PS Smart Tutorial 1: Layer Mask animation effect

The tutorial is a few short tutorials, all translated from Adobe.com, with the shortest length of the most useful Photoshop usage and skills, so that readers with the least amount of time to master the most powerful bitmap editing software.

One of the PS Smart Tutorials Series: Layer masks and special animation effects

A layer mask is a very useful technique that can obscure the parts of a layer that you don't need without actually destroying the pixel of the layer. You can use the layer mask to set the range for your animation in Adobe ImageReady. This is more convenient for those animations that change the position of the object, because you can make the object appear to move in or out of the range area. In this tip, we apply a layer mask to make an object appear from behind the mask and fill an area.

(Figure Main)

1. Hide layers that do not affect animations

Create a ImageReady file that contains several layers, and then hide the layer content that you don't want it to appear in the animation. In this case, the animation is to show the orange juice filled with U-letters, so we need to work with juice and text layers, but we don't need a background picture layer.

(Figure STEP01)

2. Set Animation parameters

Select a frame delay time from the delay menu in the animation panel to set the looping option to remain valid. Try setting the latency to 0.1 seconds, so that you can see the preview in a moment, and then come back to adjust if you need to.

(Figure STEP02)

Latency refers to the time that a frame is displayed in an animation. The looping option specifies the number of times the animation sequence repeats during playback.

Click the Copy Current Frame button at the bottom of the animation panel, and then click the link symbol between the mask and the layer in the layers panel of the new frame to cancel the link state.

(Figure STEP03)

Removing a mask link allows you to move the layer content without having to move the mask. Attention. In this case, we're going to fill the U-shape with the juice, the layer mask is a U-shaped, and the juice can only be shown in the U-shaped range. We want to keep the mask position, move down the juice position, and create the U-shaped empty animation effect.

4. Modify the layer mask in the new frame

Make sure to select a new frame in the animation panel, and select the mask layer in the Layers panel, and then change the layer. Here, we use the Move tool to move the orange below the U-shaped bottom curve.

(Figure Step04)

5. Move the new frame to the beginning of the animation sequence

Drag the new frame to the position of the first frame of the animation sequence in the animation panel, so that the animation will start at replay.

(Figure STEP05)

You can also leave this frame there, as the end of the animation, in fact, this effect is better than the first method. In this case, if we don't move the new frame, the juice in the animation will be much more interesting from the full Cup to the empty.

3. Add frames, remove links between layers and masks
6. Adding transition frames to the sequence

Make sure to select the first frame in the animation panel, select animation frame transitions from the panel, and set the transition options. We add 5 transition frames and choose to change the position of all layers.

(Figure Step06)

A transition frame is a series of frames that are added between two existing frames in an animation sequence, which evenly changes the properties between the starting and ending frames. This is the easiest way to populate an animation so that you don't have to set the properties of each frame one frame at a single frame. After creation, you can also edit them as needed.

7. Show layers that were previously hidden by us

If you want to show the layers that were hidden at the beginning, select any frame on the animation panel, and then select the hidden layer on the Level panel of the frame. Then select Cross frame matching layers in the animation menu so that the layer properties of the selected frame apply to all frames in the animation sequence.

(Figure Step07)

8. Previewing, optimizing, and saving

Select File > Preview and select the browser from the menu to preview the animation. Now, if you want to speed up or slow down, you can return to change the delay time and cycle options. Here, we set the loop to something else, playing 2 times.

Select optimize animation from the animation panel, select the bounding box, and remove the redundant pixels. In the Optimization panel, set the optimized file format to GIF, and then press the other options that are optimized for Web display settings. Select File > Save optimization results, saving animations.

This is all of this tutorial. With layer masks, you can easily make certain elements go in and out of the animation field.