10:11 which is gonna clip it with the previous layer.
- 10:13 So now only the skull is being affected.
- 10:16 That's perfect.
- 10:17 Right about there.
- 10:17 I'm gonna add one more adjustment layer.
- 10:20 I'm going to add a hue and saturation.
- 10:22 Again, make sure to clip it.
- 10:24 I'm gonna decrease the saturation.
- 10:26 Maybe increase the hue a little bit.
- 10:29 Somewhere right around there.
- 10:30 To make sure the colors match up a little bit better than they were before.
- 10:34 And the last thing I'm gonna do,
- 10:35 because the image is still a little bit blurry, it shouldn't be too sharp.
- 10:38 I do wanna go back to this layer,
- 10:40 the containing the skull, and add a little bit of a Gaussian blur filter.
- 10:44 So, Filter > Blur and then Gaussian Blur.
- 10:48 Now two is probably a little bit too much, so I'm gonna decrease it,
- 10:51 let's say to around 1.3, maybe 1.2, maybe 1.
- 10:57 Okay. One looks pretty good.
- 10:58 I'm gonna press OK,
- 11:00 and let's go back to the beginning to see how things are progressing.
- 11:03 So, it starts off normally.
- 11:06 The enhancement starts.
- 11:07 Pixelation starts.
- 11:08 There's a little bit of a pause.
- 11:10 Enhance.
- 11:11 And we now see what that object on Mars really is.
- 11:15 Again it's probably not an alien skull and
- 11:17 if we do hide the skull layer it looks nothing like a skull, it's probably
- 11:20 a strangely formed rock or something that fell off the Rover as it was descending.
- 11:24 But we can always have a little bit of fun with some CSI type enhancements,
- 11:28 now to finish off the animation, because the animation ends right about here.
- 11:31 We're gonna scrub a little bit further, and I am going to set my end point,
- 11:34 this is the end point right here, I am going to drag it back to the beginning.
- 11:37 And now if I scrub back to the beginning, press the Spacebar,
- 11:39 we can see the animation in all its glory, and it will loop if you
- 11:43 do have that option enabled under the time line's menu right over here,
- 11:46 you can turn on Loop Playback.
- 11:48 Now in order to save it, what you wanna do, you wanna go up to the File menu.
- 11:51 Save for Web, and you wanna make sure that GIF is selected.
- 11:55 Now it will take a little bit of time to prepare as it
- 11:57 is a pretty complex animation and Photoshop has to put everything together.
- 12:01 But once it's finished, right at the bottom here, you have looping options.
- 12:03 You can choose to loop it once or forever.
- 12:06 And when you press Save, you can save it to your computer and
- 12:09 then you can upload just to web for everyone to enjoy.
- 12:11 And that just about does it.
- 12:13 We've gone ahead and uncovered what that mystery object was on Mars.
- 12:16 And of course, you can use this technique to enhance pretty much anything,
- 12:19 like you see in CSI and all those fun TV shows.
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