Change timeline layout to be more like Animate, make it more user friendly.

Question

Every once in a while I open photoshop to play around with animating frame by frame in there instead of Animate. But the timeline is so confusing and frustrating that I can never get myself to continue.

By reforming the timeline closer to Animate, which is calm and easy to use, you will loose less frame-by-frame animators. Because AE is not quite right for it.

What makes the Animate timeline so nice is that you can group it, it is organised and most of all; the singel keyframes makes it way clearer what you are working with. You can be way more precise.

With the current layout it is very specific how to even start an animation, every singel drawing (frame) is visible in the layers tab, when you first finally manage to get the first video setup every frame is 5 seconds long. So you need to first shorten it, then copy paste very singel layer a 100 times (hopefully that is enough) and then place them behind each other. This workflow takes way too much time.

Thank you for reading my rant, I care very much about both photoshop and animate. And if animate has to go (which I am still hoping is a cruel early April fools day joke) I am hoping for a better alternative because AE is not it!
And as it stands now photoshop is not made for animation, so let’s turn it into one! :)

notofagus · Answer

Suggested additions to the current Video Layers Timeline:

Frames & Keyframes

Clear visual and functional distinction between frames and keyframes.
Keyboard shortcuts to jump to the previous/next keyframe.

Onion Skinning

Color-coded onion skinning, with previous and next frames shown in different colors.
Option to apply onion skinning to keyframes only.
Dedicated on/off toggle button for onion skinning.
Dedicated onion skin settings button.
Option for a floating onion skin settings panel that can be docked in a workspace.

Frame Controls

Button to add one empty frame.
Button to add two empty frames.
Button to duplicate the selected frame.
Button to delete the selected frame.
Button to clear the contents of a frame without removing it.

Layer & Group Controls

Button to add a new video layer.
Button to add a new video group.

Timeline Editing

Ability to select multiple frames across different layers with a single mouse gesture.
Ability to cut the final frame of a video layer (currently only possible for layers with 2+ frames).
Ability to change the duration of multiple video layers simultaneously, rather than one by one.

Camera

Add a camera layer/tool for framing, panning, and zooming within animations.

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