Opening Photoshop files as animations
You can easily create animated GIFs from existing one-layer-per-frame images in Adobe Photoshop file format or from a group of single-layer images.
You can make each layer in a multilayer Photoshop file a separate frame in the Animation palette. The layers are placed in the Animation palette in their stacking order, with the bottom layer becoming the first frame.
You can also import a folder of files and use each file as a frame in ImageReady. Files can be in any format that ImageReady supports. Each file becomes a frame in the Animation palette. The files are placed in the Animation palette in alphabetical order by image filename.
To open a multilayer Photoshop file as frames:
- Choose File > Open, and select the Photoshop file to open.
- Choose Make Frames From Layers from the Animation palette menu.
Each layer in the image appears as a frame in the Animation palette. The bottom layer in the Photoshop image is frame 1 in the Animation palette.
Choose Reverse Frames from the Animation palette menu to reverse the order of frames.
To import a folder of files as frames:
- Place the files to be used as frames into a folder. Make sure that the folder contains only those images that are to be used as frames. The resulting animation will display more successfully if all files are the same pixel dimensions.
- Choose File > Import > Folder As Frames, and choose the folder to be imported.
To have frames appear in the correct order in the animation, name the files in alphabetical or numeric order, with the file to be used as frame 1 the first in order. (You can also change the order of the frames in the Animation palette after you import the files.)
The files appear in the Animation palette as frames and in the Layers palette as layers, with each layer assigned to a separate frame. The image that is first alphabetically or numerically by filename is frame 1 in the Animation palette and the bottom layer in the Layers palette.