Load Files into Stacks and Converting to a GIF

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About this lesson

Bring in a number of files simultaneously and get Photoshop to organise and align them in layers.

Exercise files

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Quick reference

Topic: Stack Loading Files and Converting to a GIF

Bring in a number of files simultaneously and get Photoshop to organise and align them in layers.

When to use

This is great for putting together a series of images that where taken of a live action event or for putting together a GIF from a series of single images.

Instructions

Load in your files

  1. Go to File/Scripts/Load Files into Stacks.
  2. Browse for the images you want to import.
  3. If all the images are taken from a similar vantage point you can also switch on the ‘Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images’ checkbox.
  4. Press OK.

Fixing the edges

  1. Use the crop tool to edit out any stray edges of the images.

Convert to animation

  1. Menu/Workspaces/Timeline.
  2. Press the ‘Create Video Timeline’ button, select ‘Create frame Animation’.

Animation process

  1. Hide all but the bottom image in the layers panel.
  2. Then click on the ‘Create new Frame’ button in the Animation Panel.
  3. Unhide the next frame up.
  4. Then click on the ‘Create new Frame’ button in the Animation Panel
  5. Unhide the next frame up.
  6. Repeat process until all the layers are revealed.

Alter animation

  1. Press the Spacebar to see the animation.
  2. To make it loop, select ‘Forever’ from the playback window options.
  3. To add pause after each loop
    1. On the last Frame in the sequence right click and change the length time to .2 seconds.

Saving animation

  1. Menu/File/Save for Web.
  2. Select GIF, preview and save.
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  • 00:04 Today we're gonna be looking at a little known feature in
  • 00:07 Photoshop that can help you align your images that were taken in a sequence.
  • 00:11 And then we're gonna turn those images into an animation.
  • 00:15 Here I have a few photos that I took just this week at the San Diego Zoo.
  • 00:19 And as I scroll through them you're going to notice that the camera wasn't
  • 00:22 perfectly still as I was shooting,
  • 00:24 which will cause an issue if I wanna turn this sequence into an animation.
  • 00:28 While you could try and manually align each layer, it's a long and
  • 00:31 tedious process, here's a much quicker way.
  • 00:35 Back in Photoshop, under the File > Scripts menu, the Load Files into Stacks
  • 00:39 feature will allow you to not only quickly add multiple images into one document, but
  • 00:45 you can choose to have Photoshop align the images as well.
  • 00:49 Browsing for my photos I can select the full sequence, which will be added to
  • 00:53 a single document, and because the camera was moving when the images were shot,
  • 00:57 I want to turn on the alignment option.
  • 01:00 Now, when I press OK, Photoshop will start the process of
  • 01:03 looking through the images for key features and align them accordingly.
  • 01:08 Depending on the size of the images you're using,
  • 01:10 the process can take a few minutes, so grab a coffee and be patient.
  • 01:14 Once the process is complete, you'll have a single document that contains all of
  • 01:18 your images perfectly aligned.
  • 01:21 Hiding each layer in the layers panel will show you how well Photoshop was able to
  • 01:25 align each image.
  • 01:26 Of course, because Photoshop needed to shift the images around,
  • 01:30 you're going to see a little bit of transparency around the document.
  • 01:33 This can be easily dealt with using the Crop tool.
  • 01:36 So now that we have the images nicely aligned creating the animation is
  • 01:40 quite simple.
  • 01:41 First we need to bring up our timeline, which can be usually found at
  • 01:44 the bottom of your workspace, or it can be brought up under the Window menu.
  • 01:49 Once it's visible you will want to create a new frame animation.
  • 01:52 You can create it using the video timeline, but for
  • 01:55 this example it's much easier animating frame by frame.
  • 01:58 What we need to do now is to create one frame for each state in the animation.
  • 02:03 To start, make sure that all the layers are hidden, except the first one.
  • 02:07 This will be state one.
  • 02:10 Now you want to duplicate the kerned frame using the Duplicate Selected Frames icon,
  • 02:14 and then unhide the next layer in the stack.
  • 02:18 This will define the next frame in the animation.
  • 02:21 At this point,
  • 02:21 you want to repeat the process until all the layers have been unhidden.
  • 02:25 Duplicate the frame, unhide the next layer.
  • 02:29 Duplicate, unhide, and repeat.
  • 02:31 And when you've completed this process for
  • 02:33 all of your frames, the animation is now ready to be played back.
  • 02:37 Pressing the space bar in the keyboard, or
  • 02:39 the Play button in your timeline will play back your completed animation.
  • 02:43 By default it only plays back once, but
  • 02:46 if you want it to loop continuously select Forever from the Looping options.
  • 02:51 Finally, if you want to add a slight pause at the end of the animation,
  • 02:54 right underneath the last frame, you can choose how long it lasts.
  • 02:58 Right now it's set to zero seconds, which will skip immediately back to frame one.
  • 03:03 Setting this to 0.2 seconds will hang the last frame before starting over.
  • 03:07 Now as for saving the animation, you can use Photoshop Save for
  • 03:10 Web Feature under the File menu to save it out as a GIF,
  • 03:14 which you can preview using the animation options at the bottom.
  • 03:18 When playing back an animation in the Safe for
  • 03:20 Web dialogue it's usually going to appear a bit choppy, but
  • 03:23 once it's saved to your computer it's gonna be nice and smooth.

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