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The Animation Panel: Taking Animated GIFs to the Next Level

You too can create exciting animated GIFs for use on your next website.  Just follow these simple steps: (1) Create a text layer, (2) apply styles, and (3) hide the styles.  The Animation panel takes care of the rest.
In the Animation panel, you can control the position, opacity, style, and wrap of a text layer.  Clicking on the Clock icon to the left of the style layer activates that option.  At that point, just move the keyframe playhead to the end of your animation and turn on the styles.  Voila! Instant animated GIF.  To export it to your very own website, choose File>Save for Web & Devices, and select your desired output features.

Toggle Between Keyframes

When animating objects in the timeline, Photoshop interpolates between keyframes to give a sense of movement.  However, if you would like the animation to toggle between keyframes, Control-click (PC: Right-click) on that keyframe in the timeline to bring up the contextual menu and select Hold Interpolation.  The appearance of the keyframes will change, and when played back it will cut to each keyframe.

Scrub Through Timeline

You can quickly scrub through the timeline by clicking-and-holding on the Current Time Indicator.  You will notice the cursor turn into opposing arrows.  Just click-and-drag either to the left or right to scrub through the timeline.

Change Timeline Settings

You can modify the duration setting in the timeline by going to the Animation panel’s flyout menu and selecting Document Settings.  In the dialog, you can set the duration and also choose a frame rate from the pop-up menu or you can enter a custom setting.

Keyframe Comments

In the Animation panel (in Timeline mode), at the top of the layer list there is an item called Comments.  This allows you to place keyframes on the timeline and each keyframe is an annotation which can contain information specific to that point in the timeline.  You can add a Comment keyframe by clicking on the clock icon on the Comment layer.  Toggle through them by clicking the left and right arrows to the left of the Clock icon.

Video Can Also Become a Smart Object

One of the cool features of video layers is that they can be set up as Smart Objects.  This opens up a ton of possibilities for image manipulation, including scaling, rotation, and even warping.

Trim Your Video

At the top of the Animation panel (in Timeline mode), you will notice two blue handles at the ends of the Work Area bar.  This is your work area.  You can drag the Work Area Start and Work Area End handles to specify how much of the video you want to work with.

Vanishing Point 2

Big changes in Vanishing Point!  Now you are not constricted to 90° angles.  This offers lots of cool possibilities with the Vanishing Point filter.

Refine Edge

Although there are many tools that will create exact selections, Adobe does step up the game a little with Refine Edge (Select>Refine Edge).  With the Refine Edge feature, you have the ability to modify your selection using a set of sliders and preview your output on different color backgrounds. Use the F key in the dialog to cycle through the preview options.

Use Overlay in the Clone Source Panel

Have you ever used the Clone Stamp tool and wondered what exactly you were going to paint in the area?  Wonder no more.  Now you can turn on the Show Overlay checkbox at the bottom of the Clone Source panel to automatically see an overlay of the image as you would clone it.  You can automatically turn this off and on by turning on the Auto Hide checkbox.

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Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

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