Hello, I'm Helen Bradley and welcome to this video tutorial. Today I'm going to
look at creating animations in Photoshop CS4 Extended.
In this video I'm going to show you how to create a simple animation in Photoshop
CS4
employing some of the animation and 3D effects that are in Photoshop
CS4 Extended.
Now I'm using a stock image here. This is from Stockvault and I think the keywords
are photographer, shoot and airplane.
And if you look those up you'll find that this is the only image that actually
matches all those criteria.
I've taken the time to mask the photographer so we're not wasting time
now. So I'm just going to choose Select and then Load Selection and just grab
the selection I've already made around the photographer and click Ok.
and I've converted the background layer into a regular layer so all I need to do now
is to just click here. And I'm just going to mask the photographer out for now.
You'll need to do that for the image yourself.
And now I've got the Cambridge photo that I'm going to use, and this has already
been sized down to 600 x 400 in size.
I'm going to do this at a small size because the rendering
requirements of Photoshop are really quite processor heavy. So if I work with
a small image we won't have to wait so long to render the video and the
animation.
So I'm going to go and grab my photographer and just drag and drop him
into this image.
And he's going to come in way too big, so let's just press Ctrl T and
Ctrl
Zero. And
that's where he is, so size him down
to an appropriate size to use.
And he's a bit on the thin side so let's just
let's just click here
to make sure we scale him in proportion.
And let's just press Enter and that will
settle him in position
into the image. And I can get rid of this photographer image for
now.
Now because of the light in this image the light that's been cast on the photographer's
legs in actual fact is the wrong way around. So I'm going to grab the
photographer himself, put him on a new layer and then flip him.
So I'm just going to add a new layer below him and let's just merge this layer down.
What that'll do is blend the mask into the layer so now we've got the
photographer on his on layer and entirely isolated in the image.
And it's just
Ctrl Click on this layer select him. I'm going to choose Edit
and then Free Transform. And I'm just going to set him to negative 100 of
his current width
which just effectively flips him over.
I'm going to place him about here in the image.
I just need my confirm transform tool there.
Now although technically we don't need a shadow here because the shadow
would be really out here, I'm going to just show you how you could create a shadow
for him.
I've got him
selected still, so I'm going to add a new layer, and I'm just going to add it below the layer
that he's on.
Let's go and select black as our foreground color, so I can just press Alt
Backspace or Option Delete on the Mac
to fill this layer with black.
I'm just going to turn off my selection with Ctrl or Command D.
Now I want to select this particular layer but I want to free transform it, so
let's choose Edit > Free Transform. Now I'm working on the layer behind the
photographer, so I'm just going to
pull this at an angle and then size it in to make a passable sort of shadow
for him.
As I said it's not really at the right angle but I'm just doing this so that you can
see
how you would add a shadow to an image.
So let's just select that. I'm going to blur it so it's a little bit
less
detailed than it is right now. So let's choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur
and I just need a small Gaussian Blur there,
about that much.
And I'm just going to add a mask to that layer and drop in a gradient, so
let's choose a gradient. Let's do a
black to transparent gradient.
Just click on the mask here and just drag it in.
That was obviously the wrong way around
and not quite the mask that I wanted.
Let's just get rid of that and
mask it again.
And that's a passable sort of shadow for him.
So now that we've got our
image in place, we've got our photographer and his shadow
we need
a flash because as he presses his camera we're going to see the flash on the
screen.
So I'm going to choose a brand new layer and let's place it underneath the
photographer because I want his body to
mask out the flash.
And now let's just choose a white to transparent gradient, so
let's bring white in as our foreground color. And then I'm going to choose this
white to transparent gradient. This time it's going to be a radial gradient. I'm on my new layer
and I'm just going to drag the gradient in.
So I want to create the sort of
flash effect.
And now I'm going to grab my brush and I'm going to select one of the star brushes
that ship with Photoshop.
It's
this one here.
It's a star 70 pixel brush. It's not big enough but I'm going to make it
bigger by using my square bracket.
Now I'm also going to bring in a yellow color, so let's just select here and
let's select a sort of yellow color for our flash.
And I'm going to paint this star on
a couple of times. I'm just going to bring up my brushes palette
and let's go to brush tip shape and this time rotate it,
spacing it out so that we can see it.
And I'm going to
brush it on just a couple of times so we're getting a really good sort of
flash effect here.
So there's my flash layer, there's my photographer,
here's my image, and all I need is a background layer. So I'm going to add
another layer, drag it down to the
bottom,
make sure that this time white is my foreground color and just
Alt + Backspace or Option + Delete on the Mac and fill it with white.
So now we've got all the pieces together, we're ready to go ahead and to create our animation.
To create the animation we going to use some of the 3D tools in Photoshop
CS4.
So I'm going to start by selecting the layer that has the image on it because I'm actually
going to move that layer.
I'm going to choose 3D,
New 3D postcard from Layer
because this will allow me to then move this layer using the 3D tools in
Photoshop.
And the 3D tools are here. These are the tools that move the image and these tools
move the camera position.
Because I've got this layer created as a 3D layer we can now use the
move tools to actually move this layer.
When I click on the Move tools you'll see this widget appear.
You can move the image using the widget or you can just move it using these tools.
You only see the widget if you've got Open GL enabled on your computer.
So now let's go and move this image, this background image, so that we can start
creating our animation.
I'm going to choose the 3D Slide tool and move it across here.
And then I'm going to choose the 3D
Rotate tool
to rotate it around at an angle, and that's going to be the starting point
for my animation.
At the same time I don't want the flash on because I'm going to fire the flash
as
the image moves across and my photographer is taking the photo.
So I'm going to wind the opacity of this layer down to zero.
Now let's go and get the Animation tools.
I'm going to choose Window and then Animations.
In fact I've got
the menu items hidden here. I just need this animation
panel.
Now the animation timeline tool allows me to change aspects of this image over
the timeline.
And there are two particular aspects of the image that I'm interested
in,
and one of them is the opacity of this layer
and the other thing is the position of this layer.
So we're interested in Layer 5 and Layer 1.
So I'm going to open the fly out menu for Layer 5 and I'm going to select
its opacity
because that's one of the things that I need to change over time.
On Layer 1 I need to change its three-day object position so I'm
going to select 3D object position. So they're now in place.
Let's move forward to another position on the timeline. Let's go forward to
this ten point.
And now we're going to set the final position for this image.
So again with the 3D tools I'm going to grab the image
and move it. I'm going to use the 3D Slide tool to move it across
here. And I'm going to use the Rotate tool to rotate it back.
The 3D tools can take a little bit of working with until you can get
them to perform exactly as you want them to.
So don't be concerned if it takes you a little while and a little bit of practice
to work with them.
I've now got the image where I want it in its finishing position,
so I'm just going to click here on the current time indicator and that will
set the object position.
So now if I wind back across my timeline, watch what happens to the image.
The image is moving
across the timeline. This is the start position
and this is its end position.
So, so far we've got the damage moving, we just don't have the flash in place.
Now one of the things I'm a little concerned about is as the image moves I
want the flash to be
appearing on the image itself not on the background,
so I'm going to clip the flash to the image.
So let's just go back into these layers in Photoshop,
and I've got the flash layer here and this is the image layer. If I press Ctrl and
Alt and then click between these two layers
what I'm doing is clipping the flash layer so it's only going to appear
in the image where this actual image itself is,
so the flash is only going to appear over the top of this image. It's not
going to appear in this white area behind it.
So now that we've done this let's take care of the flash itself.
And for this we need to be working with Layer 5.
So I can close Layer 1 because I've already got that settled.
You need to be working with Layer 5 and I'm concerned about the opacity
of this layer.
Let's move it forward to position three.
And this is where I'm going to have my photographer take his first photograph.
So I'm going to select this flash layer and I'm going to wind the opacity
up to 100 percent because that's him taking the flash photo.
And I'm just going to click here.
because that's setting a key frame for that position. The problem is that the
flash is winding from 0 opacity to 100 percent opacity
over these first frames. What I really want it to be is at 0 opacity
at this point
then move forward a frame or two and be at a 100 percent opacity.
So let's just wind this back down to 0 opacity and you can see that
Photoshop has put a key frame in there for us.
Let's wind it forward.
this is the flash on nearly a 100 percent. Well it is actually a 100
percent. Let's go forward a frame or two,
and now let's take it down to 0 percent.
And you can see Photoshop again has put another key frame in.
So let's move forward to the six seconds mark.
Again, at this point we want it to be 100 percent opaque so that we can
see the flash. Photoshop has put the key frame in for us.
Let's go back a bit and set it to 0 because we don't want it to wind
up; we just want it to fire a flash.
And let's go after this point
and see the flash is now happening, let's wind it back to 0 percent
and the flash is off.
So that's what's happening at this position in the timeline
and it's also happening here at this position in the timeline.
We're seeing the flash.
We can add flashes at other intervals on the timeline. I'm just going to add one
at nine,
opacity a 100 percent,
wind back just a little bit, take the opacity back to 0 so that
there's nothing happening in this period here on the timeline,
the flash is fired and then let's take it back down to 0 again
And that's really all that was
used to create that video effect.
Now that we've created our animation and we've tested it because we've been able to
drag along the timeline and see that it actually works
let's click the Play button.
As you play it the first time you'll find that the rendering process depending on
the size of your image could be quite slow.
So you would expect that to happen.
Photoshop is rendering those frames as it moves along the timeline.
When it gets to the end it then runs through a second and subsequent
time and of course this time because the frames have all been rendered
the animation is very smooth.
Now that we've seen the animation the next question is how do we actually do
something with it.
This is a Photoshop file.
I'm just going to stop the animation for now.
We would want to save our file so that we could come back in and make changes
to it if we needed to later on, so I've just chosen File > Save.
and Photoshop is saving the file with all its layers and with this animation
timeline as well as the 3D layer.
And now we're ready to render this as a video, so just let's close down these
dialogs and to render this as a video,
all we'll do is choose File and then Export.
I'm going to choose Render Video.
The video name is going to be called Cambridge movie and it's going to be put
in my animations folder.
It's a QuickTime movie. You can view the settings if you want to.
We're running at 30 frames per second and all of them are key frames.
We can wind down the quality to High for example.
We can choose the size but since it's already set to 600 x 400
that's exactly what I want. So I'm just going to click Ok.
You can see here again it's set to 600 x 400.
So you really don't need to do much in this dialog at all except just click
Render.
And Photoshop is going ahead now and rendering this out as an MOV file.
Again depending on your image size and exactly how long your animation is it
could take some time to export the video. Ours
is extremely small so it's exporting very, very fast.
So now that we've done that let's go and see the final animation.
Here's my animations folder and here's my Cambridge movie.
It's opening in QuickTime.
and now let's just play it.
And there's our movie file.
So there's a brief introduction to creating animations and using some of
the 3D tools in Photoshop CS4 Extended.