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A
Anonymous
March 29, 2011
Question

Editing animated gifs

  • March 29, 2011
  • 2 replies
  • 19779 views

Hi there,

I'm used to using CS2 and older versions of Photoshop and now at work I am using CS5.

I've been sent an animated GIF from our designers that isn't quite right, and I want to be able to edit it.

I have done a Google search and I'm told I'll need Firework to be able to do this these days (even tho I have a lovely little 'Animation' window).

Is this true?  A lot of Google is telling me to go File < Import < Video Frames To Layers.

Am I blind or does this really not exist anymore? How do I edit the animations?

Thanks so much for your help folks.

--Sasha

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    2 replies

    A
    Anonymous
    March 29, 2011

    flossycomet wrote:

    ...I've been sent an animated GIF from our designers that isn't quite right, and I want to be able to edit it...

    Beware that editing GIFs is not ideal if you can have your designers send you their original PSD file. A GIF has been smacked down to a very limited palette of 256 colors spread across all frames. You will need to switch to RGB color mode to apply most Photoshop edits. But when you re-save the GIF back down to a limited color palette, you can lose some colors that were once in the original GIF file.

    A
    Anonymous
    March 29, 2011

    Cs5 should be able to open animated gifs (new in cs5) by File>Open.

    You can also use File> Import>Video Frames To Layers by inserting a character

    like the * symbol and then press load and you will be able to see gif files and open

    them. The drawback with using Import>Video Frames to Layers is you lose any

    transparency in the frames.

    MTSTUNER

    A
    Anonymous
    March 29, 2011

    File < Open =

    "This is an animated GIF.  You can only view one frame.  Saving over this file will result in a loss of information."

    File < Import - I don't have Video Frames To Layers.

    ...

    A
    Anonymous
    March 29, 2011

    Are you using cs5 or cs2 to open the animated gif?

    If your using cs5, you need to use the 32 bit version for the

    File>Import> Video Frames to Layers, but you should be able

    to open an animated gif in cs5 and retain the frames using File>Open.

    If your using cs2, then you need to use ImageReady to open animated gifs.

    MTSTUNER

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