whiskie
06-29-2006, 02:17 PM
Adding Text to your ImageReady Animation
Well I was browsing through AOI's ANIMATED GIF Tutorial thread (http://forums.narutofan.com/showthread.php?t=15156) and it seems a lot of people want to add text to their ImageReady animation but can't get it to remain throughout every frame. I didn't see anyone answer the question yet, so figured I'd help out. If someone else already answered, I apologize, but I didn't see it.
Adding text is not difficult at all. It only takes a few minutes in ImageReady. I am going to explain it thoroughly though while also explaining some things about ImageReady and how the whole animation and text thing work. The more you know about it, the easier it is to do more on your own by exploring and being intuitive. Ok so here we go.
Okay, so I'm going to assume everyone who needs help has already done a Tutorial or made something on their own, and they have a working animation open in Adobe ImageReady. Now we just want to add text to the animation, such as putting your name on it, or whatever. If you haven't made an animation yet for your GIF, I suggest reading AOI's Animated GIF Tutorial by clicking on the link above or doing another ImageReady Animation Tutorial.
To add static text to your animation. (Meaning, text that isn't changing, moving, flashing, or anything. Static text = my sig, for example...
1.) Open up your animation in ImageReady, with the Animation bar also open. (The bar that shows each frame in sequence. This is covered in AOI's Tutorial.)
It should look pretty much like this:
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut1.jpg
2.) Okay, the first thing we want to do is select the first frame's layer. If you look at the right hand of the screen, you will see the Layer window. This is a list of all the pictures being used in your animation. What ImageReady does is tells the animation which layers to show at what time, and the result is a moving sequence of pictures. That's just some FYI stuff, though, so if you don't understand, don't worry about it.
All we are going to do now is make sure we are selected on the FIRST FRAME'S LAYER. The first frame's layer is usually at the bottom of the layer list. You can make sure by looking at what the first picture is in the Animation toolbar and seeing if it's the same.
If you used VirtualDub or another program to get the frames from a video/anime movie, then VirtualDub probably numbered your frames for you. Something like testframe66, testframe67, testframe68.. for example. If that's the case, then when you Imported the frames into ImageReady (in AOI's tutorial), ImageReady probably sorted the frames in order from smallest number to largest.
Okay, I hope I didn't make that sound more complicated than it should be. Basically all we're doing is selecting the layer for the first picture in your animation. Here's a pic of where mine was:
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut2.jpg
3.) Okay, once we have that layer selected, we're going to go to the Animation toolbar (the long bar with all the little frames lined up in order). We need to select ALL the frames. There are 2 ways to do this:
-The easiest way is to click on the small arrow ► in the upper right hand corner of the Animation toolbar window. Once you click that, a small window opens. Click Select All Frames in that little window. This should highlight all the frames in your Animation toolbar window.
-Another way to do this is to select the first frame in the Animation toolbar window, and then scroll the window all the way to the right, so you're at the end of the Animation toolbar window. Then hold shift and click on the last frame in the window. This will highlight all the frames in between the 1st and last frames.
Here's what it should look like:http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut3.jpg
4.)Alright, so we have all the frames selected. Now we're going to add the text to the animation.
- Click on the text tool. It's the T icon on the Toolbar to the left side of the screen. This should turn your arrow cursor into a text cursor.
-Next, put the cursor where you want the text to be, on the big picture of your animation. Once you have it about where you want it, click once. This will put a cursor on your animation window.
-DON'T WORRY IF THE CURSOR ENDS UP IN A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT LOCATION, WE CAN MOVE THE TEXT IN A SECOND.
For now, we should look like this:http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut4.jpg
5.) Next, type in the text you want. It should show right up on your animation, in the big window. Again, don't worry if it's the wrong color or in the wrong spot, we will change those in a second. Here's what we should look like:http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut5.jpg
6.) Okay, once we have the text typed out on our animation, we want to go back to the Layers window on the right-hand side of the screen.
-There should be a new Text layer that appeared in your Layers window. It will look different than the rest because instead of a small picture to the left of the layer, it will have a big T. Do you see it? It should also say whatever your text says. I.e. if you typed out "Banana" on step 5, the layer will be named "Banana". Simple huh?
-Once you see the new Text layer, click on the Text layer, and HOLD THE MOUSE BUTTON DOWN.
-While holding the mouse button down, drag the Text layer to the VERY TOP of the Layers window. Make sure the Text layer is at the very top of the Layers window, so it's the first layer in the list. This is very important!
Okay, it should basically look like this:http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut6.jpg
Now, because I'm only allowed 6 pics per post,
I'm continuing this in the next post. We're almost done!
Read on!
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..
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Well I was browsing through AOI's ANIMATED GIF Tutorial thread (http://forums.narutofan.com/showthread.php?t=15156) and it seems a lot of people want to add text to their ImageReady animation but can't get it to remain throughout every frame. I didn't see anyone answer the question yet, so figured I'd help out. If someone else already answered, I apologize, but I didn't see it.
Adding text is not difficult at all. It only takes a few minutes in ImageReady. I am going to explain it thoroughly though while also explaining some things about ImageReady and how the whole animation and text thing work. The more you know about it, the easier it is to do more on your own by exploring and being intuitive. Ok so here we go.
Okay, so I'm going to assume everyone who needs help has already done a Tutorial or made something on their own, and they have a working animation open in Adobe ImageReady. Now we just want to add text to the animation, such as putting your name on it, or whatever. If you haven't made an animation yet for your GIF, I suggest reading AOI's Animated GIF Tutorial by clicking on the link above or doing another ImageReady Animation Tutorial.
To add static text to your animation. (Meaning, text that isn't changing, moving, flashing, or anything. Static text = my sig, for example...
1.) Open up your animation in ImageReady, with the Animation bar also open. (The bar that shows each frame in sequence. This is covered in AOI's Tutorial.)
It should look pretty much like this:
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut1.jpg
2.) Okay, the first thing we want to do is select the first frame's layer. If you look at the right hand of the screen, you will see the Layer window. This is a list of all the pictures being used in your animation. What ImageReady does is tells the animation which layers to show at what time, and the result is a moving sequence of pictures. That's just some FYI stuff, though, so if you don't understand, don't worry about it.
All we are going to do now is make sure we are selected on the FIRST FRAME'S LAYER. The first frame's layer is usually at the bottom of the layer list. You can make sure by looking at what the first picture is in the Animation toolbar and seeing if it's the same.
If you used VirtualDub or another program to get the frames from a video/anime movie, then VirtualDub probably numbered your frames for you. Something like testframe66, testframe67, testframe68.. for example. If that's the case, then when you Imported the frames into ImageReady (in AOI's tutorial), ImageReady probably sorted the frames in order from smallest number to largest.
Okay, I hope I didn't make that sound more complicated than it should be. Basically all we're doing is selecting the layer for the first picture in your animation. Here's a pic of where mine was:
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut2.jpg
3.) Okay, once we have that layer selected, we're going to go to the Animation toolbar (the long bar with all the little frames lined up in order). We need to select ALL the frames. There are 2 ways to do this:
-The easiest way is to click on the small arrow ► in the upper right hand corner of the Animation toolbar window. Once you click that, a small window opens. Click Select All Frames in that little window. This should highlight all the frames in your Animation toolbar window.
-Another way to do this is to select the first frame in the Animation toolbar window, and then scroll the window all the way to the right, so you're at the end of the Animation toolbar window. Then hold shift and click on the last frame in the window. This will highlight all the frames in between the 1st and last frames.
Here's what it should look like:http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut3.jpg
4.)Alright, so we have all the frames selected. Now we're going to add the text to the animation.
- Click on the text tool. It's the T icon on the Toolbar to the left side of the screen. This should turn your arrow cursor into a text cursor.
-Next, put the cursor where you want the text to be, on the big picture of your animation. Once you have it about where you want it, click once. This will put a cursor on your animation window.
-DON'T WORRY IF THE CURSOR ENDS UP IN A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT LOCATION, WE CAN MOVE THE TEXT IN A SECOND.
For now, we should look like this:http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut4.jpg
5.) Next, type in the text you want. It should show right up on your animation, in the big window. Again, don't worry if it's the wrong color or in the wrong spot, we will change those in a second. Here's what we should look like:http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut5.jpg
6.) Okay, once we have the text typed out on our animation, we want to go back to the Layers window on the right-hand side of the screen.
-There should be a new Text layer that appeared in your Layers window. It will look different than the rest because instead of a small picture to the left of the layer, it will have a big T. Do you see it? It should also say whatever your text says. I.e. if you typed out "Banana" on step 5, the layer will be named "Banana". Simple huh?
-Once you see the new Text layer, click on the Text layer, and HOLD THE MOUSE BUTTON DOWN.
-While holding the mouse button down, drag the Text layer to the VERY TOP of the Layers window. Make sure the Text layer is at the very top of the Layers window, so it's the first layer in the list. This is very important!
Okay, it should basically look like this:http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f150/piratebri2/tut6.jpg
Now, because I'm only allowed 6 pics per post,
I'm continuing this in the next post. We're almost done!
Read on!
........
......
....
...
..
.