Getting Animated with ImageReady

ImageReady can also take your multilayered images and create animated GIF files that provide motion effects when displayed on your Web pages. Although animations are often poorly used and overused, motion can be effective if you don’t overdo it. One or two (max) objects that, say, call attention to a special area of a page or a helpful link might be okay if well done. And keep in mind that some browsers allow the user to disable animations, so using animations for something critical may not be a good idea. You might even find other applications for animations, such as within PowerPoint presentations. ImageReady has all the tools you need to create these animations and can even streamline the job for you. Animations are nothing more than successive images, or frames, that are displayed one after another to create the illusion of motion. For example, you might have an image in which an object moves from left to right, one tiny increment at a time. Or you might have four views of an object, each from a different angle, which, when viewed consecutively, produce the illusion of rotation. The GIF format enables you to store each version in a separate layer within the GIF file. A Web browser (or other program, such as PowerPoint) that displays the GIF file automatically shows each of the different image layers in turn. All you need to do to create an animated GIF is to produce the individual layers and find a way to combine them into a GIF file. That’s where ImageReady comes in. You can save animations in ImageReady as animated GIFs, a QuickTime movie, or as SWF (Macromedia Flash) files. And in this latest version of ImageReady, you can also save animation frames out as separate files.

Here are some of the ways ImageReady can help you create animations:
- Build animations from layers. Create each of the individual frames needed for an animation in a separate layer in Photoshop (or ImageReady). Then open the image in ImageReady and choose Create from Layers from the Animation palette. ImageReady will create a set of frames that you can edit, change the order of, and then save as an animated GIF.
- Create tweened images for you. If you want to move an object in your image from Point A to Point B, you don’t need to create each layer manually. You can specify the frames that show the start and end positions of your object and ask ImageReady to create new, intermediate frames. The term tweening comes from the process used to automatically create and insert the frames “in between” the start and ending frames.
- Specify the time interval between frames. ImageReady can add a Delay value between two or more frames, determining how long to show each frame before displaying the next. Shorter display times and faster frame rates produce smoother animations, but also dramatically increase the size of your animated GIF. You can play around with time intervals in ImageReady until you get the best compromise.
- Optimize animations. ImageReady can squeeze your animated GIFs down to a manageable size by discarding pixels that don’t change from frame to frame, leaving you with only the pixels required to generate the animated effect you want.