Photoshop® CS3 Extended Video and 3D Bible

Chapter 8. Getting Started with the Basics of Animation

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Getting acquainted with the Animation (Timeline) palette

• Importing image sequences

• Animating DICOM files

• Rendering and exporting animations

• Previewing and exporting files

Welcome to the world of animation in Photoshop. Even if you have used the animation tools found in Photoshop CS2, you are going to be amazed at the new animation capabilities that Photoshop CS3 has to offer. You can accomplish anything from creating a simple animated GIF to building elaborate animations frame-by-frame.

With the new 3D capabilities in Photoshop, you can even animate 3D objects, or incorporate them into an animated scene. Now that you have become very familiar with the 3D environment and creating composites from 3D objects, you are just a few steps away from being able to animate these scenes with ease. In fact, many of the examples throughout the next few chapters make use of 3D objects or image composites.

Photoshop has also added video editing to its ever-growing repertoire. This means that Photoshop has gone from the basics of creating simple, crude animations to being able to paint within video layers and Rotoscope animation. That's a pretty big jump in capability.

This chapter introduces you to the new Animation (Timeline) palette in Photoshop and shows you a few basics in animating: importing image files, animating DICOM files, and rendering animations once they are complete.

Note

To make use of the capabilities in the Animation ...