How to Create an Animated GIF in Adobe Photoshop Elements

Create your own moving pictures in Adobe's easiest-to-use application

Last Updated: May 27, 2022

You know those little animations you see online that your computer treats like pictures? Those are called GIFs, and they can be used for anything from stamps to avatars to emoticons. You can make your own using Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Steps

1
Open Adobe Photoshop Elements and create a new file. A good size to practice with is 300 by 300 pixels at 72 dpi. You can select a transparent background, as it creates a cool effect, however you don't have to.
2
For each frame of your animation, create a layer. Then, proceed to draw your frames, one on each layer, using whatever animation technique your little heart desires. Just make sure that your first frame is the lowest layer, your last frame is the layer on top, and all the layers in between are in chronological order.

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3
Once your frames are done, set the layer visibility so that ALL the layers are VISIBLE. This is important!
4
Go to File>Save for Web.
- "GIF" should be the default setting, but if it's not, change it so that you've got "GIF" selected.
5
Check the box that says "Animate."
6
Click "Preview in Default Browser." An internet window should pop up and display your animation. If it looks okay, exit out of the web browser and click "Save."
7
If your animation doesn't look quite how you expected, click "Cancel" and make necessary changes to your frames.

Community Q&A

Question

Why doesn't my animated GIF work when I save it to the desktop?

Community Answer

You will need to open the GIF in a web browser. To open the GIF on your desktop, you'll need an application that will play the animation. It's like you have a virtual movie and what you need is a virtual projector.
Question

How can I slow down a GIF animation?

Community Answer

Duplicate the layers in your GIF. Each time you duplicate a layer it should go slower.

Warnings

Saving an image file as a GIF may decrease the image quality a bit, so try to keep it fairly simple.

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Animated GIFs aren't the only GIFs out there. There are also static ones, so if you just need to save a file as a GIF to reduce its size, don't use this tutorial.

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