How to: make a GIF

QUICK START: Animated GIF instructions from Adobe

CONTEXT

VIDEO: ‘Animated GIFs: the birth of a medium’, Off Book Series on PBS Online 2012 <http://video.pbs.org/video/2207348428/> 6:52 minutes

FYI: Kondo, M. (2014). “Unfolding the In-between Image: The Emergence of an Incipient Image at the Intersection of Still and Moving Images“. Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture, 3, 50-61.

Abstract: As digital technology has transformed various aspects of our screen culture over the past few decades, we have been witnessing a disappearing boundary between photographic still images and cinematic moving images. An emerging in-between image has become increasingly prominent in this new image culture, which attempts to negotiate the grey area between stillness and movement. This in-between image, manifest in a variety of formats and media, points to an increasingly solid middle ground between the traditional divisions of still and moving images. This paper builds a conceptual framework for analyzing this new type of image and explores both the roots of this emergent category

EXAMPLES OF GIFS IN COMMERCIAL CONTEXT

james-blake2

  • Old school 90s flames:

 

MORE ON GIFS HERE: http://placefacecyberspace.net/tag/gifs/

SUGGESTION: TRY MAKING A GIF OUT OF AN IMAGE OF AN ARTWORK

More ideas here: https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article/jpvyqb/gif-competition-antique-update

TUTORIALS:

Excellent instructions here: Animated GIF instructions from Adobe
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/how-to/make-animated-gif.html

 

“Create gif animation using puppet warp in Photoshop CS” by Ziad Chatila 2012

Note that in CS6 & CC, the interface for creating animations has been renamed ‘Timeline’, not ‘Animation’.

Menu: windows/timeline. Then click the button in the centre of the interface to create a frame animation.

The above video tutorial by Russel Preston Brown runs through the different settings required to maximise the quality of a photographic image in GIF format.

You have probably all see how degraded a GIF can look with extreme posterisation and pixelation.

Compare the above with the work of Jamie Beck & Kevin Burg http://cinemagraphs.com/

If you look at the ankle you can see some posterisation  – this is one of the issues with GIFS. The challenge is the maximise the quality as much as possible. GIFs have a maximum of only 256 colours, as opposed to almost 17 million colours in other file formats.

BTW,  if you want no posterisation with 256 levels of tone, try black & white

http://juliendouvier.com/

CINEMAGRAPH TUTORIAL

SOURCE IMAGES FOR ANIMATION:

Note that the animation could be created by using either a sequence of images, as in the example of the moon above, or by manipulating and compiling an image. Test out these three means of distorting and moving your image:

  • Liquify Filter
    • MENU: Filter/Liquify
  • Transform/Warp
    • MENU: Edit/Transform/Warp
  • Puppet Warp
    • MENU: Edit/Puppet Warp

Want more information? See: