Saving and exporting video and animations, Video and animation export formats, Optimize animation frames – Adobe Photoshop CS4 User Manual
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USING PHOTOSHOP CS4
Video and animation
Last updated 1/10/2010
Saving and exporting video and animations
Video and animation export formats
You can save animations as GIF files for viewing on the web. In Photoshop Extended, videos and animations can be
saved as QuickTime movies or PSD files. If you’re not rendering your work to video, then saving the file as PSD is best
because it preserves the edits and saves the file in a format that’s supported by Adobe digital video applications and
many motion picture editing applications.
For a video on working with image sequences, see
Optimize animation frames
After you complete your animation, you should optimize it for efficient download to a web browser. You optimize an
animation in two ways:
•
Optimize the frames to include only areas that change from frame to frame. This greatly reduces the file size of the
animated GIF file.
•
If you are saving your animation as a GIF image, optimize it as you would any GIF image. A special dithering
technique is applied to animations to ensure that dither patterns are consistent across all frames and to prevent
flickering during playback. Due to these additional optimization functions, more time may be required to optimize
an animated GIF than to optimize a standard GIF.
When optimizing the colors in an animation, use the Adaptive, Perceptual, or Selective palette. This ensures that
the colors are consistent across frames.
1
(Photoshop Extended) Make sure the Animation panel is in frame animation mode.
2
Choose Optimize Animation from the Animation panel menu.
3
Set the following options:
Bounding Box
Crops each frame to the area that has changed from the preceding frame. Animation files created using
this option are smaller but are incompatible with GIF editors that do not support the option. (This option is selected
by default and is recommended.)
Redundant Pixel Removal
Makes all pixels transparent in a frame that are unchanged from the preceding frame. The
Transparency option in the Optimize panel must be selected
for redundant pixel removal to work. (This option is
selected by default and is recommended.)
Important: Set the frame disposal method to Automatic when using the Redundant Pixel Removal option. (See “
4
Click OK.
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