Ok, this tutorial is rather easy especially once you get the hang of it.

-Animated gif "movies" in your sig can look very cool, but:

• they are often overrused
• they take up massive amounts of space (usually between 200k and 1 mb)
• when you save them optimized, the sig often has a poor overall quality
• VDCORE does not support these sigs due to their file size.

With that stated, let's start:

IMAGE READY

First off, you'll need to get a .mov quicktime video file. For an entire vault of great footage, i will suggest using [Only Registered users can see links . Click Here To Register...]

Next, do File -> Open
Select the quicktime video you want to use, and open it
A screen such as this will show:




The majority of the time, you will only want to use part of a clip, not the whole thing, so click Selected Range Only. You should only use a small clip to begin with, but if you must use a rather large clip, then also select Limit To Every 2nd Frame. (You dont want to choose anything more than 2nd frame because then it will look bad)

-When selecting the clip from only a selected range, pick your starting point and be sure to hold the SHIFT button while dragging the pointer across progress bar to your end point.

Now you have the quicktime video in image ready with all of its frames.

*NOTE* - It is recommended that your video is less than 150 frames. You shouldnt use a clip that is more than 150 frames because the file size will just be too big, and you'll need to optimize the hell out of it

As you can see, all the frames have a default delay (0.03 sec), we don't want that. It slows the animation and makes it look awkward. Select all the frames by highlighting the first frame and then highlighting the last frame with the shift key held down, click the delay, and go to No Delay



Now you'll want to make it smaller so it can be put in the signature
Do Image -> Image Size and enter in the size desired.


Jump back to Photoshop by hitting the button shown:




PHOTOSHOP

The gif should now be in photoshop with all of its layers (mine has 56)


This is the part where many people mess up, so pay attention

In order to have a working clip, you must not just drag the layers onto a background. Instead, increase the canvas size of it by going to Image -> Canvas size (You may pick any size you want, but this one will be 450 x 125 pixles)



*NOTE* - when changing the height and width of the canvas, make sure you are changing the size in pixels (boxed in red). Also make sure you set the anchor to the left or right, unless you want the clip to be right smack in the middle of your sig (boxed in blue......and dont worry, you can always move the clip around later)

Now you'll want to link all of your layers together (boxed in blue)



If you want to move the clip to a slightly different position than it is already in, then select the first frame and by using the move tool, drag the clip to wherever on the sig.

Insert a background image as the very FIRST frame



Put this back into image ready by clicking the jump button (posted above)

To save this as a moving gif, go to File -> "Save Optimized As"

Final product (for the sole purpose of showing you how to insert a gif):



*HOSTING TIP* - If you're file is small enough, you can host it at [Only Registered users can see links . Click Here To Register...], but if it is rather large, host it at [Only Registered users can see links . Click Here To Register...]

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Thanks for the tutorial.

Hi Spiral,

for some reason when I attempt to add a background image, it won't allow me to and adds it as a new layer covering the frames.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

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any help would be appreciated

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New here but 2 suggestions

1. Drag the background image layer to the bottom of all layers.

2. if not possible. delete the image layer. Click the bottom layer, Click new layer, Drag it down one, Drag image onto layer.

thank you for your sharing

thanks for give this information.