Click the play button, or hit the spacebar to test out your animation. Moving back to the timeline, click each frame and set it so that only one corresponding layer is visible at a time, by clicking on the eye icon. Once you have your five new layers drawn, go ahead and delete the original five layers to clean up your workspace. Lower the opacity for layer 1 so you can use it as a guide to draw another layer on top. In your layers panel, create a new layer and place it on top of layer 1. Opening up your GIF in Photoshop should open up the timeline panel, which will look like this: I chose to make my new GIF a breakdancing bear, to get a result like this: GIF by Dami Lee

It’s a little bit like rotoscoping, a technique used by animators to trace over live-action footage, but instead, we’re just tracing over the general body outline in our original GIF. We’re going to use the individual frames of this GIF as a guide to draw a version of yourself breakdancing.

But if you want to stand out from the crowd by making your own animated GIF in Photoshop, here’s how.įor the purposes of this demonstration, save this GIF to your computer and open it in Photoshop. Giphy’s online GIF maker lets you pull short YouTube clips and add captions, and Giphy Capture is a great Mac app that lets you drag the part of the screen you want to record and turn it into a neat animation. GIFs are pretty much an inescapable form of internet communication now, and it’s never been easier to make your own.

Best animated gif