Can I create a countdown timer in Photoshop?

Thank you for your help everyone

To clarify, I saw a countdown "video" that a church used to show that the event would be starting in "5 minutes" it was really cool, but I didn't know if Photoshop would have that capability

If you want a live countdown for an event then here's how;

Design the Web: Creating an Event Countdown

I can think of two different things you might mean. People are answering depending on which one they guess you mean.

1. A short, continuous countdown timer. Like, 30 seconds counting down to zero. This can be done as an animated GIF in Photoshop quite easily (though you will have to type and position each number in the timeline). This could be used on a web site or in a presentation.

2. A long term timer. Perhaps when someone visits a web site they are told that the event is now in 3 days, 2 hours, 5 minutes. This cannot be done in Photoshop or any kind of movie app: it's a job for a web programmer.

This can be done very easily in After Effects using the Numbers effect. You can keyframe the values or you can add an expression that will control the numbers displayed over time automatically. Let me know you need help doing this in AE. We can move the post over to the After Effects forum if so :-)

Using Text effects in After Effects

If It's a stopwatch - then as others have said - you would be better downloading a timer app.

However if it is just a countdown to zero then :

1. Make a layer for each number (I've used 10 down to 1) - plus a layer for the background.

2. Open the timeline and click "create frame animation"

3. In the drop down menu at the top right of the timeline choose  "make frames from layers"

4. Step through each frame and turn on the visibility of the background and the appropriate number

5. Highlight all the frames (click on first then shift click on last) and set the time for each frame - I have used 1 second. I then set the last frame to 5 seconds

You could now export that as a gif - however the timing of gifs can be a bit hit or miss so I would now carry on and make a video from the frame animation. So :

6. Click at the bottom left to turn this into a video

7. In the timeline click on Render Video

8. In the dialogue choose H264 for the format - then click Render

That is it. If you want to add sound , do that after step 6 in the video timeline

Dave

its_johnny_time  wrote Hi there Creative Fam! I am wanting to create a timer for an event coming up, but I wasn't sure if I can do this in Photoshop

I really do not understand why you would even want to try to do that.  Everyone with a cell phone like an iPhone has a stopwatch in their pocket that will be much better than whatever you will be able to come up with using Photoshop.  You do not even know if Photoshop can create a stop watch.   It is surly not anything Photoshop was designed to do.  Its an image editor with tons of features.

Hi!

You can create a "simulation" of a countdown as a animated gif or a .mp4 file by creating the artwork and animating on the timeline. It would only look like a countdown, but if you timed it correctly, it might work for what you need.

As for creating a real countdown--I have nothing in my experience that says it's possible in just Photoshop.

Hope that helps,

Michelle

I'm not sure if photoshop can do this. I know you can create a design for it and then use those assets in a flash/jquery counter. If you google jquery countdown or counter you'll find a bunch of free ones. You can edit them how ever you want them to look. I hope this helps.