Character Animation in Adobe Photoshop

Learn character animation in adobe Photoshop. In this lecture you will learn how you can create animation in adobe Photoshop. We can create GIF animation with a few easy steps in Adobe Photoshop and you can use that animation on various platforms.

Basic steps for animation

Try to keep your character or object as vector for better graphic quality. In any vector tool like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw just keep your character or object as sprites. You can also create an environment for you animation as you can see in above video we have created a green park environment for our character. If you don’t want to create environment then just create a new file in Photoshop and you can use reasonable canvas size according to your requirement. We have used 1366px by 768px size for our canvas.

Let’s start animation

Next step is just copy all of your sprite images one by one from your Illustrator/Corel draw to Photoshop. But the very most important point is the dimension and position of all characters should be same. You can set “x” and “y” positions with grids so that when your animation is playing there should be no jerk at all.

Now simply just open your timeline from window menu. Select “Create Frame Animation” if this option is not selected. At this stage it depends on you that you can create as much frames as you want. on frame one only first character or object layer should be visible rest layers should be hide. Similary you can do with all frames, at each frame you just need to keep visible only relevant layers other layers should be hide. When all frames done one by one then you can play your animation. There is small drop down icon under each frame from there you can set speed of animation/video. You can also set its loop time, either it should run for once, twice or forever.

Save your animation

To save your animation just go into file menu, click option “Save for web”. A new window will open, from top right corner you can select option GIF from the drop down, colors option should be selected 256 and click on Save button and save it at your required destination.
Now go into your destination folder and drag your GIF file in any browser it will be working perfectly.

View all Glint Pixel videos

How to make text, icon or shape thicker/bold in Adobe Illustrator

Overview

How to make text, icon or shape thicker/bold in Illustrator. Recently I faced a problem for my on going project regarding font thickness. I was designing a four pages brochure and and when I sent it for approval, my client shared a paid font which he wanted to use for all headings. But the problem was that was slightly light weight font and client wanted to see is little thicker. Then I got the solution and now going to share with all of you.

In Adobe Illustrator you can make your heading, letter or shape thicker or thinner only with a few steps. Sometime it happens that you have only light or regular font of any particular font type in your computer and you want to make it little thicker like medium, bold or black but for this you don’t have complete font family.

How to do it?

Just select your required text, go into Type menu press option “Create Outlines”. Now your text has been converted into shapes and you can not change it’s font type anymore. Now go into Object menu, select Path, from path menu select “Offset Path” option. A new window will open with a few option. In the first field of offset you can enter your required number, for example if it is “0.1 inches” then you can increase it to “0.5 inches” and press ok. But keep mind when you are working in inches do not enter too much big numbers like 2 inches or 3 inches because it will increase too much thickness and will destroy its shape. Similarly you can play with your icons or other design shapes but in this case you don’t need to convert it into outlines. Because we need to create outlines only in case of fonts.

View all Glint Pixel videos

How to use Smart Object in Photoshop CC Tutorial. Smart Object Benefits.

Our today topic is how to use smart object and smart object benefits. There are two major parts of this tutorial, first one is “what is Smart Object” and second part is “Why should we use smart object”. Let’s discuss about both parts of Smart Object one by one.

What is Smart Object?

Smart Object is group of layers that contain multiple data of text and images. In Adobe Illustrator we do not convert art work into Smart Object because it remains vectored at all stages. But when we copy our art work from Adobe Illustrator to Adobe Photoshop then we have an option to keep our design as Smart Object.

Also when we are working in Adobe Photoshop and we have multiple layers, we can covert all or a few layers into Smart Object. For example if you are designing a website and there are multiple sections of landing page like header, hero, services, footer etc, you can select all layers of hero and press right click of your mouse then select “Convert into Smart Object” option. You will notice that all selected layers are removed from layer panel and only one layer is visible with name of smart object, you can rename it and keep some relevant name. Now all of your layers are saved in this one layer and you can edit them anytime by double clicking on this layer. When you will double click on this all layers will be visible and you can make changes in this file, save it and close file, you change will be done and occur in your original landing PSD.

Why should we use smart object

The main reason to use Smart object is re-usability. Let’s discuss again above mentioned example of landing page, if you have multiple page of your website and there are a few common module in all pages. Whenever any new changes come from client you have to change in all of your psd. It will be very easy for you if you converted all common modules into Smart Object. What you need to do it just convert your header into smart object and save as that Smart Object file as .PSB format and close it. Now in your About, Service and contact pages wherever you are using similar header just use this “Header.PSB” file or in about.psd file select your header files convert them into smart object, press right button of your mouse and click “Replace Contents” option, now you can re-link your Header.PSB file. Now whenever you will make change in your Header.PSB that change will be done in all your psd files you just need to “Replace Content”.

Smart Object Benefits

  • Once you converted your image into Smart Object then you can resize, scale, rotate, skew, distort, perspective transform, or warp your image without losing original resolution and quality.
  • The most important benefit is re-usability of Smart Object as mentioned above.
  • Art work can be copied as Smart Object from Adobe Illustrator to Photoshop and can be edit anytime.
  • Make changes in your Smart Object and automatically update all its linked files.

View all Glint Pixel videos

Copy design from Adobe Illustrator to Adobe Photoshop

Hello Friends in this tutorial you will learn how to copy design from Adobe Illustrator to Adobe Photoshop. If you are going to start project in Adobe Photoshop and might be you need some of your design parts from Adobe Illustrator then this tutorial is very important for you. This is very easy to copy content from Illustrator to Photoshop it is slightly tricky.

Basic Information

When you have to move your design from Adobe Illustrator to Adobe Photoshop you will have to options, one is export which I never use and second is copy your desired part of design and paste in Photoshop. When you will paste your design in Photoshop it will give you a few options:

  • Smart Object
  • Pixels
  • Path
  • Shape Layer

You have to choose one them option.

1- Smart Object

If you select Smart Object option that is good because you can edit anytime time your design by double clicking on the layer. You can resize this object as you want it will not be pixalting and when you need to edit this just double click on its layer and it will get open in Illustrator because originally it was designed in Illustrator. To know more about Smart Object you can visit my Video and Article from the following link:
How to use Smart Object in Photoshop CC Tutorial. Smart Object Benefits.

2- Pixels

If you select Pixels then you design will appear as raster image and this method is not recommended at all. Because once you pasted neither you can enlarge this nor you can edit it. You can simple avoid this option.

3- Path & Shape Layers

This method is recommended as well like Smart Object. In this method you will get all original layers and objects as they were in Illustrator. The most useful benefit is you can edit them within Photoshop because now you have full control of layers. You can change the colors and modify the shapes according to your requirement.

View all Glint Pixel videos

How to Convert an Image Into a Vector Graphic in Adobe Illustrator

Convert image into vector very easily with a few easy steps in Adobe Illustrator. There was a time when people have to use big and small images in there websites. But now time has been changed and there are retina devices everywhere and we can not use images in our website and mobile applications.

Importance of vector graphics

As we know technology is getting advanced day by day and we can not afford raster images in our websites and applications. There are various negative points of using images in websites for instance your website will take lot of time for loading, SEO problems and on retina devices image will be pixlated etc.

So to avoid such problems we have to use vector images. And if due to some reason vector graphics are not available we have to convert our images into vector. If we will convert required images into vector it will make our life easy. For example, if we use SVG code in website there will be 3 major benefits, first of all it will be using as a code so no fear of loosing quality, secondly it will be very light weight just a few Kbs and lastly you can change the color of your SVG file anytime with css code.

Steps: How to convert image into Vector

  • Open Adobe Illustrator and take a new document with RGB or CMYK mode.
  • Open your image in Adobe Illustrator, you can also drag and drop your image.
  • Select your image and go into Object menu.
  • Select sub menu Image Trace
  • In Image Trace menu click on “Make and Expand”
  • Now image has been converted into vector, now press right click of your mouse and do Ungroup it.
  • Click somewhere else in your document and deselect your image.
  • There could be some unwanted objects or layers simply delete them.
  • Select your vector again and change it’s color as per your requirement. You can save this graphic as SVG image or can copy SVG code.