Video And Animation . . .
Sunday, March 18th, 2012
I think that video and animation is something that stills photographers have to become more aware of in order to be competitive. One of the areas is simple animation of still photographs. Fortunately, Photoshop CS5 has an application within it to take your still photo and make a short animated video that can keep on running on your web page to attract attention. Older versions may have this capability also, but since I no longer have any of them available, I can only speak to what I have. (See the image below to get an idea of what can be done.) I have used the header image from our We Shoot Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/kH0Ozp to make a flashing “Eat at Joe’s” type of billboard for this purpose. There are three transitions: First, just as a collage; second, “Call Now” is added; and, third, our phone number is flashed over our name.
I won’t go into how to make such an animation except to say that you go into the menu at the top of Photoshop and pick Window>Animation. You can look up how to use this in the help menu, or go to Vimeo or Youtube to get step-by-step instructions on how to carry this out. If you already have a knowledge of timelines in slideshows or video editing programs, you are already on your way.
BTW, the file size can be made relatively small, and take almost no time to load. The animation will not work on some web pages, such as on Flickr, but will work elsewhere, and unless you have it blocked on your own website, it will probably work there. As you can see, it works on this blog.
Have fun.
-Gary Silverstein
We Shoot