How to Make an Animated GIF in Photoshop [Tutorial]

Lindsay Kolowich Cox

Published: April 06, 2022

Animated GIFs are great additions to your marketing. They're easy to consume, provide a new way to capture your viewers' attention, and can have a serious emotional impact.

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The best part about GIFs is that they aren't too hard to make . If you have access to Photoshop and a few minutes to spare, you can create an animated GIF in no time.

In the following tutorial on making animated GIFs, I'm using the Creative Cloud 2015 version of Photoshop, but the steps should be similar in other versions.

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How to make a GIF

  • Upload your images to Photoshop.
  • Open up the Timeline window.
  • In the Timeline window, click "Create Frame Animation."
  • Create a new layer for each new frame.
  • Open the same menu icon on the right, and choose "Make Frames From Layers."
  • Under each frame, select how long it should appear for before switching to the next frame.
  • At the bottom of the toolbar, select how many times you'd like it to loop.
  • Preview your GIF by pressing the play icon.
  • Save and Export Your GIF.

How to Create an Animated GIF in Photoshop

If you already know how to create a GIF, skip to the section on how to use GIFs in your marketing materials . 

Here's an example of an animated GIF you might make using this tutorial:

Step 1: Upload your images to Photoshop.

If you already have images created ....

Gather the images you want in a separate folder. To upload them into Photoshop, click File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack.

load-file-into-stack

Then, select Browse, and choose which files you'd like to use in your GIF. Then, click OK.

load layers to create a gif

If you don't already have the series of images created ...

Create each frame of the animated GIF as a different Photoshop layer. To add a new layer, chose  Layer  >  New  >  Layer.

add-new-layer

Be sure to name your layers so you can keep track of them easily when you make your GIF. To name a layer, go to the Layer panel on the bottom right of your screen, double-click on the default layer name, and type in the name you want to change it to. Press Enter when you're finished.

name-layers

Once you have your layers in there and you've named them all, you're ready for step two.

Pro Tip: If you want to combine layers so they appear in a single frame in your GIF, turn visibility on for the layers you want to merge (by clicking on the "eye" to the left of each layer name so only the eyes for the layers you want to merge are open). Next, press Shift + Command + Option + E (Mac) or Shift + Ctrl + Alt + E (Windows). Photoshop will create a new layer containing the merged content, which you should also rename.

Step 2: Open up the Timeline window.

To open Timeline, go to the top navigation, choose Window > Timeline . The Timeline will let you turn different layers on and off for different periods of time, thereby turning your static image into a GIF.

open-timeline

The Timeline window will appear at the bottom of your screen. Here's what it looks like:

timeline-in-photoshop

Step 3: In the Timeline window, click "Create Frame Animation."

If it's not automatically selected, choose it from the dropdown menu -- but then be sure to actually click it, otherwise the frame animation options won't show up.

create-frame-animation

Now, your Timeline should look something like this:

timeline-with-frame-animation

Step 4: Create a new layer for each new frame.

To do this, first select all your layers by going to the top navigation menu and choosing  Select  > All Layers.

Then, click the menu icon on the right of the Timeline screen.

timeline-icon

From the dropdown menu that appears, choose Create new layer for each new frame.

new-layer-for-new-frame

Step 5: Open the same menu icon on the right, and choose "Make Frames From Layers."

This will make each layer a frame of your GIF.

make-frames-from-layers

Step 6: Under each frame, select how long it should appear for before switching to the next frame.

To do this, click the time below each frame and choose how long you'd like it to appear. In our case, we chose 0.5 seconds per frame.

choose-frame-time

Step 7: At the bottom of the toolbar, select how many times you'd like it to loop.

choose-loop-number

Step 8: Preview your GIF by pressing the play icon.

play-icon

Step 9: Save and Export Your GIF

Satisfied with your GIF? Save it to use online by going to the top navigation bar and clicking File  > Export >  Save for Web (Legacy)...

save-for-web

Next, choose the type of GIF file you'd like to save it as under the Preset dropdown. If you have a GIF with gradients, choose Dithered GIFs to prevent color banding.  If your image employs a lot of solid colors, you may opt for no dither. 

The number next to the GIF file determines how large (and how precise) the GIF colors will be compared to the original JPEGs or PNGs. According to Adobe ,  a higher dithering percentage translates to the appearance of more colors and detail -- but it increases the file size. 

save-for-web-preset-dropdown

Click Save at the bottom to save the file to your computer. Now you're ready to upload this GIF to use in your marketing!

Upload the GIF file into any place online that you'd put an image, and it should play seamlessly. Here's what the final product might look like:

How to Use GIFs in Your Marketing

1. on social media..

Pinterest was the first to enable animated GIFs, followed by Twitter. And by the summer of 2015, Facebook had also jumped on the GIF bandwagon. Then, Instagram changed the game with Boomerang, which lets users film and share their own GIFs. On any of these social feeds, animated GIFs can be a great way to stand out in a crowded feed.

For example, check out how Calm used a GIF of a heart drawing in this quote from Samuel Beckett to add animation to an otherwise text-heavy Instagram post: 

          View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Calm (@calm)

2. In your emails.

Animated GIFs display in email the same way a regular image does. So why not spruce up your email marketing by replacing still images with animated ones?

Not only could this help capture recipients' attention with novelty alone, but it could also have a direct impact on your bottom line.

For some brands, including an animated GIF in emails correlated with as much as a 109% increase in revenue. Using HubSpot’s free email marketing software is an easy way to accomplish this type of increase on your own site.

Make use of GIFs by showcasing products, making event announcements, or otherwise enticing readers. Check out the GIF below from The Hustle , which showcases various prizes email subscribers can win by referring the Hustle to friends: 

3. On websites and blog posts.

Finally, consider the power of using GIFs on webpages to draw a viewer's attention to a specific area, or engage a viewer in an otherwise text-heavy post.

Take a look at how Bloomberg uses stick figure animated GIFs in this article on the Beijing Winter Olympic Games:

If you don't have one, take a look at The 12 Best Graphic Design Portfolios We've Ever Seen, & How to Start Your Own . 

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in September 2013 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

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BEGINNER · 4 MIN

Create an animated GIF from a series of photos

Learn how to use a series of photos and frame animation to create an animated GIF.

A rocky shoreline by the water with mountains in the background

What you'll need

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to turn a series of photos into a looping animated GIF using Photoshop.

This technique works well for creating a timelapse animation using series of photos taken from a DSLR or point-and-shoot camera, or even a mobile device. For this example, we'll use a series of photos taken with burst mode from an iPhone. Download and unzip the sample assets above, or use your own sequence of photos.

Tip: You can also use this technique to create an animated GIF from a short video. Scroll down to the Optional Step 1 to learn how to start with a video file.

Import a series of photos

Open Photoshop and go to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack.

Click Browse and locate the photos you want to use. While holding down the Shift key, select all the files and click Open.

Click OK to import the photos into a single layered file.

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Note that a number of new layers have been created in the Layers panel on the right side of your workspace.

These individual layers will become the frames of the animated GIF.

The new layers in the Layers panel will become frames of the animation

Optional: Import a video

If you're starting with a short video, you'll first need to convert the frames of the video into individual layers. Go to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers....

Locate and select the video file you want to use and click Open.

Click OK to convert the video frames to a single layered file.

Note:  Photoshop may not be able to fully import a video that is too long. Use the options in the Import window to limit the amount of frames imported. You can select to import the entire video, or choose just a segment of the video. You can also limit the amount of frames imported to a set interval, such as every 2 frames.

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Open the Timeline

Go to Window > Timeline to open the Timeline panel.

Click the arrow on the button in the middle of the panel and select Create Frame Animation. Then click the button to create a new frame animation.

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Convert layers into animation frames

Click the menu icon from the upper right corner of the Timeline panel. Click Make Frames From Layers.

This will convert all the layers in the Layers panel into individual frames in your animation.

Choose the option: Make Frames From Layers

Click the Play button from the bottom of the Timeline panel (or press the Spacebar on your keyboard) to preview the animation.

Note:  If your animation is playing in reverse, click the Timeline menu icon again and select Reverse Frames.

Click the Timeline menu icon and select Reverse Frames

Set the animation to loop

Click the repeat menu from the bottom of the Timeline panel and select Forever. This will create a looping animation.

Select Forever in the Repeat menu

Export the animation as a GIF

Go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)...

  • Select GIF 128 Dithered from the Preset menu.
  • Select 256 from the Colors menu.
  • If you are using the GIF online or want to limit the file size of the animation, change Width and Height fields in the Image Size options.
  • Select Forever from the Looping Options menu.

Click the Preview... button in the lower left corner of the Export window to preview your GIF in a web browser.

Click Save... and select a destination for your animated GIF file.

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Congratulations! You have just created your animated GIF. Post it online to show it to the world.

Note that you can also use this technique for any layered Photoshop file.

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How To Make an Animated GIF in Photoshop (Fast & Easy!)

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Got an amazing scene from your favorite series or movie that you want to recreate as an animated GIF? In this tutorial, you’ll learn exactly how to make an animated GIF in Photoshop—it’s so fast and easy that even a beginner can follow along!

Table of contents

Create a new document, import a video, use the timeline panel to trim the video, loop video preview, export photoshop video layer as animated gif, my new video series on adobe.

To start the process of learning how to make an animated GIF in Photoshop, click on the Create new button.

photoshop tutorial gif animation

On the Preset Details panel , set the Width and Height to your desired dimensions. Set the Resolution to 72 Pixels/inch , so it’s web-friendly.

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Under Advanced Options , set the Color Profile to sRGB IE61966-2.1 .

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Then, click on the Create button.

To import a video, choose File > Place Embedded , locate the video file on your computer, and click on the Place button.

That places your video into the document window.

Transform the video to fit the canvas. 

You can always create a canvas with the same aspect ratio as your video, but we’ll create a square GIF for this tutorial.

Then, click on the checkmark icon to commit the changes.

Choose Window > Timeline . 

Click on the drop-down menu icon and select Create Video Timeline . 

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Then, press on the Create Video Timeline button to convert the video into a video layer, which allows you to apply animations, trim the video, and edit the audio.

To trim the video, click on the Play button to estimate where you want the GIF to start and end.

To find those in the timeline, click-and-drag the Playhead to scrub along the entire video timeline and place it where you want the video to start.

Once that is set, click-and-drag the video layer’s edge towards the Playhead until it snaps into place. 

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Click-and-drag the video layer towards the 00 starting point.

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Once again, use the Playhead to scrub along the video timeline to set the video’s end.

Then, click-and-drag the opposite edge of the video towards the Playhead until it snaps into place. 

You can click on the Play button to preview your clip.

Click on the Options icon > Loop Playback .

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Then, click on the Play button to set the video on an infinite loop. 

Choose File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy) .

The Save for Web window may sometimes be slow to open depending on your computer’s processing power, the file dimension, and the animation’s complexity.

On the right-side panel, set the File format to GIF, and the default setting should be appropriate. 

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Check the Image Size and make sure that it has the appropriate dimensions.

Under Animation , set the Looping Options to Forever . 

photoshop tutorial gif animation

 Preview the GIF by clicking on the Play button .

When you’re ready, simply click on the Save button, name your file, and click on the Save button to finalize your GIF!

In case you missed it, Adobe and Photoshop Training Channel partnered up for a 6-part series that introduces Photoshop users to Adobe Illustrator and Premiere Pro! 

It covers 3 videos for Adobe Illustrator from creating a logo, making scalable texts, and designing a business card!

For Adobe Premiere, you’ll learn how to color correct, animate graphics, and even resize a video for social media sharing!

This video series is perfectly designed to make you more comfortable using Adobe’s other applications, and you will surely have fun along the way.

So click here to start learning!

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Jesús Ramirez is a digital graphics expert, speaker, and educator specializing in Adobe Photoshop. Jesús is best known as the founder of the Photoshop Training Channel, one of the most popular Photoshop YouTube channels in the world. More.

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How to Make a GIF in Photoshop (+ 8 FREE Methods)

Learning how to make a GIF in Photoshop is fun! This step by step tutorial shows you the easy way. (We also include 8 free methods if you don't own Photoshop.)

Photoshop | Software | By Usnea Lebendig

Animated GIFs became hugely popular several years ago, yet never really seem to go out of vogue.

Not just a photo, but not quite a video file either, animated GIFs can be used for everything from memes and humor to marketing.

If you’re a a photographer who like to teach, animated GIFs are especially good for demonstrating brief techniques (like putting up a tripod or assembling a lighting setup) and/or illustrating the before-and-after of some phenomenal post-processing.

If you’re into creating videos, animated GIFs can also be used for attention-grabbing video previews.

There’s also a sort of pleasure in using your own images to create a GIF that expresses feelings that just can’t be described in words or a static image.

Luckily making animated GIFs from a series of photos isn’t that difficult, particularly if you use Photoshop.

This tutorial will focus on how to make an animated GIF in Photoshop, but we’ll also touch on a few other options if you don’t use Adobe products.

Let’s get started.

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Table of Contents

How to Make a GIF in Photoshop: Step by Step Tutorial

For this demo I chose a a series of images I took of one of my godsons playing on the beach. The images were taken using the burst mode feature of my camera.

Step 1: Load Your Images into Photoshop

Load files into a stack

If you have a series of images ready to go, import them into Photoshop via the “Load files into stack” script.

To make a GIF in Photoshop, you’ll need to first have a set of images you want to animate. For most photographers, it’s easiest to finish all the basic post-processing first and then export the photos to their own folder.

Once you have the images ready, open Photoshop and go to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack .

From there, click  Browse , navigate to the folder where the images are, and hold down the Shift key while selecting all the images you want to use. Click  Open and then  OK .

This tells Photoshop to import all the selected photos into a single file with each image on its own layer. They’ll show up in your layers panel on the right.

You can also opt out of using the default Photoshop import script and create the layers by hand. This is helpful sometimes when creating GIFs with animated or blinking text, banners, etc.

Either way, if you intend on making further changes to any of the images, it’ll be be best to rename each of the layers so you can figure out which layer you’re looking for at a glance.

Also, if file size is an issue for you, the fewer the frames the smaller the overall GIF and vice versa. (I know this is obvious but you’d be surprised how many people space this out!)

Note: If your source material is a video file, you can still use this tutorial. Just import the video via File > Import > Video Frames to Layers. 

Step 2: Open the Timeline Window

opening the Timeline window

The timeline window will allow you to animate your frames.

Once you have all of your images imported into Photoshop, you’ll need to make sure Photoshop’s Timeline window is open. This is where the animation will take place.

Since it’s not open by default, you’ll need to go up to Window > Timeline to make it visible. The window will appear at the bottom of your screen.

  • Read more: How to edit a PDF file in Photoshop

Step 3: Create  Frame Animation

Frame Animation

Choosing the frame animation option tells the Timeline to use a frame-by-frame style.

The Timeline window has two animation options: Create Video Timeline and Create Frame Animation .

The quickest and easiest way to make an animated GIF in Photoshop is through Frame Animation, so make sure that’s selected.

(You’ll find both of these options by clicking on the arrow on the button in the middle of the panel.)

Step 4: Convert the Layers into Frames

timeline drop-down menu

Sometimes the timeline dropdown menu can be hard to see. It’s the little menu icon located at the far right of the timeline.

Now it’s time to convert the layers into frames. Navigate to the tiny menu icon in the upper right corner of the Timeline panel. In the middle of the menu, you’ll see Make Frames From Layers .

Convert layers to frames

Once you click on the timeline menu icon, a drop-down menu will pop-up. Select “Make Frames From Layers.”

Like magic, all your layers will be converted into individual frames ready for animation.

The magic of Photoshop is that you’ll still be able to edit each individual frame in your Timeline as needed. You can turn layers on and off, move elements around in each of the individual frames, apply filters, rotate text, etc.

Step 5: Preview your GIF

Reverse the frames if necessary

If your frames are playing in reverse, go to the Timeline menu and select  Reverse Frames .

Now it’s time to preview your soon-to-be animated GIF.

You can do this by either clicking on the Play icon  at the bottom of the Timeline panel or by pressing the spacebar .

Also, depending on the order your images were imported, they might be playing in reverse. If this is true, the fix is simple: just click on the Timeline menu icon and select Reverse Frames .

Step 6: Adjust the Timing and Looping

Setting the frame timing

  • Adjusting the Timing (the speed)

Changing the GIF speed in Photoshop is pretty simple.

Photoshop’s default timing is set with no pause between the frames. Leaving it at that setting isn’t often the best choice. For some reason, the “0” setting for frame timing tends to make things flow strangely or sometimes even not at all.

Changing the timing is pretty easy. Simply click on the frame you wish to adjust, click on the arrow, and then choose a time from the dropdown menu. I’d recommend starting out with either 0.2 or 0.5 seconds.

\You can always change this later. (The frames in the demo GIF above are set to .2 seconds.)

Most animated GIFs are set to continually loop as long as they’re open, and that’s what Photoshop’s default is set to. But if you’re wanting the image to just repeat once or three times, etc. Photoshop gives you a few options.

Below the timeline and to the left of the play button, you’ll see Forever and an arrow signifying a dropdown menu. There are a few different looping options as well as the option to customize your own timing.

Remember, of at any time you don’t like the results you can always go back and change the timing and loop options or even the order of the frames.

Step 7: Save as an Animated GIF

save as a

Use Photoshop’s “Save for Web (Legacy)” under the Export menu.

Once you’ve got your settings dialed in and your GIF is moving the way you’d like it to, it’s time to save it and view it on other platforms (to make sure it runs the same outside of Photoshop).

The saving process here is a bit different than with standard images. Instead of hitting  Save  or  Save As , you’ll need to use File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy) .

If want to limit the file size of the GIF, you can always change the Height and Width fields in the Image Size options, or change the save quality. (I like to change dimensions before reaching this point, but either way works.)

Once you’re done, hit the  Save button.

Once the file has been saved as a GIF, make sure to view it outside of Photoshop in a couple of different places to make sure it runs well. Also, don’t forget to save the parent file as a .psd file too, in case you want to make changes later.

Note that if you plan to host the animated GIF on your own website, you should consider the final file size to ensure it loads quickly for users on slower Internet connections.

This may involve having to experiment with the optimization settings, such as reducing the number of colors or the amount of dither.

As you’ll see in my example at the start of the tutorial, there’s some color banding most noticeable in the sky, due in part to the heavy optimization I chose, in an attempt to reduce the file size – this resulted in a final GIF of 1.5MB.

How to Make a GIF in Photoshop: Video Tutorial

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Usnea Lebendig is an experienced photographer and reviewer who loves to photograph professionally and in moments where the world’s beauty and/or strangeness leaps in front of the lens.

Has anyone here made cinemagraphs? I’d love to hear your experiences with them.

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How To Easily Make An Animated GIF In Photoshop – Tutorial

From email newsletters to social media posts, GIFs can be a powerful way to enhance and bring emotion to your content. Here's how to create an animated GIF in Photoshop.

cropped methodshop icon 1024x1024

From email newsletters to social media posts, GIFs can be a powerful way to enhance and bring emotion to your content. Here’s how to create an animated GIF in Photoshop.

Build Your Layered Image In Photoshop

Open the timeline window, create frame animation, create a new frame for each frame in your gif animation, adjust frame delay durations, do you want a looping gif, press play and preview your animated gif, save your animated gif photoshop project, export your animated gif, adjust your gif file export options, save your gif animation, after you create your animated gif in photoshop, where should you use it, the history of the gif file format.

There’s a famous saying: An image is worth a thousand words. If that’s true, then depending on how many frames are in your animation, a GIF can be worth several thousand words. Somewhere between a still image and a video, the GIF hybrid file type allows you to create short image animations.

The survival of the GIF image file format is very admirable. Primarily used for ugly MySpace pages and annoying animated banner ads, animated GIFs were very popular in the 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, the GIF was not a respected file type. It was a symbol of bad design and many people predicted, and even hoped, that technologies like Adobe Flash and HTML5 would kill the GIF once and for all.

Not only has this older file format survived, but it’s thrived . Animated GIFs are an excellent way to capture an online audience’s attention and bring an extra element of excitement to your content.

Creating Animated GIFs Using Adobe Photoshop Or A Photoshop Alternative

There are plenty of websites and apps that can help you make animated GIFs. Some of my favorites include GIF Brewery (Mac) and GIPHY . Many of these services will even allow you to upload a video clip and convert it into a GIF. If you aren’t familiar with Adobe Photoshop , then you should try using one of those services.

Learning Photoshop isn’t easy, but if you know your way around Adobe Photoshop and need to make an animated GIF, then this tutorial is for you. This tutorial was made using the Adobe Photoshop 2020 version of Creative Cloud . If you have a different version of Photoshop, don’t worry. The basic steps of how to create an animated GIF in Photoshop will be similar in other versions of the application.

With a rough storyboard in mind, build your image project in a layered Photoshop file. In this example, I am animating the MethodShop logo. You can create folders for each frame or just compose all of the raw layers, it’s up to you. Don’t forget to name your animated GIF Photoshop layers! It will make the animation process a lot easier.

Once your file is ready to animate, open the Timeline window. The Timeline feature in Photoshop enables you to turn layers on and off over a period of time transforming your static image into an animated GIF.

  • Window > Timeline

In the Timeline window, you should need a drop-down menu with two options: Create Video Timeline and Create Frame Animation. If you don’t see the drop-down, then expand your window size and it should appear. Once you see it, click on the option that says Create Frame Animation.

  • Window > Timeline > Create Frame Animation

Arrange your layers for your first frame and then click on the “Create Frame” icon. Arrange your scene and Create Frame, then repeat. Each time you do this, a snapshot will be taken of your layered file. Continue creating frames for your animated GIF until you are done.

  • Window > Timeline > Create Frame

If your Photoshop file is already set up with a sequence of layers for your animation, then try the Make Frames From Layers option. In the top right of the Timeline menu, there’s a three-line hamburger menu option. Click on that and then choose “Make Frames From Layers”. Your Photoshop will then get automatically sequenced into a series of frames.

  • Window > Timeline > Make Frames From Layers

How long of a pause or delay would you like between frames? There’s a drop-down menu under each frame that allows you to customize your delay durations. Adjust the duration individually for each frame.

Do you want your GIF to loop? The bottom of the Timeline toolbar has an option where you can select how many times you’d like your animated GIF to loop. Select Forever if you want your image to loop infinitely. If you are creating an animated GIF banner ad, then select 3 times for your loop. Most ad networks require GIF ads to loop 3x or less or last 30 seconds or less.

Test your animated GIF in Photoshop by pressing the Play icon. Go back and make changes by selecting the frame you’d like to modify. Then preview again until you are happy.

If you haven’t already, now would be a good time to save your animated GIF in Photoshop. You can save an editable file as either a PSD or layered TIF file. Both of these file types will save your frame animation data.

  • File > Save

Animated Gif Photoshop Tutorial: Export Your Animated Gif

Are you happy with your animation sequence? Let’s export it as a GIF animation file using the “Save for Web” option.

  • File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)…

Not all GIF settings should be the same. You can make a variety of custom adjustments to your animated GIF in Photoshop before exporting it. Here are some of the most important settings that you can customize. Your goal should be to find a balance of settings that both make your file look great and keep your file size as small as possible.

  • File Type: You must select GIF, not JPG, WBMP, or PNG. If you don’t select GIF, then you will end up with a still image that doesn’t animate.
  • Color Palette: You will probably get the best results with either an Adaptive or Perceptual color pallette but you can try experimenting with other options.
  • Dither: If you have a lot of gradients in your animation, then choose Diffusion, Pattern, or Noise as one of your Dithering options. This will attempt to create a gradient effect using dots. But if your GIF is all solid colors, then select No Dither.
  • Colors: The most important option on this screen is your color count. Using more colors will increase your file size. Less is less. Try to get this number as low as possible. Using fewer colors will decrease your file size.
  • Web Snap: An easy way to decrease file size is to restrict your file colors to standard web colors. Try to get your Web Snap percentage as high as possible without making your image look like crap.
  • Animation: Don’t make all of your file adjustments based on a single frame in your animation. Toggle back and forth between frames while you experiment with your settings.

That’s it! You just made an animated GIF in Photoshop! The final step is to click the Save button in the bottom right of your screen. This will save your animated GIF file on to your computer. Open your GIF in a web browser and test it out. Then, if necessary, go back and make any adjustments.

Congrats! You just made an animated GIF in Photoshop. Here are some of the places that you can use your GIF:

  • Social Media: Social media sites including Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter all accept GIFs. They didn’t initially, but all started accepting GIFs in 2015.
  • Presentations: You can also use your GIF in presentations using Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides.
  • Emails: You can’t include rich media content, like videos, in an email. But you can use a GIF. Adding GIFs to newsletters is becoming a very popular tactic.
  • Websites: You can use GIFs to help bring your blog posts to life. Here’s an example .
  • Advertising: Although not as popular as HTML5 ads, GIF banner ads are still very common online. Many ad networks have restrictions on GIF ads. In general, you should try to keep your GIF banner ads under 150 kb and your animations under 30 seconds with a max loop of 3x.

GIF is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format . The GIF image file format was created by the dial-up Internet service company CompuServe in 1987. Although GIFs may not look as clean or be as small as JPG files, GIFs have two major advantages over other web-compatible image file types: transparencies and animation.

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J. Frank Wilson

Frank Wilson is a retired teacher with over 30 years of combined experience in the education, small business technology, and real estate business. He now blogs as a hobby and spends most days tinkering with old computers. Wilson is passionate about tech, enjoys fishing, and loves drinking beer.

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Creating a Simple Animated GIF

This exercise is excerpted from Noble Desktop’s past Photoshop Animated GIFs training materials and is compatible with Photoshop updates through 2019. To learn current skills in Photoshop, check out our Photoshop Bootcamp and graphic design classes in NYC and live online.

Note: These materials are provided to give prospective students a sense of how we structure our class exercises and supplementary materials. During the course, you will get access to the accompanying class files, live instructor demonstrations, and hands-on instruction.

Topics covered in this Photoshop tutorial:

Creating a frame animation, Adding frames, Setting frame duration using the frame delay option, Testing the animation, Saving as an animated GIF

Exercise Preview

ex prev 1A

Exercise Overview

In this exercise, you’ll learn how to create a simple animation with flashing text in Photoshop. We’ll show you how to create a frame animation in an existing Photoshop file, test the animation, and save it as a GIF file for viewing on the web.

Previewing the Finished Animation

Download the class files . Refer to the Downloading the Class Files page at the beginning of the workbook on how to download and install the class files.

Launch any web browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.).

Press Cmd–O (Mac) or Ctrl–O (Windows) and navigate to Desktop > Class Files > Animated GIFs Class > NYC Tours .

Double–click on nyc-tours.gif .

Watch the animation loop a few times to get a feel for what we’ll be working towards. There is a cycling list of tours at the bottom followed by a flashing 10% OFF banner over a static NYC background.

Getting Started

Launch Photoshop.

NOTE: This book has been tested with Photoshop 2020 . If you’re using an older or newer version, most things should still work the same or similarly.

  • Go to File > Open .
  • Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > Animated GIFs Class > NYC Tours .
  • Double–click on nyc-tours.psd .
  • Go to File > Save As .
  • Name the file yourname-nyc-tours.psd and navigate into Class Files > Animated GIFs Class > NYC Tours .

Click Save .

If a dialog pops up asking if you want to Maximize Compatibility , just leave it checked. Then check on Don’t show again and click OK .

Creating a Frame Animation

We have an existing Photoshop file with all the elements we want to animate, but right now it’s just a static layered image. We first need to tell Photoshop that we want to create an animation.

Open the Timeline panel by going to Window > Timeline .

There are two options within the Timeline panel: Create Video Timeline and Create Frame Animation . The Video Timeline option is similar to video editing software—it shows what each element in the file is doing for the duration of the video/animation.

Frame Animation shows us what the image looks like during each chunk of time, instead of showing what each element does in a timeline. Each chunk of time is called a frame. By changing how elements look from one frame to the other, we can build our animation.

timeline down arrow

In the Timeline panel, click the Create Frame Animation button.

Adding Frames

At the bottom of our animation, we want to cycle between different tourist spots in NYC before ending on a final message. To accomplish this, we will need to set up multiple frames in our animation, and change the text from frame to frame. First, let’s take a look at how the text layers are set up in the file.

Open the Layers panel ( Window > Layers ) if it isn’t already open.

layer group arrow

As you can see, we have five different text layers. Currently they are all hidden except for the Statue of Liberty text layer. We’ll show these layers one at a time.

new button

This creates a new frame (chunk of time) in our animation that’s identical to our first frame. We need to change the second frame so that it displays the next set of text.

eye hide show icon

Click on the first frame in the Timeline panel, then click back to the second frame again to see how the two frames are now slightly different.

Changing the Size of a Frame’s Thumbnail

panel menu

This created a third frame in our animation. Because we had the second frame selected when we made a duplicate, right now the third frame looks identical to the second frame.

Repeat the previous steps to create a fourth frame that hides the Grand Central text layer and shows the Times Square text layer.

Create a fifth frame that hides the Times Square text layer and shows the BOOK NOW! text layer.

Setting Frame Duration

Now that we’ve created the frames for our animation, we now have to set how long we want each frame to last.

Notice that the bottom of each frame currently says 0 sec.

This is how long each frame will last. We want them to be more than zero seconds each though.

Click 0 sec. on the first frame to change how long that frame will last.

From the menu that appears, choose 1.0 to set the first frame’s duration to 1 sec.

We want all our frames to last the same amount of time. Instead of setting each one individually however, we can set the timing for multiple frames at once.

  • Click on the second frame.

Then Shift–click on the fifth frame so that the last four frames are all selected.

Click 0 sec. on the second frame, and choose 1.0 .

All the frames are now set to 1 sec.

As shown below, at the bottom left of the Timeline panel, the looping menu will probably say Forever or Once . From the menu choose Forever so that the animation loops forever:

forever loop

Testing the Animation

Now it’s time to test the animation! We don’t have to export the file as an animated GIF to see it working. Photoshop can give us a rough idea of how the animation looks so far.

play button

Watch as the text at the bottom changes each second, cycling through the different NYC tourist spots. As we specified, the animation also continues to loop forever.

stop button

Adding Flashing Text

Let’s make the 10% OFF (on the teal banner at the top left) flash. To create flashing text, we will need to create several more frames so that our text can disappear and reappear a few times.

  • In the Timeline panel, select frame 5 .

With frame 6 still selected in the Timeline panel, hide the 10% OFF text layer.

In the Layers panel, make the 10% OFF text layer visible in the new frame.

Select frame 8 in the Timeline panel.

Hide the 10% OFF text layer in the Layers panel.

It looks good, but the 10% OFF text should flash faster.

  • Click on frame 6 .

Shift–click on frame 9 to select all the frames with the 10% OFF text.

On frame 6, click on 1 sec. and select 0.2 to change frames 6–9 to 0.2 sec.

The 10% OFF text is now flashing faster, but the final frame should last longer so viewers can read the full ad one last time before the animation starts over.

Select frame 9 and set it to 2 sec. (2.0).

Do a File > Save .

Saving as an Animated GIF

To save as an animated GIF, we need to use the Save for Web option.

Go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy) .

NOTE: Save for Web is marked as Legacy because Adobe won’t be updating it to support new features such as artboards. Adobe introduced newer exporting methods such as File > Export > Export As . These new methods may be suitable in some cases, but they are currently not as developed and lack some options found in Save for Web . For example, they do not support animated GIFs, but Save for Web does. Adobe is keeping Save for Web until the new methods can fully replace it.

A new window appears, allowing you to adjust compression settings and preview the final image. Click the 2-Up tab at the top.

You’re now looking at two images. The first is the original uncompressed image and the second is the compressed version.

  • Choose View > Fit on Screen to zoom in more.

In the settings on the right, from the Preset menu, choose GIF 128 No Dither .

The goal when saving any graphic for the web, is to get the smallest file size possible without losing image quality. Animated GIFs require a little more work when optimizing because you have to check to make sure any changes you make to the settings look good throughout the animation by checking every frame.

As shown below, at the bottom under Animation , there are buttons that allow you to preview the animation and step through it frame by frame. Go ahead and try them out.

NOTE: Keep in mind that if you press Play, the animation may play at a slower speed than in the final file.

animation preview dialog

Before we change any compression settings, make sure you are on a frame where most of our elements are shown, like frame 2.

Change Colors to 256 .

GIFs can have up to 256 colors. You can reduce file size by reducing the total number of colors in an image.

Notice the file size below the image preview. It is currently at around 59K.

Let’s reduce the number of colors to see if we can lower our file size without losing too much image quality.

Change Colors to 128 .

Using the buttons below Animation , step through the animation frame by frame to see if reducing the colors made a difference in our image quality.

The image still looks good, but notice the file size has been reduced to around 44K.

Let’s see if we can reduce the colors any more.

Change Colors to 64 .

Notice we are getting some banding under the teal banner on the top left and towards the top right of the image around the building under construction. We lost some file size, but it’s not worth the loss in image quality.

Change Colors back to 128 .

From the menu to the left of Colors , choose the Perceptual color palette.

Adaptive , Selective , and Perceptual base their color choices on the actual image. The other options are preset color palettes, and therefore are typically not desirable. We chose Perceptual in this case because it was the smallest file size, and visually there was almost no difference between the three options.

Notice our file size is currently at around 42K.

We don’t have any transparency in our file, so in the settings, uncheck Transparency .

Notice the file size below the image preview to see that the file size has increased.

That’s strange! Normally, it would make sense to uncheck Transparency if a file isn’t using it. However, bizarrely enough, even though we do not have transparency in this file, checking Transparency on reduces our file size.

Having Transparency checked on makes no visual difference to our file, so let’s check it on to save on file size.

In the settings, check on Transparency .

NOTE: You should always check to see if the Transparency option makes any difference in the file size of your GIFs. Like we saw here, even though a file doesn’t have any transparency, checking the option on reduces our file size.

Using the buttons below Animation , step through the animation frame by frame to make sure it looks good.

From the Metadata menu, choose None .

This saves us a little bit on file size, although you may not see any noticeable change in the file size preview in Photoshop.

Name it yourname-nyc-tours.gif and navigate into Class Files > Animated GIFs Class > NYC Tours .

To preview the file, open a browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.).

Press Cmd–O (Mac) or Ctrl–O (Windows) and navigate to Class Files > Animated GIFs Class > NYC Tours .

Double–click yourname-nyc-tours.gif .

You should see your animated GIF playing! Hurray!

Checking File Size

If you compare the file size that was listed in the Save for Web window with the file size listed on your system, you may notice that they don’t match up. This is mostly due to your operating system handling size calculations differently. It may also be because your system is tacking on some metadata to your file. There are some tools out there that can further reduce your file size by optimizing compression parameters and removing junk metadata. For more information on how you can further reduce the file size of your images, read the Image Optimization Tools reference at the end of the book.

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How to Edit Animated GIFs in Photoshop

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Few internet phenomena have survived quite as long as the GIF. While it can technically be used as a still image format, the feature that enshrined the GIF in the hall of internet fame is its ability to display multiple frames within a single file, allowing it to become a quick way to share short video clips.

Photoshop is one of the most powerful image editing tools ever created, and for a long, strange time in its development, Adobe was adding every single feature they could think of, from 3D model painting to video editing. 

After a while, Photoshop became a bloated mess, and Adobe finally began to remove some of these additional features and split them off into their own dedicated editing apps. 

While GIFs are often used to display videos, they’re still technically an image format, not a video format, which means that Photoshop still has the ability to edit GIFs . 

If you’ve got a favorite GIF that you want to edit, Photoshop is a great tool for creating seamless edits (or utterly ridiculous ones, if that’s more your style). 

Note: for this tutorial, I’m going to assume that you want to edit an animated GIF. Editing a GIF that’s just a still image works exactly the same way as editing any other image, and doesn’t require any special instructions.

The GIF used in this tutorial is from Giphy.com by Luis Ricardo.

Table of Contents

Step 1: Opening A GIF For Editing

Step 2: set up your workspace, adding adjustment layers, other edits, step 4: exporting your gif, a final word.

This is definitely the easy part! To open an existing GIF for editing, just use the standard process for opening any image in Photoshop: Open the File menu, click Open , and then browse to find the GIF file that you want to open. 

Click the Open button, and Photoshop will load your GIF file. 

photoshop tutorial gif animation

You’ll notice that Photoshop splits each frame of the animated GIF into a separate layer in the Layers panel. 

photoshop tutorial gif animation

You can use the Layers panel to select and edit individual frames, but you’ll find yourself constantly toggling layer visibility on and off in order to see one frame at a time, and there’s a better and faster way to do it: the Timeline panel.

Unless you skimmed past the intro, you’ll remember that Photoshop has some video editing capabilities, and that’s what you’ll need to use to complete the editing process. 

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Open the Window menu and select Timeline . Photoshop will open a new panel along the bottom of the main document window. 

photoshop tutorial gif animation

If you’ve ever used a video editing app, the concept is probably quite familiar to you, but for those of you who aren’t veteran video editors, it’s still an easy idea to pick up. In essence, the Timeline is a horizontal, time-based layer stack that runs from left to right.

Just think of it like the progress bar that you see when watching a streaming video, except that instead of a simple colored line indicating your position in the video, you see a row of thumbnails displaying each frame instead. 

Selecting a frame to edit within the Timeline panel allows you to automatically display it in the main document window without having to mess around with the layer visibility in the Layers panel. 

The Timeline panel also allows you to do some other important jobs, such as controlling the length of time each frame is displayed, quickly changing the order of your frames, and getting an animated preview of your file.

Step 3: Applying Your Edits

Applying Photoshop concepts to an animated video can be a bit difficult to grasp at first, but you’ll get the hang of it. Here’s a quick explanation of some of the more common Photoshop edits that you can apply to an animated GIF. 

Unfortunately, because of the nature of how each frame is constructed, it’s not always possible to apply these edits non-destructively, but it is sometimes. 

If you want to adjust the entire GIF using an adjustment layer, you can simply create a new adjustment layer at the very top of the layer stack in the Layers panel . 

Scroll up to the top of the Layers panel, select your last frame (which is shown at the top of the layer stack), and then add your adjustment layer. This will apply the effect to every frame/layer listed below it.

You can also apply adjustment layers to individual frames. Select the frame you want to edit using the Timeline panel, and then scroll to find the corresponding frame in the Layers panel and click to select it there too. 

Open the Layer menu, select the New Adjustment Layer submenu, then select your chosen adjustment type. In the New Adjustment Layer dialog box, make sure you check the box labeled Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask.

photoshop tutorial gif animation

You can also create an adjustment layer using the Adjustments panel, but it doesn’t offer you the same checkbox option. 

Instead, once you’ve got your adjustment layer added in the right place, hold down the Option key and place your mouse cursor over the line between the adjustment layer and your target layer in the Layers panel. 

photoshop tutorial gif animation

You’ll see the cursor change, indicating that you can convert the layer mask into a clipping mask , which effectively restricts the adjustment layer to the single layer below it. As you can see in the screenshot above, only layer/frame 45 has its color modified. 

When I said that you can do any Photoshop edit you want to your image frames, I meant it! You can use the clone tool, artistic filters, or just about anything else that you can imagine to spice up your GIFs. Just remember – because layers are treated as frames, you won’t be able to use the non-destructive image editing techniques that are standard practice for editing still images. 

This is probably the trickiest part of the GIF editing process in Photoshop, but it’s easy enough to do once you know what to look for. The only real trick is to use the Save For Web (Legacy) exporting method instead of the newer and more streamlined Export As method. 

First, make sure that you’ve got all the frames of your animation selected in the Timeline panel, or Photoshop will only export your currently selected single frame and your animation will turn into a static image. 

photoshop tutorial gif animation

You could select each frame manually, but there’s a helpful popup menu hidden in the upper right corner of the Timeline panel (shown above). Open the menu and click Select All Frames .

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Next, open the File menu, select the Export submenu, and click Save For Web (Legacy) . You can also use the difficult keyboard shortcut Command + Option + Shift + S (use Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S if you’re working on a PC).

photoshop tutorial gif animation

The Save For Web dialog can be a bit overwhelming at first glance, but there are only a few things you’ll need to confirm before you export your newly-edited GIF. 

photoshop tutorial gif animation

First of all, make sure that the Save For Web dialog is set to use the GIF file type. It may be set there by default because it knows you’re editing a GIF file, but sometimes presets or past usage can interfere with that. 

The top section of the dialog allows you to customize all the color export options for your GIF animation. GIFs can support a maximum of 256 colors, so you’re probably going to want to keep it that high or you’ll lose some image quality. 

However, because animated GIFs contain multiple frames, your file size can easily grow very large, and nobody is expecting a GIF animation to be cinematic quality. The current size of your GIF file can be previewed in the bottom left corner of the preview window. 

You’ll have to experiment with the settings a bit to find the right balance of image quality and file size.

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Last but not least, make sure to customize the Animation section to control the looping aspect of your animation. Most GIFs that are spread around the web loop continually, but you can disable it or set it to loop a specific number of times only. 

Oddly, I find that the animation preview controls don’t work properly on my PC: the Play button doesn’t do anything, but the frameskip buttons all work, so you can still get a stop-motion preview of your final animation. 

It all works perfectly when using Photoshop on my Mac, but perhaps your experience will vary a bit (even though it shouldn’t).

Once you’re happy with the final settings, click the Save button. Enter a filename in the Save dialog box, click Save one last time, and Photoshop will export your GIF to the location you specified. 

Congratulations, you’ve just edited a GIF in Photoshop! If you’re serious about editing GIFs regularly, you might want to find a program that’s dedicated to editing animated GIFs and other types of video, but for the occasional fun editing project, Photoshop is a great choice – especially if you’ve already got it installed.

Happy animating!

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How to make a GIF animation in Photoshop

  • May 24 2018

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Using an animated GIF is a great way to showcase your work and show the building process of it and that’s what i’m going to show you today, you’ll learn How to make a GIF animation in Photoshop by discovering how to use the timeline frame animation feature to create looping GIFs

In the following tutorial on making an animated GIF, i’ll be using the 2018 version of Photoshop, but the steps should be similar in other versions.

Watch the video tutorial

How to make an animated GIF in Photoshop

So this is the image that you were going to be working on, this is from a project that I did a while ago, if you wanna learn more about how I created this image click here

How to make a GIF animation in Photoshop

so what we’re going to do is create an looping GIF animation that shows the process of putting together this image from the start to the end, and to learn How to make a GIF animation in Photoshop, we need to first show the timeline by going To window timeline

How to make a GIF animation in Photoshop

so this frame represents what is visible in the layers panel and what you see on the canvas

How to make a GIF animation in Photoshop

then from the drop-down menu select the panels menu then go to the very bottom where you see timeline frames, new frame and you can see that I added the f8 shortcut for new frame

How to make a GIF animation in Photoshop

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How to Make an Animated GIF in Photoshop

With Adobe Photoshop, you can easily create an original animated GIF file (graphics interchange format) from a series of photos. In this tutorial, we’ll break down the step-by-step process of how to make an animated GIF in Photoshop.

birds flapping wings sequence images

1. Select which photos you want to use for your GIF

For the best GIF possible, use a series of images taken in rapid succession. Time lapse images or images shot in burst mode work the best. That’s because they make your GIF feel like a short looping video. The more frames you use in your GIF, the smoother the animation effect will be.

A total of 15-24 still images usually work best. Make sure the image size for each of your frames is the same, so double check the pixel count. Put all of the frames you want to use in a folder on your desktop or a hard drive. That will make it easier to find them easily in Photoshop.

How to Make an Animated GIF in Photoshop select images

2. Import your photos into Adobe Photoshop

Open Adobe Photoshop. From the File menu, select Scripts > Load Files into Stack. This will open a new dialogue box. Click Browse to find the folder you created on your desktop or hard drive that contains the images you want to include in your GIF.

Press the Shift key to select multiple images. Once all the image files you want to use are highlighted, click OK. Next you’ll see all the files you selected, listed in the Load Layers dialog box.

Click OK, and Photoshop will then open the selected images as individual layers in a new document.

How to Make an Animated GIF in Photoshop timeline panel

3. Access the Timeline panel

From the Window menu, select Timeline to open the Timeline panel in your workspace. By default, the Timeline panel will open at the bottom of your screen.

In the center of the Timeline panel, you’ll see a button that says Create Video Timeline, with an arrow next to it. Click the arrow, and select Create Frame Animation from the drop-down menu.

Now the button will say Create Frame Animation. Click that button.

How to Make an Animated GIF in Photoshop animation frames

4. Convert your image layers into animation frames

In the top right corner of the Timeline panel, you’ll see a menu icon (four horizontal lines). Click that menu icon to bring up a drop-down menu with animation options.

Click Make Frames From Layers. This will convert the images in the Layers panel into individual frames in your GIF.

Now you should see a thumbnail of each of your image layers in the Timeline panel. Click the Play button to preview how your GIF animation will look.

How to Make an Animated GIF in Photoshop loop animation forever

5. Loop your animation

In the bottom left of the Timeline panel, you’ll see a few choices for looping options. Adobe Photoshop lets you decide if you want your GIF to play through once, three times, or forever. You can select other looping options manually by selecting Other.

Forever is often selected by default. If one of the other options is selected, click the arrow next to the listed duration. Then select Forever from the drop-down menu.

Click the Play icon one more time to make sure you like how the animated GIF looks.

How to Make an Animated GIF in Photoshop export animation gif

6. Export your animation as a GIF file

From the File menu, select Export > Save for Web (Legacy). This will bring up a new settings dialogue box. Here are the ideal settings to choose when saving your work in the GIF file format:

  • Under Preset, select GIF 128 Dithered.
  • In Colors, select 256.
  • Under Image Size, you can adjust the physical dimensions of your GIF. If your original image files were very large, you should reduce the dimensions of your GIF for better online viewing. As you adjust the dimensions, you’ll see the estimated file size change in the bottom left corner of the GIF preview.
  • Under Looping Options, make sure Forever is still selected.

Click Preview in the bottom left corner of the dialogue box to see how your GIF will look in a web browser window.

Click Save, which will open a new save options dialog box. Name your file, choose a destination, and click Save. That’s it! You’ve made your own quick and easy GIF in Adobe Photoshop. Now you can upload it to social media, add it to websites, or do anything else you want with it!

See the final GIF:

Want to learn more Adobe Photoshop tricks? Check out our other guides:

How to Remove the Background of an Image in Photoshop

6 Adobe Photoshop Tips and Tricks for Beginners

How to Select and Change Color in Photoshop

How to Lighten and Brighten Eyes in Adobe Photoshop CC

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Changing backgrounds just got crazy easy thanks to AI. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how swap backgrounds in your images with shocking ease. Get ready for mind-blowing results in just a few clicks!

Go PRO: Go beyond the basics! Master advertising design in Photoshop with our PRO tutorial, packed with advanced techniques and strategies. Photoshop for Advertising: Master Graphics, Mockups and Designs .

Animate with AI

Get ready to impress with this amazing technique! We’ll use AI to transform a single product photo into a captivating animated gift. Simply, open Photoshop and follow the steps below:

Selecting the Subject

1. Open your product photo in Photoshop. 2. Use the “Select Subject” tool to automatically isolate your product. 3. Fine-tune the selection with the Lasso tool, holding “Alt/Option” to subtract areas. Don’t worry about a perfect edge; AI will fill in the gaps!

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Inverse the Selection

4. Make sure you’re on the “Background” layer. 5. Click “Inverse” in the “Select” menu to select everything except your product.

Work with AI

6. Get ready for the magic! Click “Generative Fill” in the “Edit” menu. 7 . Type in a descriptive prompt for your desired background, like “white marble display, front view.” 8. Hit “Generate” and watch AI work its wonders. Choose the background you love! 9. Repeat with different prompts like “rustic wood display” or “broken stone display” to create multiple variations.

photoshop tutorial gif animation

Save Your Animated GIF

10. Click “Save” in the “File” menu and choose “Save for Web (Legacy).” 11. Select “GIF” as the format and adjust settings like animation loop and timing. 12. Hit “Save” and admire your animated creation!

You’re all set! You’ve successfully created an animated GIF using AI. Remember you can experiment with different prompts and see what creative backgrounds AI generates. This technique is perfect for product photos, but don’t limit yourself! Have fun and explore the possibilities.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

The PNG file format is widely used on websites to display high-quality digital images. Created to exceed the performance of GIF files, PNGs offer not just lossless compression, but also a much broader and brighter color palette. Read on to discover the pros and cons of PNGs, their main uses, and how to create a PNG image.

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History of the PNG file

What are PNG files used for?

Pros and cons of PNG files

How to open a PNG file

How to create and edit a PNG file

PNG files: frequently asked questions

What is a png file.

PNG is short for Portable Network Graphic, a type of raster image file. It’s particularly popular file type with web designers because it can handle graphics with transparent or semi-transparent backgrounds. The file format isn’t patented, so you can open a PNG using any image editing software without the need for licensing.

PNG files, which use the .png extension, can handle 16 million colors — which definitely sets them apart from most file types.

History of the PNG file.

The PNG image format launched in 1995. IT expert Oliver Fromme came up with the name PING, later shortened to PNG.

PNGs are the next evolution of the GIF format, which had already been around for eight years when PNGs first launched. GIFs had several drawbacks, like requiring a patent license and a limited range of just 256 colors, which didn’t keep pace with ever-improving computer screen resolution. To avoid these issues, PNG files were made patent-free and included a significantly larger color palette. PNGs, as opposed to GIFs, are a single-image format — they don’t support animation.

The Portable Network Graphic is a versatile image file format. Here are just a few ways you can use PNGs:

Logos with transparent backgrounds.

Designers often use PNG files for logos. That’s because the format supports transparent backgrounds, which means designers can layer logo files on different backgrounds in a way that looks natural.

Online charts and graphics.

The PNG format uses lossless compression, which means that this file type retains of all its original data when compressed. This makes PNGs great for detailed graphics and charts on websites because none of the vital information gets lost.

Discover more raster files

Pros and cons of PNG files.

With PNGs, there are many advantages — but also some disadvantages — to consider before using the file format:

Advantages of PNG files.

  • By handling millions of color options rather than hundreds, PNG files can store much more detailed images than GIFs.
  • PNG is open format, so you can view and edit these files in a huge range of programs without a license because there’s no patent.
  • A PNG image won’t lose any of its data when it’s compressed, which makes it much easier to store and transfer. This is a big advantage over lossy options like JPEG files , where some information disappears in the compression process.

Disadvantages of PNG files.

  • By retaining all its original data when compressed, a PNG file will generally be a lot larger in size than a GIF or JPEG. This means it’ll take up more room on your computer’s hard drive.
  • From the outset, PNGs were designed with the web in mind. Because of this, they don’t support CMYK color modes, so transferring them to print can prove difficult.
  • Although compressed PNGs contain high-quality, detailed image data, their larger file size means slower page loading times and responsiveness.

How to open a PNG file.

Nearly all built-in image editing programs can open PNG files. Whether you use a Mac or Windows computer, simply search for the file name and double-click on it. You can then c hoose the program you want to use from the list of options your computer gives you.

All the major web browsers can also open PNGs, including Chrome, Edge and Safari. To view it, just drag and drop a PNG file from your desktop to your browser.

How to create and edit a PNG file.

Follow these three easy steps to create a PNG using Adobe Photoshop :

  • Open an existing image file in Photoshop and click Save As.
  • Select PNG from the Format menu in the box that appears.
  • Save your new PNG file to a location of your choice.

To edit the transparency of your image:

  • Open your PNG file in Photoshop and click Window, then Layers.
  • In the Layers panel, click on the Background layer followed by OK.
  • Select the Opacity menu within the Layers panel. You can then choose a percentage below 100% to alter your image’s transparency.

Does the PNG format ever support animation?

What are the differences between png and jpeg files.

The simple answer is that PNGs offer lossless compression and JPEG files don’t. This means, unlike JPEGs, PNGs don’t lose any of their image data when they’re compressed. On the flipside, lossless compression tends to make PNGs much bigger files than JPEGs, so they require more storage space.

Find out more about the differences between PNGs and JPEGs .

Are PNGs raster or vector files?

Do pngs support exif data from digital cameras, how effectively do png files display written text, xl spacing, grid width 8.

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GIMP 2.99.18 Released: The Last Development Preview Before 3.0!

At long last, we bring you the final development version before GIMP 3! While the release of 2.99.18 is a bit behind our intended schedule , there are a number of new features and improvements that we’re very excited to share with you.

⚠️ ☢️ We remind that a development version means that this is a release to show work-in-progress but also give an opportunity to the community to detect issues early and report issues. In other word, this is an unstable version and we do not recommend to use it in production. Use it because you want to help GIMP improve by reporting bugs .

This version 2.99.18 in particular might be one of the most unstable releases in the 2.99 series because of the space invasion. It is expected and normal. ⚠️ ☢️

  • (Color) Space Invasion
  • Improved Color Algorithms
  • Initial Non-Destructive Editing
  • Font Handling Improvements
  • Auto-Expanding Layers
  • New Snapping Options
  • Welcome Dialog
  • HEIF and JPEG - XL
  • New image format supports: Farbfeld, Esm Software PIX , HEJ2
  • New palette format support: Swatchbooker
  • Wayland Tablet Pad Interactions
  • API  Updates
  • GEGL and babl
  • Release stats
  • Team news and release process
  • Mirror News
  • GIMP on Windows/ ARM
  • Downloading GIMP  2.99.18
  • What’s next

This news post lists the most notable and visible changes. We do not list minor bug fixes or smaller improvements here. To get a more complete list of changes, you should refer to the NEWS file or look at the commit history .

(Color) Space Invasion ¶

We have been working very hard on the Space Invasion project, which is — as you might recall  — our codename for the project of making GIMP more correct regarding colors.

Lately we have been porting older internal color structures ( GimpRGB , GimpCMYK , GimpHSV …) which we used to carry color information to GeglColor . This generic object can contain any color data regardless of color model, precision or space supported by babl , our pixel encoding engine.

What it means for color correctness in particular is that we will now do color conversion only when needed (last-second conversion) and therefore won’t lose information when it could have been avoided. For instance, say you color-pick color from an image: if we were to convert to an intermediate format, before using it on a second image (which may or may not be in another color format), we’d do 2 conversions. Which means more possibility of precision loss. The issue is even more flagrant if the input and output formats are the same (i.e. no conversion should happen at all). And this will be even more a problem when we will have core CMYK backend (we really want to avoid doing a round-trip to an intermediate format with CMYK , which doesn’t have bijective conversion with most other color models, even when working unbounded and ignoring precision issues).

We are also slowly moving stored data to this generic color object. In particular it means that color palettes will be able to contain CMYK colors, CIELAB colors or in any other supported model (and not only these colors after a conversion to unbounded sRGB).

A consequence for code maintainance is that it makes it a lot easier to handle color conversions within our codebase, now that the structure embeds both the data and its “meaning”. It makes color handling a lot less bug-prone compared to when we had to keep track of both information as separate data.

Lastly we are working toward showing color space information in various parts of the interface, when relevant, such as when displaying or choosing RGB , CMYK , HSL or HSV data. Values in these color models without the associated color space are near-meaningless. Interface displaying values in RGB without further information are a remnant of the past when it mostly meant sRGB. This is clearly not true anymore in modern graphic work and the interface should make this clear.

The below video shows some of this interface work where RGB , HSV or CMYK models for instance are always displaying the color space the values are in (which very often means the name of the ICC profile). This is being done in the color picker tool, color samples, FG / BG Color dockable, “ Change Foreground/Background Color ” dialog and in more places.

Not only this, but when people select a soft-proofing profile and activate soft-proofing (e.g. through the nice new simulation toggle which was added in GIMP 2.99.12 ), we will also show out-of-gamut area not only within the image’s color space, but also the soft-proof space.

Very important warning : this is once again a huge port in our codebase, which impacted litterally thousands of lines of code. This work is unfinished though it will have to be finished before the first release candidate. Therefore unstabilities or bugs are to be expected in this update so if you encounter any issue, we recommend to report them .

Improved Color Algorithms ¶

Øyvind Kolås improved a few internal algorithms:

  • Achromatic pixels in the Hue-Saturation tool are now special-cased so that grayscale pixels (saturation of 0) are only changed by the master adjustment, not by the red adjustment.
  • Grayscale gradients are now kept achromatic even with “Dithering” checked in the Gradient tool.

As the space invasion project goes on, getting things consistent is getting easier in various color-related algorithms, hence enabling us to discover issues quickly and fix them.

Initial Non-Destructive Editing ¶

One area we’re “ahead of schedule” on is the much-requested non-destructive editing! The foundation for these features has been laid by many developers over many years, since the introduction of GEGL into GIMP . Originally planned for the 3.2 roadmap, an initial implementation was made as a continuation of a Google Summer of Code project. If you are not familiar with the term, “non-destructive editing” means that filter effects such as Blur are kept separate from the layer’s pixels. This means that if later on you want to change a setting, rearrange, or even remove the filter, you can easily do so without affecting the rest of the image. Until now, GIMP has followed a destructive editing workflow where effects were immediately merged down onto the layer, so this is a major change!

Any GEGL operation that has a GUI is now applied to layers non-destructively (Non-destructive effects for layer masks and channels are planned for future updates.). This includes third-party GEGL plug-ins and custom operations created with our GEGL Graph tool. These effects can be saved and loaded in .xcf project files, although not all GEGL properties are supported in the current build.

Once a filter has been applied, you can interact with it further by clicking the filter icon in the layers dockable. This will open a pop-up that shows all filters currently applied to the layer. From here, you can toggle the filter’s visibility, edit the filter settings, re-order the filters, and delete individual effects. You can also merge down all filters to recreate a destructive workflow.

Note that this is only an early implementation, and much work remains to be done for a full-featured version of non-destructive editing. We will continue to refine the existing features for the 3.0 release based on user testing and feedback, and extend them further afterwards. The interface itself is not how we envision this feature ideally and a first specification draft was layed out for a much more integrated workflow.

The below screenshot is a mockup from this first specification which would show layer effects within the main layer list, sharing the same “eye” and “lock” buttons, but also with their own easily editable mask:

Non-destructive layer effect Specification mockup image

Nevertheless creating this new interface will be its own challenge so we decided to delay it to after GIMP 3 release and to propose this early implementation at first.

Please share your thoughts on the discussion forums and issue tracker !

Font Handling Improvements ¶

Idriss Fekir, another GSoC 2023 student, has been working with long-time developer Liam Quinn to improve how GIMP handles fonts. A lot of this work was internal to improve GIMP ’s ability to handle future font and text updates. Some of the more visible changes include:

GIMP no longer relies on font names being unique to distinguish between them. This means it won’t append “#1”, “#2” and so on but instead keep the original names in the font selection list. Despite the apparent name clash, both identically named font will now work properly.

GIMP can now load fonts using custom styles (bypassing Pango which is unable to load them).

We can now load more types of fonts than before. In cases where we don’t support a font yet (or the font is non-existent), we can better detect this and fall back to a default font. This also improves support when loading an .xcf file created on another computer to different fonts available.

On Windows, we force the Pango backend to always use anti-aliasing. This improves the readability of menu text on that operating system, especially with a dark theme.

The XCF -saving code now stores font information much more accurately which helps to avoid loading the wrong font when reopening some XCF .

Alignment of text in text layers for RTL languages is now more consistent with how it works in other software (such as LibreOffice or Scribus).

These changes are a lot less flashy relatively to some of the other features and therefore may feel less important, yet they are actually the foundation work on making text handling a lot more reliable in GIMP . We are envisionning a future where text editing will be simpler while much more powerful and featureful (in particular OpenType features are some of the big improvements we hope to get eventually).

Auto-Expanding Layers ¶

The third GSoC project last summer by student Shubham Daule brought a long requested feature – auto-expanding layers! Brush tools now have an additional “Expand Layers” option. When checked, painting past the layer boundaries will cause them to automatically expand so you don’t have to manage the layer size yourself. If you want to expand the layer beyond the current size of the canvas, you’ll need to also check the “Show All” option in the View menu.

The Expand Layers option also has additional settings when selected. You can decide how much you want the layer boundaries to expand by whenever the brush reaches them. There are also options to specify how the new areas of the layer and layer mask should be filled in when expanded.

New Snapping Options ¶

New contributor mr. fantastic developed two new options for aligning layers on the canvas. With “Snap to Bounding Boxes” enabled, dynamic guides will now show when the layer you are moving is aligned with the center or sides of others. The active layer will also snap to those boundaries to assist you with arranging them properly. The second option, “Snap to Equidistance”, allows you to snap between three layers that are equidistant from each other.

Themes ¶

We continued to improve the user interface and style for this release. One of the biggest improvements was dealing with “system theme leaks”. There are styles that were not specifically defined in our themes, thus allowing different systems to supply their own (often conflicting) styles. With the help and feedback of several contributors and users, we’ve made a lot of progress in defining those styles so that everyone has a consistent experience!

Recently Jehan worked on re-organizing and simplifying our theme system. In past development versions we had five different themes: Default, Gray, System, Darker, and Compact (Each with light and dark options). These have been simplified into the System theme and a single Default theme with three possible states – light, dark, and gray. Similarly, our four separate icon themes were condensed into the Legacy set and a Default with Color and Symbolic options. We think these changes will reduce user confusion and make it easier for them to find their preferred interface appearance.

In addition, on Windows the main titlebar (and most dialog title bars) now adjust to light or dark mode depending on the selected theme.

Welcome Dialog ¶

The Welcome Dialog has been expanded to provide quick access to a number of useful features and options. There are now four new sections:

Personalize: There are several customization options that require you to dig through the Preference Dialog to change. Now from this page you can easily change the color and icon themes, the user interface language and font size, and OS -specific settings.

Create: This page shows your eight most recently opened images and allows you to quickly reopen them. There are also buttons to create a new image or load an existing one. As with other programs, you can set this screen to automatically appear when GIMP starts for immediate access to these features.

Contribute: We consolidated some of the many ways you can be involved in GIMP ’s development on this page. There are direct links to report bugs, write code, assist with translation or donate financially.

Release Notes: Originally these were shown on the lower half of the Welcome page. Now we have a full tab dedicated to them for easier reading.

File Formats ¶

As in other releases, we have made improvements to existing file formats and added import and export support for some new ones.

A new contributor Stayd has been working with developer Jacob Boerema to make many improvements to the DDS plug-in. As a start, the import functions have been written to be simpler and easier to extend in the future. Some of the other additional updates include:

Loading 16 and 32 bits per channel RGBA DDS images is now possible.

The Catmull-Rom cubic filter has been added for mipmap generation, and all mipmap generation calculations are performed at 32-bit precision.

DDS images in the R8G8 , R16, and R16G16 formats can now be loaded as well.

An option to flip DDS images vertical on import was added to mirror the existing export option, as some game images store their data this way.

In the past, overwriting a GIF rather than exporting would always convert it into a single frame image. Now we check to see if the GIF is an animation on load, so it will stay that way when overwritten.

HEIF and JPEG - XL ¶

Both plug-ins now use their respective libraries ( libheif and libjxl ) to load metadata. As a result, we have removed our custom code to interpret the image orientation and rely on the information supplied from the library instead.

OpenEXR ¶

OpenEXR allows for channels to have custom names besides the color type. In these cases we now treat any single channel image with an unconventional name as grayscale. On import, we also display a notification so that users are aware of the conversion.

The “Layers as Pages” export option now works even if there is only a single layer group. Previously this option was not available, as the plug-in only checked if there was more than one “layer” without considering if it was a layer group with multiple sub-layers.

Safe-to-copy PNG chunks are now preserved on import and included in the exported image. Additionally, an often-reported issue with exporting transparent indexed PNGs has been fixed. Now the exported indexed colors should be displayed correctly.

Jacob Boerema continued his work to improve the PSD plug-in. In addition to bug fixes such as correcting the layer order on import, he also clarified the export warning on layer mode compatibility between GIMP and Photoshop.

The Paintshop Pro plug-in now supports importing more features from the project file, such as the ICC color profile, guides, grids, and the active selection from when the file was saved. The ZDI - CAN -22096 and ZDI - CAN -22097 security vulnerabilities were also patched in this release.

New image format supports: Farbfeld, Esm Software PIX , HEJ2 ¶

We recently added import and export support for Farbfeld , an sRGB image format intended to be easy to parse, pipe, and compress externally.

We also added import only support for the following new file formats:

Esm Software PIX : A modified JPEG format used exclusively by the Esm Software company to store their customized images. This was implemented in response to a bug report that confused this format with our existing Alias PIX image support.

HEJ2 : An addition to our existing HEIF plug-in by contributor Daniel Novomeský which allows importing JPEG 2000 compressed images.

New palette format support: Swatchbooker ¶

Swatchbooker is a free/libre open source software that creates and converts color palettes in a variety of formats. While the software itself has not been updated in many years, its custom palette format .sbz is the most comprehensive of all the ones we currently support. Among its many features are allowing multiple color model definitions per palette entry, localizable names and descriptions, and support for per-entry ICC color profiles.

While working on our import support, we were able to contribute information that led to a bug fix in Krita’s support for Swatchbooker. It’s always great when projects can work together and help each other!

Wayland Tablet Pad Interactions ¶

Long-time GNOME contributor Carlos Garnacho added support for interacting with GIMP via tablet pads. When a tablet is plugged in, you can now assign different actions to the tablet controls via the “Input Device” dialog under the Edit menu.

This work also involved porting features to GTK 3, the GUI framework that GIMP is built on. Note that this feature is currently only supported on Wayland.

API Updates ¶

The Application Programming Interface, for plug-in makers, is steadily being reworked as part of the GIMP 3 overhaul. Part of it is that when colors are involved, we are moving the API to use GeglColor as part of the more general Space Invasion project . Yet it’s only a small part of the whole API  improvements.

We are also moving towards more classes to represent the various resources managed by GIMP (brushes, fonts, patterns, etc.) instead of only representing these by names (which was a historical limitation whereas it is absolutely possible for 2 resource makers to choose the same name and the fact is that we see such cases in the wild — for instance 2 fonts independently created may have the same name).

Another big move is replacing the GimpValueArray representing the ordered arguments of a plug-in procedure by a GimpProcedureConfig which contains arguments by name instead of by order. This allows much more semantic usage of plug-in procedures (especially when they have long list of arguments) but also will make it easier to enhance plug-ins in the future, with new or reordered arguments without creating new procedures because the order and number arguments matter a lot less. It means that adding new arguments in the future won’t break existing scripts depending on past versions of these plug-ins anymore (plug-in writers will still have to choose appropriate defaults for the new arguments in order for this to be true, of course).

In parallel, we continue to improve the ability of automatic GUI creation given to plug-ins, making creating dialogs more easy than ever. This includes (among many other enhancements) a new type of procedure argument named GimpChoice which is a string list of choices which can be displayed to creators as drop-down list widgets in your plug-in dialog.

We are planning to write and release tutorial for plug-in writers in the Resource Development section of our developer website in the same time as GIMP 3 release, or not long after.

GEGL and babl ¶

This release of GIMP is accompanied by new releases of GEGL and babl , both of which assist with the color space invasion project.

babl 0.1.108 brings a new babl_space_is_rgb function to help us directly confirm a color space is RGB (rather than doing multiple tests to see if it’s not CMYK or grayscale). There were also several improvements to the build process and to the babl command-line interface tool.

GEGL 0.4.48 provides several updates to the GeglColor object which now supports much of GIMP ’s color operation. Specific improvements include being able to directly get and set CMYK color values, as well as assigning the color space when setting RGB (A) colors.

A crash in the existing gegl:voroni filter was fixed, and a long-standing bug with the gegl:dropshadow filter which prevented the effect from shrinking was corrected too.

Last but not least, a new gegl:shuffle-search filter was added to the workshop. It shuffles neighboring pixels to create a more optimized dithering effect.

Release stats ¶

Apart from the first version in the series (2.99.2), GIMP 2.99.18 is clearly the biggest update in most numbers. Since 2.99.16:

  • 238 reports were closed as FIXED .
  • 201 merge requests were merged.
  • 1358 commits were pushed.
  • 26 translations were updated: Basque, Belarusian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Danish, Esperanto, Finnish, Georgian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian Nynorsk, Persian, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.

60 people contributed changes or fixes to GIMP 2.99.18 codebase (order is determined by number of commits; some people are in several groups):

  • 23 developers to core code: Jehan, Alx Sa, Shubham, Jacob Boerema, Idriss Fekir, bootchk, Anders Jonsson, Carlos Garnacho, mr.fantastic, Stanislav Grinkov, lillolollo, Øyvind Kolås, Sabri Ünal, programmer_ceds, Lukas Oberhuber, programmer-ceds, James Golden, Luca Bacci, Massimo Valentini, Niels De Graef, Zander Brown, psykose, sonia.
  • 17 developers to plug-ins or modules: Jehan, Alx Sa, Jacob Boerema, bootchk, Anders Jonsson, Stayd, Zander Brown, Bruno Lopes, Daniel Novomeský, Sabri Ünal, programmer_ceds, Kamil Burda, Mark, Michael Schumacher, Stanislav Grinkov, programmer-ceds, sonia.
  • 31 translators: Yuri Chornoivan, Martin, Ekaterine Papava, Luming Zh, Sabri Ünal, Anders Jonsson, Rodrigo Lledó, Jordi Mas, Alan Mortensen, Vasil Pupkin, Asier Sarasua Garmendia, Kolbjørn Stuestøl, Boyuan Yang, Víttor Paulo Vieira da Costa, dimspingos, Alexander Shopov, Alexandre Prokoudine, Aurimas Černius, Balázs Úr, Marco Ciampa, Sveinn í Felli, Danial Behzadi, Ngọc Quân Trần, Jürgen Benvenuti, Piotr Drąg, Timo Jyrinki, Andre Klapper, Kristjan SCHMIDT , MohammadSaleh Kamyab, Rafael Fontenelle, Tim Sabsch.
  • 9 resource creators (icons, themes, cursors, splash screen, metadata…): Alx Sa, Jehan, Ferry Jérémie, Stanislav Grinkov, Anders Jonsson, Bruno Lopes, Jacob Boerema, Sabri Ünal, mr.fantastic.
  • 5 documentation contributors: Jehan, Bruno Lopes, Jacob Boerema, Alx Sa, Anders Jonsson.
  • 14 build, packaging or CI contributors: Jehan, Bruno Lopes, bootchk, Alx Sa, Zander Brown, Jacob Boerema, Jacob Boerema, Stayd, Carlos Garnacho, Heiko Becker, mr.fantastic, Daniel Novomeský, U- YGGDRASIL \ender, lillolollo.

Contributions on other repositories in the GIMPverse (order is determined by number of commits):

  • babl 0.1.108 is made of 17 commits by 6 contributors: Jehan, Øyvind Kolås, John Marshall, Andre Klapper, John, sid.
  • GEGL 0.4.48 is made of 77 commits by 20 contributors: Øyvind Kolås, Jehan, Anders Jonsson, Jacob Boerema, Yuri Chornoivan, Alan Mortensen, Sabri Ünal, Andre Klapper, Ekaterine Papava, Jan Tojnar, Jordi Mas, Luming Zh, Martin, Piotr Drąg, Víttor Paulo Vieira da Costa, Asier Sarasua Garmendia, Marco Ciampa, Rodrigo Lledó, dimspingos, woob.
  • ctx had 308 commits since 2.99.14 release by 1 contributor: Øyvind Kolås.
  • The gimp-macos-build (macOS packaging scripts) release is made of 32 commits by 1 contributor: Lukas Oberhuber.
  • The flatpak release is made of 15 commits by 3 contributors: Jehan, Daniel Novomeský and Hubert Figuière.
  • Our main website (what you are reading right now) had 31 commits since 2.10.36 release by 6 contributors: Jehan, Alx Sa, Sabri Ünal, Anders Jonsson, Bruno Lopes, Jonathan Demeyer.
  • Our developer website had 30 commits since 2.10.36 release by 5 contributors: Bruno Lopes, Jehan, Alx Sa, bootchk, Robin Swift.
  • Our 3.0 documentation had 247 commits since 2.99.16 release by 17 contributors: Andre Klapper, Jacob Boerema, Yuri Chornoivan, Alx Sa, Jordi Mas, Alan Mortensen, dimspingos, Anders Jonsson, Boyuan Yang, Sabri Ünal, Víttor Paulo Vieira da Costa, Juliano de Souza Camargo, Rodrigo Lledó, Kolbjørn Stuestøl, Marco Ciampa, Danial Behzadi, Emin Tufan Çetin.

Let’s not forget to thank all the people who help us triaging in Gitlab, report bugs and discuss possible improvements with us. Our community is deeply thankful as well to the internet warriors who manage our various discussion channels or social network accounts such as Ville Pätsi, Liam Quin, Michael Schumacher and Sevenix!

Note: considering the number of parts in GIMP and around, and how we get statistics through git scripting, errors may slip inside these stats. Feel free to tell us if we missed or mis-categorized some contributors or contributions.

Team news and release process ¶

Access rights to the git repository were recently given to Bruno Lopes (who has been very active improving our build process and Windows packaging).

Several long term or recent developers or packagers who started to contribute to the new developer website were also given access to the associated git repository.

More contributors are now actively participating to testing releases and packaging, and this is the first news for years which Jehan has not written nearly entirely! Thanks a lot to Alx Sa (a.k.a. Nikc or CmykStudent) for taking up on collaborative news writing!

Clearly we are consolidating day after day a solid core team of contributors and this shows in our release process having more and more feedback at each release.

We are also particularly happy and proud that the 4 GSoC projects we had, since we started again subscribing to this mentoring program, were all successful and ended up being merged to the main code branch within half a year at most after the internship end.

Around GIMP ¶

Mirror news ¶.

Since our last news , a new mirror has been contributed to GIMP  by:

  • Sahil Dhiman , in Nürnberg, Germany, as a personal project.

This brings us to a total of 46 mirrors all over the world.

Mirrors are important as they help the project by sharing the load for dozens of thousands of daily downloads. Moreover by having mirrors spread across the globe, we ensure that everyone can have fast download access to GIMP .

GIMP on Windows/ ARM ¶

Since our news for an experimental build on Windows for ARM 64-bit architecture , we received help from Hernan Martinez, well known contributor in the MSYS2 project, who hosted our first ever CI runner for Windows on Aarch64 architecture. Though this was only a temporary setup (literally a build machine in someone’s living room) until we get a more stable situation, we are extremely thankful to Hernan who helped us make our second step on this platform (the first step was done by Jernej, who made our first experimental installer), make sure our automatic build process worked there and more.

Since then, we got the stabler situation: Arm Ltd. themselves stepped up and contributed officially 3 runners for our Continuous Integration process in Gitlab! Arm Ltd. also sponsored a Windows devkit to one of our developers.

While we still do consider this build experimental, because of lack of testing and because only 2 contributors have a machine able to run it right now, the biggest blocker got removed and we are happy to announce that our universal Windows installer for GIMP 2.99.18 contains GIMP for all 3 platforms (x86 32 and 64-bit, and now ARM  64-bit)!

Downloading GIMP 2.99.18 ¶

You will find all our official builds on GIMP official website (gimp.org) :

  • Linux flatpaks for x86 and ARM  (64-bit)
  • Universal Windows installer for x86 (32 and 64-bit) and for ARM  (64-bit)
  • macOS DMG packages for Intel hardware
  • macOS DMG packages for Apple Silicon hardware

Other packages made by third-parties are obviously expected to follow (Linux or * BSD distributions’ packages, etc.).

What’s next ¶

As we have now entered a feature freeze, our focus has shifted to bug-fixing, clean-up, and preparing for the first 3.0 release candidate.

We indeed think that this should be the last development release since no new feature will be introduced from now on, at least GUI features (the API is still evolving until the first release candidate). So what you see now is basically what you should get in GIMP 3.0.0, feature-wise.

This is why we released this version even though we know it is quite unstable. Now is the time for last minute comments! Also it’s the moment to report and fix bugs like there is no tomorrow. We hope to be able to deliver a RC 1 soon and it should be as bugless as possible.

Our current expectation is to be able to release GIMP for the upcoming Libre Graphics Meeting in May 9-12. To be fair, this is not an easy goal and therefore we are not sure if we can make it. What is sure is that even if we did not manage this on time, it should not happen too long after. In particular we won’t release just because we set a deadline . We want to provide the best experience, which means that if we discover last minute blocker bugs, we will delay the release until they are fixed.

Don’t forget you can donate and personally fund GIMP developers , as a way to give back and accelerate the development of GIMP . Community commitment helps the project to grow stronger! 💪🥳

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