Creating Animations

Using the Animation palette

The Animation palette lets you create, view, and set options for the frames in an animation. You can change the thumbnail view of frames in the Animation palette—using smaller thumbnails reduces the space required by the palette and displays more frames in a given palette width.

To display the Animation palette:

Choose Window > Show Animation, or click the Animation palette tab.

To change the thumbnail view of frames:

1. Select Palette Options from the Animation palette menu.
2. Select a thumbnail size, and click OK.

Adding frames

Adding frames is the first step in creating an animation. If you have an image open in Image Ready, the Animation palette displays the image as the first frame in a new animation.

Each frame you add starts as a duplicate of the preceding frame. You then make changes to the frame using the Layers palette.

To add a frame to an animation:

1. If you want to add the animation to a rollover state, select the desired state in the Rollover palette.
2. In the Animation palette, do one of the following:

• Click the New Frame button.

• Select New Frame from the Animation palette menu.

Selecting frames

Before you can work with a frame, you must select it as the current frame. The contents of the current frame appear in the document window. You can select multiple frames, either contiguous or discontiguous, to edit them or apply commands to them as a group. When multiple frames are selected, only the current frame appears in the document window.

Copying and pasting frames

To understand what happens when you copy and paste a frame, think of a frame as a duplicate version of an image with a given layer configuration.

When you copy a frame, you copy the configuration of layers (including each layer’s visibility setting, position, and other attributes).

When you paste a frame, you apply that layer configuration to the destination frame.

To copy and paste layers between frames:

1. Select one or more frames.
2. Choose Copy Frames from the Animation palette menu.
3. Select a destination frame or frames in the current animation or another animation.
4. Choose Paste Frames from the Animation palette menu.
5. Select a Paste Method.
6. Select Link Added Layers if you want to link pasted layers in the Layers palette. Use this option when you need to reposition the pasted layers as a unit.
7. Click OK.

Creating a type selection border.

When you use the type tool with the Masked Type option selected, you create a selection in the shape of the type. Type selections appear on the active layer, and can be moved, copied, filled, or stroked just like any other selection.

To create a type selection border:

1. Select the layer on which you want the selection to appear. For best results, create the type selection border on a normal image layer, not a type layer.
2. Select the type tool, and click the Masked Type button in the options bar.
3. Select additional type options, and enter type at a point or in a bounding box.

Working with type layers

Once you create a type layer, you can edit the type and apply layer commands to it. You can change the orientation of the type, apply anti-aliasing, convert between point type and paragraph type, create a work path from type, or convert type to shapes. You can move, restack, copy, and change the layer options of a type layer as you do for a normal layer. You can also make the following changes to a type layer and still edit the type:

• Apply transformation commands from the Edit menu, except for Perspective and Distort. (To apply the Perspective or Distort commands, or to transform part of the type layer, you must rasterize the type layer, making the type uneditable.)
• Use layer styles.
• Use fill shortcuts. To fill with the foreground color, press Alt+Backspace (Windows) or Option+Delete (Mac OS); to fill with the background color, press Ctrl+Backspace (Windows) or Command+Delete (Mac OS).
• Warp type to conform to a variety of shapes.