Guide: Making An Animated .gif Image In ImageReady

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Have you ever seen a picture somewhere that was animated and wondered how it can be done? Well, those animated pictures are called .gif images, which are basicly just a sequence of images that are played right after eachother all put into one file. You can easily make one of these out of an existing video clip using a program called Media Player Classic and Adobe Imageready.

First, you need to download Media Player Classic.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Video-Players/Media-Player-Classic-for-Win2kXP.shtml

Then, open your video clip with media player classic. I will be using a video of me skateboarding for this guide.

Move the slider to wherever you would like to begin your gif image, and then click on file> save image and select the directory in which you want to save it. Make sure there arent any other images in this directory. Also, name this image "01."

Next, you want to click on the "Step" button. Each time you click this buton, the video will advance 1 frame.

For my video, I advanced 3 frames and and repeated the last step, only naming the pcture file "02." Keep doing this until you reach the point at which you want your gif to end. Note that skipping lesss frames between screenshots will make your gif more smooth, but it will also increase the size of the final file. When you are done, the folders that you are saving your pictures in should look something like this:

 

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Open up ImageReady. Click on file>import>folder as frames. Select the folder that contains your images.

Your screen should now look like this.

Notice that there is an "Animation" window at the bottom of the screen. You can use this to view all of the frames in your gif, and play the gif to preview how it will look.

If you click the play button, it should play the gif as an animation. By default, it will play it with no delay between frames. To put more delay between frames, select each frame in the animation window (by holding ctrl while click on each frame individually.) Once they are selected, let go of ctrl and click on where it says "0 sec" on any on of the frames, and select how much delay you would like between frames.

 

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If you are planning on posting this image online, you may want to resize it (if it isnt already small enough.) To do this, click on image>image size.

In the window that popped up, you can either manually change the resolution of the image, or change the size by adjusting the percentage of the original you want the new image to be. For example, i made mine 50%. That means that my new image will be 50%, or half, the size of the original image, decreasing the file size greatly.

After adjusting the size of your gif, it is time to save. Go to file>save optimized as and select the directory in which you wish to save. make sure the format is set to "gif" (i think thats the only choice anyways) and then click save. And there you have it! Double click on the file icon to open and play your gif image. I hope this guide was helpful to anyone wondering how people got their pictures to be animated.

final product:
(wait for it to play through once and then it will reapeat through again and again smoothly.)

 

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bump

 

[~NeonFire372~]

Nice guide, cileskot.