Animated GIF in InDesign

[patrickn14295884]

Does anyone know of the possibilities for creating an animated GIF in InDesign using the interactive features and saving/exporting as a gif? I see that there is an in5 extension one can trial/purchase to convert InDesign to a gif but was wondering if there were other possibilities.

[BobLevine]

Nothing I know of. 

[Geоrge]

Isn't have. Change your look to create gif's in Photoshop. 

[rayek.elfin · Accepted solution]

Preview the animation in the epub previewer, and use ScreentoGif to capture it to a GIF.

https://github.com/NickeManarin/ScreenToGif

[patrickn14295884]

Thank you!

[m quiggl47890392]

Adobe has created Creative Cloud Express which is their flagship for social media. You can find it in your Creative Cloud desktop app under the bar on the left for Social Media. Templates abound for video, pdf, and image projects. Of course, you can use Adobe Stock in the designs to enhance your projects!

There are options for making what you already have made in InDesign animated (you can already do that in ID but cannot export to animated GIF without In5 or other GitHub items (which is a shame!). [see Window>Interactive>Animation in ID to animate items on the page]

Or you can jump ship altogether and get Canva, another nice piece of software that also has animation capabilities for social media, etc.

We are busy designers who are being squeezed to do all kinds of stuff with the software we already own but which has not kept up with the social media times without having to shell out more cash for additional software to do things. And you wonder why your clients turn and leave the office when you tell them how much this is going to cost... 

Adobe...help us out her. with animations in InDesign especially for social media (I am not talking about flipbooks but of simple animations like you find in PowerPoint that are already in InDesign). When PPT can beat up ID with standard features like this, it's humiliating.

Thanks for listening to a user who needs more to do the job I have been given.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'd just say that Creative Cloud is a whole box of tools because there are so many different tasks to accomplish. I can't see any reason ID should be a social media animation creator when (nearly) anyone who has it has all the other very capable, purpose-built tools as well. There's no reason every tool should do every job.

But if you think Canva is a valid alternative, we're probably on different planets. 🙂

—

[m quiggl47890392]

NitroPress:

I agree with you. The whole SUITE of Creative Cloud has all the tools you need but now Adobe has created another app for Social Media called Creative Cloud Express. Check it out in your Creative Cloud Desktop. 🙂

[Justin Putney]

A quick update on the in5 GIF Maker extension. We've just released version 3, which will let you turn InDesign animation into an MP4 video, which would allow you to create a finely-tuned animated GIF in Photoshop (as well as directly creating it with the Chrome extension). We'll be uploading videos to our YouTube channel soon.

[rayek.elfin]

@Justin PutneyA bit outdated. perhaps? It would be more forward thinking and relevant to allow for direct conversion to Animated PNG and Animated WebP.

[Creative Overlord]

100% need this ability direct from indesign. 

Screen to gif suggested below doesn't work on mac, the mac alternative program leaves margin for error having to drag the recording part to the edge of each design, which also adds time.

I wish IN5 was affordable for me as a freelance designer because the new update they talk about below is exactly what I would use, both IND to gif and to mp4 for social. I build google ads, web banners and EDM's in indesign for a large company and it's so fast paced, the only current way to do a gif from Indedign is by exporting jpg's then importing as stack in PS and exporting AGAIN finally to gif, then if you want a mp4 version for social you also have to convert to video timeline and duplicate/export as mp4. This is so tedious and feels like such a waste of time.

People on here that keep saying Indesign is the wrong tool - but it's fast, accurate, and easily handles large images placed within frames and honing of typography is easy too. I'm not going to make 3 formats of a design from scratch in photoshop or illustrator JUST to gif it when I also need that design in 10 seperate formats for other uses and Indedign makes the most sense for those.

I use PS to edit images, I use Illustrator for packaging, illustrations or patterns, I use Indesign for anything I possibly can because it remains the fastest, easiest to navigate and most accurate when placing things perfectly "to the pixel" position.

Canva is infuriating to me but I'm tempted to try learning figma for this purpose. Still, seems like a wasted opportunity and Adobe keeps doing spin-off apps - just give me one thing for IND!

Or better yet, a single beast for evvvverything and do it well!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

InDesign, for all the grace and power you rightly attribute to it (I go to other tools only when I have to or really know it's a better option) — just isn't a good tool for web banners and such. It's not good at such small-scale work and doesn't export well to small raster images. I know many designers use it, and persist in getting the job done. but sometimes it seems like more work is spent getting around ID's limitations for this class of work than is worth it.

As for spin-off apps... isn't XD specifically for such work? Have you given it a thorough test drive, with the support of other tools as needed? That is, maybe it's worth swapping to XD as your primary workbench for web ad work.

And no, never, ever, "one tool to rule them all." There are just too many differences in facets of this job to make one tool be hammer, jackstand, metal lathe, mud gun and screwdriver. Sorry. And that's what ID would become if every designer got "just this one more thing I need." And the rest of us would have to put up with a primary tool that no longer did anything well, or was so cluttered it was no longer efficient.

[Creative Overlord]

It's funny you mention XD because I had in fact turned there first before even trying to google indesign extensions for gifs, sadly XD also does not have the capacity to export a simple gif let alone more complex ones. It also has a baffling inability to adjust kerning (or when I tried I couldn't find it, possibly this has changed since, I do need to find the time to learn that program more but given it doesn't do the main thing I'd use it for, that's not a priority).

My main frustration is that for all the apps we get, Adobe still doesn't seem to have anything for what is a large portion of the work many designers do now. Don't get me wrong, I've been designing since everyone hated indesign for being the Quark killer, I used both and loved Adobe for its innovative features and usability. But it feels like they've split into so many programs now nothing is getting the attention it deserves. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'm not sure there's much to add here, but I'll sum up anyway.

I think you greatly understimate the effort involved in adding even minor features to apps as complex as these; just extending one feature's options, linearly, involves thousands of man-hours in development and regression testing, and that's often just a start to continuing fine-tuning. It is not simple, even for Adobe, just to bundle more features into any of the major apps. What you want are major new facets, and even if Adobe should consider them, those are on a long list of much more integral and relevant updates and improvements, used by far larger segments of the user base.

It is also a hallmark of any field that has craftsmen that those worker/user/artists prefer strong, optimized tools for each job. You can't build a house with a Swiss Army Knife; you can barely use most SAWs as, well, knives. I doubt ten percent of serious Adobe Suite pro users want any further integration or overlap or co-expansion of features, especially since we long ago crossed into the era when the same source file can be opened in most of the Suite's rotation.

And while it may or may not be true that whipping out sets of little animated GIFs is "what a large portion of the work" now is — and if I felt like continuing this exchange any longer, I'd make quite a few observations on that — Adobe certainly makes tools that accomplish that job, and are used by some multiple of thousands. That any of the big three apps are not individually optimal for this extremely narrow niche function is not a reason to modify any of them for that task.

Having worked across the Marketing spectrum (something I have now essentially put behind me, for many reasons), I've worked with, for, hired, fired and managed many designers and other creatives in the trade. Too many fail to understand that what they do is not the whole of the field, perhaps not even a majority of it, and (I'd argue) far from the most important part of it. It's very shiny and visible, yes. But in the end, it has to share the tools that enable results in this field, and most of those that have been bent to making this season's shinies have become quickly obsolete. For all the expansion of new niche tools like XD, Adobe has the sense to keep the big, workbench tools of use to everyone.

But from my observations, there are endless options for web banner GIF generators out there; they're just (mostly) not from Adobe.

[Creative Overlord]

Just jumping in here again in case the Adobe gods are ever monitoring - our entire design team still creates gifs daily as part of regular workflow and would still love the ability to export INDD pages as jpgs, set the quality and timing and have it export as gif directly, without having to jump into PS and import as stack then export again.

We create google PMAX and display ads, EDM's, web banners, you name it, and most are gifs now, it would save so much time to skip the photoshop step. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, a second shop using this workflow or a similar one would be... validating. 🙂

Just putting on my devil's advocate cap, I'd wager that most pros and shops have a few workflows that are a bit foreign to ID and need extra turns of the crank to execute. I wouldn't want to see all of them integrated into some bloated edition of the app. If there's a notable body of users creating animated GIFs starting with ID layouts, votes on a feature request would be the way to get the feature implemented (some day). But to me that's a pretty out-there use, like using Illustrator to do book pages... so such things are properly on the user to find the most streamlined, script-enabled process they can.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

https://exchange.adobe.com/apps/cc/108941/gifstudio-trial

[rayek.elfin]

Can I be blunt here? You mentioned earlier in this thread that you cannot afford In5 because you are a freelancer. You now mention that your InDesign TEAM creates gifs daily for multiple clients.

If In5 would save your designers hours of work, then why not just get IN5? It's $50 per month for 4 machines - if your designers save an hour a day with the tool you save WAY more money than $50 in hourly wages. Besides, as a work related expensive it's tax-deductable as well.

So I don't understand why you wouldn't just subscribe to IN5 to speed up your workflow instead of using convoluted time-consuming workarounds.

[Creative Overlord]

I'm not sure if your reply was to me or the person above, but re freelance, yeah, I totally get it, In5 sounds great, I've mentioned approximately 495439539 times to the main company I freelance for that this would be a solid investment. Especially as Adobe is refusing to incorporate such a simple export option in their own program, yet bafflingly introduced an Animation panel that you can't export animated objects from 🤣. But I digress.

Unfortunately this company won't purchase it for their inhouse staff, so I sure won't convince them. As a freelancer I have to pay for my own software, computer, etc, so the cost would not be split across the team for me, and the adobe suite itself is already such a huge cost (and gamble, considering offsetting that cost relies on future freelance bookings that are not guarenteed) so as a sole trader this is just not something I can justify. 

For those laughing at using indesign for such a task, it's by far the best typesetting app Adobe has, and while I've attempted to use many of their other programs instead, and indeed use those programs for other types of design tasks regularily, the formats we need and turnover time of these ads end up making it easier and more efficient to build all of them in indesign even with the tediousness of having to export all the various sized pages as jpg, jump across to ps and import stack, then use a pre built action I've saved to create frame animation, set timing and export again as gif (then sometimes loop the gif and export as video for socials) then close again. The rest of the team of designers old and young haven't yet found a faster way or better program so we keep going. Although I'm eyeballing Figma with desire lately, but they don't get have great control for finer details in typesetting. 

If you still doubt that people want this, i'd search the forum for "gif" - lots of threads indicate there is demand. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Anecdotal evidence isn't worth all that much, Overlord, and one user demanding a feature 10^23 times doesn't weight the balloting any. InDesign is simply not a tool well-designed to do GIF animations, and I don't think I've heard from a second person, here or elsewhere, who is creatively crushed because it doesn't have Photoshop-grade direct export.

If GIF anis are the end need, I can't think of a way that ID is superior to Photoshop — or any of the many tools out there that focus on this relatively narrow need, for that matter. And that includes type-based imaging; I wouldn't want to lay out a magazine in PS, but it does have everything including paragraph-level type control. And unless you're doing national-TV level work, there are some other streamlined tools that do animations even more easily.

I don't mind that it bugs you, but sweeping claims that big fat rich Adobe simply won't bend to the cries of its stifled users is... somewhere between hilarious and nonsensical. You have a workflow that meets your rather narrow needs; In5 would streamline that considerably (although it exists for many purposes other than GIF animations). But by your own admission, your revenue stream from this won't even justify the cost of In5.

No... I don't have much patience for the segment of the user base that insists that every tool do every job, their way.

I suggest the solution here is that you back up from your peculiar stance that only ID can do this job, and learn to use PS and that segment of tools to efficiently (including cost-efficiently) do a job they are intended and designed to do.

[BobLevine]

Nobody is laughing, but this is an exercise in futility. I don't know what your history with InDesign is but I've been at it since version 1.0 in 1999.

Nothing is baffling about the animation panel. It, and indeed most of the interactive features, were added as a way to export to SWF. They were then adapted to be used in DPS. Every single one of these features has never seen a bit of development since they were released. They are a giant kludge and beyond the wonky fixed layout epub format and the (IMO) close to worthless Publish Online, they serve zero purpose. in5 is the only answer if you want GIF out of InDesign.

My closing point is that there are lots of arguments to be made about the worthiness of a tool, but if you can make more money with it, the cost is worth it. I won't scoff at the cost...it ain't cheap, but if it can earn you more than it costs? How is that too expensive?

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Maybe you've missed it before:

https://exchange.adobe.com/apps/cc/108941/gifstudio-trial 

[Creative Overlord]

@Robert at ID-Tasker PERFECT this got bogged down in everyones theories for why the use case existed/didn't exist but this is exactly what I was looking for, once off cost much less than In5 and after trying, it's simple and easy to use. Purchased! Thanks!