I taught myself to create an animated gif in Photoshop Elements 6 last night; I know your thinking “So what can’t everybody?’, well I could not. Last Thursday I switched from Photoshop CS3 ext. to Photoshop Elements and have since been teaching myself a whole new language. It became second nature to use the other program and everything felt foreign to me, almost to the point of ripping my PC off the desk and chucking it out the window.

Well I’m writing this so as you guessed the cursed thing is still here, at least for now! Anyway, back to the Blinkie issue. I searched the net; checked out the forums and groups; picked the mids of my fellow srap community buddies; and visited every digi-scrap designer’s Blog I came across, all to no avail with a trully consie and coherent tutorial. I’m sure they exist, I just don’t have the patience or time to sift through hundreds of tutorials that probably won’t have what I’m looking for.

I decided to just spend the whole night reading the entire Help Manual and work my way to the Online Help site. Of course the last place I looked I found the information within the first link I clicked. I felt like saying “Duh!”, it was so simple and I had spent all night asking the wrong questions in the search criteria.

I wrote down every step I took and now I’m going to share it with you. Remember I’m using Photoshop Elements 6 so it may vary if your using a different version.

First you want to open up your Photoshop program and click on File. Under file you want to hover over New and choose Blank Page. When the window pops up change the Height to 152 pixels and Width to 52 pixels at a resolution of 72 pixels per inch; now there are two ways you can go from here. Either create your Blinkie from scratch, or use papers and embellishments from a kit.

You’ll want to use at least two of the main colors of the site you are linking to; if you have a custom background design use some of the elements you used in your Blinkie.  If you take this route, open all the elements your going to use and instead of filling your layer with color place your papers and embellishments where you want them.

If you are creating from scratch then follow the recipe below;

Fill your first layer with your desired background color and apply and filters you wish. click the Type tool and write your text in the font and color of your choice. Remember this is going to be the last word in your Blinkies cycle; if you type the words out of order don’t worry because you can always change your layer order later. Create a new layer and follow the steps above until you get to the text, you want to leave this layer blank. Create a new layer and repeat the first step with another word. You continue on until your layers contain every word  you want to be seen in your Blinkie. Make sure there is color fill layer in between every text layer to create the blink effect when you loop it later. You want it to look like this;

Text  on background

Background without text

Text on background

So on and so on, until you have all words and elements on a layer within the workspace.

Once you have done this you want to go back to File and scroll to Save For Web. A new screen will pop up and you want to look to the right; make sure gif is selected in the dropdown box and click animate. Go to the bottom of this and click loop and set your preferred delay from the dropdown menue. Hit okay and it will take you to the save screen; name your file something your gonna remember easily for when your searching for it and hit save. You my friend have created an animated gif or better known as a Blinkie. Congratulations, you may now pat yourself on the back. Now all you have to do is create a html code so you can post it on your site or drop in the forums and groups; don’t worry I’ll walk you through this step soon just not tonight. Okay, you can quit screaming at your screen I’ll be back tomorrow with it, I just have to tweak that process before sharing. Kiss your babies and lock yourself in your office for awhile, your about to get wrapped up in some frustrating yet rewarding fun.

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