First Attempt at Macro GIF Animation :-/

Howdy,

This Katydid flew in the house last night so I took a few photos to tryout the animation techniques that others here do so well. Not knowing how to do it from scratch, I struggled waaaay to long to figure out how to get things assembled. I'm sure there is an easier way. I'm still using Elements 2 or PS 7.0. Anyway, the app kept yelling at me that it couldn't do the "Save-as Web" because the file would be too big. I decreased the original jpgs down to 175KB each and only used 4 layers. The gif ended-up at 3.8MB before downloading it to Photobucket. In the end, the image resolution looks pretty poor. I'm not sure what I was supposed to do to retain decent image quality .

(I was also a bit "bummed" that the shots I took cut-off the tops of his legs. I was messing with the 5x screen magnifcation and then let him go before I saw the goof.)

I found some info on the Web but anyone have a good link to how to get good results with my old Elements 2.0?

One of the four original 9MB jpg images before being used in the animation:

Really nice...really like the gif...well done.

well, it looks like it was worth the effort. nice pic and animation!

HAHA, very nice.

Very very good result with GIF animation.

Well whatever you did the GIF came out wonderfully
Brian V.

Good job. You help the camera pretty steady.

Great set of images, thanks for sharing.

good one, like how it uses its antennae like a whip.

That animation is great, if I wasn't such a computer phobe, I'd like to have a go at that. I bought Elements8 over 6 mths ago, and I have used it twice to clone out some dust that was on my sensor. I even bought the full book, but all the computer jargon gets to me in a matter of minutes.
Is this similar to stacking, or a whole different process? If someone could post some links to how to do this, that would be great.

Regards, Dutch

You'd be surprised what you can find on Google.

mangrovedutch wrote in post #11249268
...Is this similar to stacking, or a whole different process?...

Howdy Dutch,

Instead of the traditional stacking, as in "focus stacking", this method is using "layers" in Elements or in Photoshop. Rather than having the layers flattened into one photo, you keep them separated by maybe a 1/4 second in time . By selecting "animation" and looping and then saving it all as a .gif you'll end-up with a dancing Katydid . The part that I haven't found the answer to yet is how to protect the resolution of the images. When the PC yells at me that what I'm about to turn into an animated gif is too big, I just can't believe that I've hogged all of the memory (PC has only 1.5GB but...) with that little stack. A new PC is on my Christmas list but that may get delayed since I just ate a really big hole in my wallet with a lens order yesterday morning .

Thanks everyone for the kind remarks .

good one, agree the GIF is awesome!

G'day Dave, That is a great explanation. Thank you for the time to explain that, I understand all of that. I googled gif animation and I found a maze of the weirdest and most wonderful of things out there, but most of what I found was graphic based. I feel like I'm stuck in the 80s and truly left behind with all the new ( and not so new, apparently LOL) technologies. It is amazing the amount that you can do with photography in the digital age, I used to scramble all my coins together to get a roll of film processed (a whole 24 or 36 shots, most of which turned out ****e anyway )
I hope to see a bit more of this animation, it's quite fasinating. Dave, I hope the Xmas spirit brings you your new computer, cause I understand that a lens is always waiting in ambush, ready to be purchased.

PS Just posted this and noticed that there is even a naughty word filter LOL, incredible, I feel so old.........

Regards, Dutch

Howdy,

I forgot to mention that LordV (Brian) has a nice mini-tutorial of creating gif animation! Thanks Brian!!
http://www.flickr.com …iscuss/72157594​586623228/