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Question

Ps animations made into smart objects as assets for a new file

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
November 28, 2018
7 replies
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I want to do a quick way of putting together up to 15 independent looping gifs (Ps) into one big composition in Ps.

Please help tell me how to make each Ps animation into a smart object which can be a looping asset put into a new file with other looping animations.

My Ps file has all the different frames of the animation as layers, then I open the timeline, create animation, and go to make frames from layers, and adjust the timing.

From there I don't know how to put this animation into a new file. I tried convert to smart object from layers menu (with all the layers and frames highlighted), and then right click, duplicate and destination of smart object to a new file, but when I go into this new file I don't know how to make the smart object "play" as an animation; it is just a static frame. I also tried going into the new file and double clicking to edit the contents of the smart object and animate it, with no marked difference to me. I beg your pardon, I have little experience with smart objects. I appreciate the help!

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JJMack

Community Expert

I never use Quicktime on windows security and file size issues.

My animation saved as a gif is 295KB

My animation saved as a mp4 is 574KB

My Animation saved as a mov is 67,459KB

JJMack

Silkrooster

Legend

The only security issue I have heard of was with the quicktime player. They made a huge deal out making sure everyone uninstalled it. Which it is not required to open in photoshop.

Unless doing large length high quality video's then yeah mp4 is the wise choice for sharing. Gif is dead (but the animation is the only thing keeping it around)

As for storing files on your own system, file size is not exactly all that important especially if you need to do archival, re-editing, etc.

But for forums, mp4, gif, png and jpg are it. With the former two for animation and latter two for stills.

Too bad the png an jpg animation formats never took off, otherwise no one would even remember gif.

I kind of wish someone would take over the source code for the gif format and update it to support more colors, larger file sizes, 8-bit alpha. Maybe even throw in layers for editing.

But, I believe that is just a pipe dream.

JJMack

Community Expert

There is an animated png addon for Chrome Animated png animate on my machine. PNG vs GIF no comtest.

JJMack

rayek.elfin

Legend

PS I do like your animated ornaments, though! Good job on those.

JJMack

Community Expert

Brettman123 wrote
I want to do a quick way of putting together up to 15 independent looping gifs (Ps) into one big composition in Ps.
Please help tell me how to make each Ps animation into a smart object which can be a looping asset put into a new file with other looping animations.

While you can combine GIFs into a single gif the only to do it with Smart Object layers is first converting the Gif to a into a video file. Photoshop Video does not support transparency so would would need a video editor with more than the basic Video support that Photoshop has ro be able to mask the video subject. You can use Gif file tough. Not the PSD source the Gif was created with. An animated gif will open with a layer for each frame in the Gif so you could be dealing with many leyers. I create two rotating Christmas balls with Photo collages on them. Photoshop 3D Sphere ring and cylinder. I created the Gif from a Video timeline, It is very easy to animate a rotating 3D layer. Saving a video there would be a solid background One of your Choice or Video would render a solid color background. So you can have several rotating 3d balls one a Christmas. A 3D layer for each Ball plus the Christmas tree background layer.

To do the same with Gif would be painful it done by copying and pasting frames. Its not that its hard to copy and paste frame its not. Select all frames, Copy Frames and Past Frames. Quite easy, However Layers start adding if quickly. For example the Christmas Ball animations gifs I created have 300 Framse. Two means 600 layers if you had 15 there would be 4,500 layers. Each ball 300 linked layers. Performance would be awful on my machine it would. With two ball it was bad. To move a ball 300 layers need to be moved and 300 frames updated before Photoshop refreshes the image windows so you can see the move. But you can have a transparent background. This two ball GIF is 5MB in size

JJMack

rayek.elfin

Legend

JJMack wrote
Performance would be awful on my machine it would. With two ball it was bad. To move a ball 300 layers need to be moved and 300 frames updated before Photoshop refreshes the image windows so you can see the move. But you can have a transparent background.

...which is why I would suggest OpenToonz. Even with very heavy multiple animations it remains very responsive. It's made for this type of work (production level frame-based animated film work, if you like).

Photoshop is not optimized for heavy frame-based animation work at all, and the animation tools/timeline rather clunky and inefficient. If the OP wishes to stay within the Adobe ecosystem of software, Animation CC would be a much better choice than either Photoshop or AfterEffects (or even Premiere). But in my experience OpenToonz is quick(er), simpler, and more effective for this particular type of work, though.

JJMack

Community Expert

I'm sure the are better applications than Photoshop. I will however not look at any other Adobe Application. There are so many bugs in Photoshop I do not need more bugs than I getting with Photoshop.

JJMack

rayek.elfin

Legend

The simplest method I found to quickly combine many GIF animations on a larger canvas while having full control over the length and speed of playing of each animation is to just do it in OpenToonz.

I prepared a quick video tutorial for you how to accomplish this in a couple of simple steps. Watch it here:

It's a bit dark due to a screen dimmer I use, and which I overlooked to turn off (sorry).

As explained in the video, you will have to point OpenToonz to ffmpeg for GIF animation support first, and then it is just a matter of dragging and dropping the gif animation on the canvas, and use the Animate tool in All mode to quickly position and scale them in place. Each gif animation will have its own frame-based timeline, and when finished, export the result as a new gif animation or a movie file.

It's quick, effective, and a no-nonsense method. OpenToonz is open source and free, btw.

Get the latest build of OpenToonz here:

Releases · opentoonz/opentoonz_nightlies · GitHub

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Brettman123 wrote
I want to do a quick way of putting together up to 15 independent looping gifs (Ps) into one big composition in Ps.

How many frames? Do you realise that all 15 must use the same number of frames? I answered a similar question yesterday. Was that you?

Nope. It was someone else

Two animations running on the screen PLEASE HELP

What I am thinking is that if there more than just a few frames, then I'd hate to do it using Photoshop. Animate or After Effects would heaps easier. Have a look at the linked thread, and see if you get the hang of how it works. Then think about manually syncing layers to frames 15 times.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

I've just had a thought. If you converted all of the frame animations to video, you could stack them in a video timeline. I am not sure if you could convert the resulting multi-track video back to a frame animation effectively flattening all 15 tracks, but if not, you could render out to video > bring that video back into Photoshop, and convert to Frame animation. Timing might be an issue, and it would need some planing, but I think it might be doable.

JJMack

Community Expert

Video animations are more powerful than frames animations. About all Frame animation has to off for automating motion is Tween which only supports layer positioning opacity and effects. Things like Transforming scaling and rotation is not supported. Video has betters support for animating layers than Frame animations. You can save out animated gif from a video timeline. But MP4 has better color support and MP4 files size is very close to Animated Gif file size and you can easly add audio to an mp4. The thing is there are better products you can use to create animations than Photoshop. If you want to do animations you should look at applications like Adobe Animate.

JJMack

M

mark@headTrix

Community Expert

Hello,

Its not really possible to combine multiple GIF animations in ONE photoshop file.

If you want to display multiple Animated GIF's together, I would suggest exporting all of your Animated GIF's separately and then creating a web page using Dreamweaver or perhaps Wordpress and importing all the GIFS to one page - like I do with my clients when presenting a variety of ads: Eco Terra Animated GIF Advertisements - headTrix, Inc.

Another option might be to export each Animated GIF to a video (File>Export>Render Video..) and for Format, choose "Quicktime" and under Render Options, under Alpha Channel, you would select "Straight Unmatted" to export a transparent video (if you have any transparent background) and then you can import the videos into Premiere or After Effects to render them all together.

Hope this helps!

cheers!
mark

headTrix, Inc. | Adobe Certified Training & Consulting

B

Brettman123Author

Known Participant

Hi Mark, about rendering the gifs into quicktime videos to render in After Effects, how do I get all the videos to loop independently?

Right now, I imported the quicktime files into After Effects and they are all of different lengths and so some have a duration which is longer or shorter than the other ones.

JJMack

Community Expert

That's a video timeline, not an animated GIF. And your playing it on the timeline. If you put an animated gif in a smart object and then dragged a smart object to a PSD you will only see the first frame., Unless you double-click it and play it inside the smart object itself.

There are only two the types of timeline a frame animation timeline and a video timeline. There is no GIF timeline. You can use Save for Web and save and animated Gif if you have a Frame animation timeline or you have a video timeline. You can Animate a Layer better in a Video Timeline than in a Frame animation timeline. You can animate a smart object layer in either type if timeline but you have more options in a Video Timeline.

You Browser is displaying the Animated gif I saved there is no video timeline in your browser

I'm not puttin an animated gif in a smart object layer or ven know if you can place a gif file in a document

More than one layer can be animated this GIF has two animations in it animated Photoshop 3d layers

JJMack

Silkrooster

Legend

For gif animations use the save for web and devices option in the File>Export menu. If the file is quite large you maybe better off using another format as they offer more features and sometimes better compression. It may take some experimenting to determine what is best for your animation.

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