Stop-Motion Animation - Saving and Export

Once you have made your adjustments to the timing of your animation, it's time to export your animation. Follow these steps:

1.) Save the project as a PSD (PhotoShop Document) - if your file is more than 2GB, you must save it as a PSB (Large Document Format) - this will enable you the option to go back and make changes

2.) Go to File, pull down to Export and across to Render Video and a new dialogue box will pop up

 (above) opening the Render Video dialogue box

 (above) it will take some time to render the video - patience

3.) Give your movie a name, something like DurbakMovie, and click Select Folder to tell Photoshop where you want your movie created and check your settings

 - Preset: choose High Quality
 - Size: re-check your document size
 - Range: All Ranges

(above) naming the movie and selecting where on the computer the movie will be created 

5.) Under Adobe Media Encoder, you have two practical choices of Format and either are okay; H.264, which gives you an .mp4 file, or Quicktime, which gives you an .mov file

 8.) Frame Rate: 30 is default, but 24 might be better if you wish to slow down your movie a bit (see image below)

10.) Click the blue Render button (see image below)

 

11.) Look in the folder where you told PS to send the file and you will have your movie created and ready to import into iMovie, Premiere, or Premiere Rush

Stop-Motion Animation - Prepping Images Part II

Once your have resized you images (see:  https://durbakmultimediadesign.blogspot.com/2020/03/stop-motion-animation-prepping-images.html for details), you are ready to load them into Photoshop and make animation frames from them so that you can adjust the timing.

You will need Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop for this part of the assignment.

1.) go to Adobe Bridge and open the JPEG folder that Image Processor created in Part I of this section

 

 (above) selecting the newly resized files

2.) select these newly resized image (Edit -> Select All or Command A), go to Tools, pull down to Photoshop, and across to Load Files into Photoshop Layers - Bridge will load every single photo into layers in Photoshop for you automatically

 (above) loading the selected files into Photoshop layers

(above) files loaded into Photoshop layers

3.) open Adobe Photoshop, make sure you're in Essentials (see the dropdown menu in the upper r.h. corner of Photoshop - reset Essentials, if need be) go to Windows and click on Timeline - the Timeline will open at the bottom of Photoshop 

 (above) selecting Timeline

4.) make sure that Frame Animation is selected in the dropdown menu inside the Timeline window and be sure to click the words Frame Animation after you have selected it

 (above) selecting the Frame Animation option from the dropdown menu

 (above) be sure to actually CLICK on the Frame Animation button to engage

(above) once you click on the Frame Animation button, your first frame will appear in the Timeline

5.) after you have clicked on Frame Animation in the middle of Timeline, select all of the layers in the Layers Palette, go to the dropdown menu in the upper r. h. corner of Timeline and select Make Frames from Layers and all of your images will be loaded automatically into new frames - click the play button to watch your animation

 (above) when all layers have been selected, as seen by the blue highlights, click on the flyout menu on the right hand side of Timeline and choose Make Frames from Layers

(above) selecting Make Frames from Layers from the flyout menu

WARNING- Sometimes Photoshop loads the layers in REVERSE order and your animation will run backwards. If that happens, go to the Timeline dropdown menu, choose Select All Frames, after all frames have been highlighted, go back to the Timeline dropdown menu and select Reverse Frames

 (above) frames were loaded in reverse - my last frame is incorrectly my first frame

 (above) choosing Select All Frames from the flyout to start to reverse the order of the frames

(above) clicking Reverse Frames to put the frames in the correct order

6.) At this point, you can adjust the timing on your frames and start editing your basic animation

(above) adjusting the timing on a selected frame

Stop-Motion Animation - Prepping Images Part I

The images that you have created for your stop-motion animation will need to be resized. Whether created on a DSLR camera or a smartphone, these original images will create a file much too large and unwieldy for our purposes.

You will need Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop for this part of the assignment.

Follow these steps to prep your images and transfer them into Photoshop:

1.) create a new folder on your desktop and give it an appropriate name; i.e., Movie Images, or Animation Photos, etc.

 (above) the folder where all images for this client are kept

 (above) the folder inside the above folder where all images are kept for this project

2.) on an Apple computer, open ImageCapture to transfer images from your device to your computer (Windows machines have similar programs)

3.) under Devices at the top left hand corner of ImageCapture, select your device and the images from that device will start to pop up in the window

4.) select ONLY the images you want to transfer and at the bottom dropdown menu, select where you want those images sent, which is, of course, your newly created folder

5.) once your images have been transferred, quit ImageCapture and unplug your device from your computer

6.) open Adobe Bridge, find your new folder and open it to display your images that you have transferred

(above) the files are now loaded into the appropriate folder

IMPORTANT - make sure that ALL images are horizontal (or square); you CANNOT have any vertical images

7.) select all images in that folder (under Edit, choose Select All, or press and hold the Command key while you press the letter 'A')

(above) selecting all the images within the folder

(above) all images are highlighted and selected

8.) keeping those images selected, go to Tools, pull down to Photoshop, and across to Image Processor - at this point, Adobe Photoshop will open and a dialogue window will pop up

(above) selecting the Image Processor of Adobe Photoshop through Adobe Bridge

 (above) you may get the above message if you are on shared Cloud devices

just ignore it and click the YES button

(above) the 4 sections referenced below as they should be selected

note that since I had 916 files in my stop-motion captures, that number displays in Section 1

 - set the information in the dialogue window as follows in the 4 sections:

Section 1:  Select the images to process
- make sure that all of your images show as being selected; for example, if your created 200 images, it should say Process files from Bridge only (200)
- do NOT check Open first image to apply settings

Section 2:  Select location to save processed images
- make sure Save in Same Location is checked as this will create a new folder inside the same folder where your images are located and you won't have to search for these resized images on your computer

Section 3:  File Type
- check Save as JPEG
- check Resize to Fit
- type 12 inside the Quality box
- check Convert Profile to sRGB
- W: 1080
- H: 1080

Section 4:  Preferences
- check ONLY Include ICC Profile

Once you have these settings, click the Run button that is in the upper right hand corner of the dialogue box and your images will start to resize