BABIES NEED THEIR EXERCISE: How To Create An Animated Image

I’ve had a little extra “love” hanging on after I had my little baby girl in March.
(Yeah, I claim I was just giving her a little extra padding to lounge around in.  I’d do anything for my kids, you know. Ha.)

So I’ve been doing more exercising lately and the kiddos have noticed.

And this crazy monkey likes to call any sort of physical exertion his exercises.  He throws something in the garbage?  Exercise. He puts his shoes away?  Exercise. He crawls on one knee with the other leg dragging behind him because he hurt his foot and won’t walk on it?  Exercise. True story.

And this baby girl of ours even does her exercises too.

Haha……..we start ’em young. :)

 

 

That video was created in Windows Movie Maker so that I could add music.  But if you’d like to create a plain ‘ol animated picture……..I’ll show you.  Well, using Photoshop CS4.  If you have other versions of Photoshop, maybe this will give you a general idea how to animate your images. (I know, it’s been a few months since many asked about my last animated image……sorry.)

 

But is there another way to animate images for you without photoshop?  I have no idea.  (If you know, leave me a comment……I’m sure there are others who would like to know.)

Anyway, by animated image…….I’m talking about making a picture, where several slides of pictures rotate one after the other.

So start by creating a new project in photoshop.  I made mine 400×600 pixels.

Then, click on “windows”, then “animation”:

Then click on that little icon at the bottom of the screen to switch your project to “frame animation”.

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Next, open up all the pictures you’d like in your animation.  Then put them into this new project, all in their separate layer.

Then at the bottom in the animation area,  click on that little square icon to add enough frame boxes to your animation.  I had 6 pictures to use, so I added 6 frames.

Then, click on the first animation box at the bottom and then make sure that the only layer that’s showing up in this animation box, is the first image you want to show.  (To hide the other layers, click on the little ‘eye’ to the left of the layer.  If there is no ‘eye’, then it won’t show up in that screen.)

Then click on the second animation box, and then make sure the ‘eye’ is only showing for the next image you want to show up for the second animation slide.

Continue until all your animation boxes have their own image in them.  Then click on the time button below each image in the animation section.  This will allow you to choose how long each frame will show in the animation.  I chose .3 seconds originally, but then changed to .4 later.  Also be sure that the button below the images says “forever”…….meaning that it will repeat the frames continuously.  Press “play” (the triangle) below the little pictures to see if it’s how you’d like it.

Click on “file”, then “save for web and devices”.

A large screen will appear where you can adjust settings and such.  Make sure that the file is in GIF format, then click “save”.

Upload your GIF file to a picture directory that you like (I use photobucket.com) and then grab the html code and add it to your post.

Then post your animated image.  And laugh if it’s of a 2 month old wiggly baby……doing her thing!