How To Make a GIF ‘moving’ Image

A GIF image is made by a series of layers, each layer may have a slight or dramatic change from the picture below it, You can make a mini slide show or an animation that can be displayed on the internet or on your computer.

I make my GIF images with Adobe Photoshop Elements 4, it is very simple. When you open your picture in Photoshop the picture is displayed on a layer, this layer is called ‘background’ this background layer will be the start of your GIF image.

You can duplicate the layer of your original image or open up a new image and use the copy and paste function to add the new image to the GIF image, by adding a new image a new layer will be created, this will be the second part of your GIF, your third layer will be the third part of the GIF and so on….

Once you have finished adding your GIF image Click FILE and SAVE FOR WEB. I normally use the save for web function for resizing my images for emails and upooading pictures to websites, you can choose the size and image quality and file type in this function.

Now you have the save to web box up you will see two pictures and on the right hand side some text with drop down menus. the first thing you need to change is the second drop down menu, it most likely says JPEG, change this to GIF, Next select the box that says Animate. If your pictures are large then you may need to resize, for GIFS I normally set the size to 500 pixels on the longest side. In the right lower corner there is a small box titled Animate, you can select how long you want your frams / Layers to be displayed, If you made an animation you may want it short, but if you made a mini slideshow then you may prefer a longer time.

Once you are done then hit OK and fill in the file name to complete the saving process.

This is a demonstration of a very simple GIF, I used 7 layers and made the text slightly bigger and a darker background on each layer. You may need to click the image to open on a seperate web page to view the animation.