When you’ve animated a sequence with Photoshop using the Animation Timeline, you can then export the sequence as either:
- An image sequence, or as
- A QuickTime movie
To do so, you should do the following (e.g., choose either the steps for QuickTime or Image Sequence).
Exporting a QuickTime Movie
Referring to Photoshop’s Main Menu, go to File > Export > Render Video. From the Render Video dialogue box, choose the following:
- Location:
- Name: Give the file a name. It’s best to use one-word names; that is, don’t leave spaces. Instead, you should use the “_” or “underscore” to represent spaces (e.g., project.mov). You should make sure to add the “.mov” suffix (which stands for “movie”).
- Select Folder: Choose a folder on the Scratch Disk or Temporary Workspace, where you want Photoshop to export the file to. Later on, you must either copy the folder to a portable drive of some kind or FTP the folder to your network space.
- Use the pull-down menu to choose “Adobe Media Encoder.”
- Format: From the pull-down movie, select “QuickTime Movie.”
- Preset: From the pull-down menu, choose “Uncompressed.” Alternatively, you could choose “Animation High Quality.” However, you are likely to edit the movie in another program, such as Premiere, Final Cut or iMovie, which will compress the work further, so you should keep the compression to a minimum.
- Size: Choose “Document Size” from the pull-down menu. It would be best to keep the movie the same size as what you established originally in Photoshop:
- 1080p at 1920 x 1080
- 720p at 1280 x 720
- 960 x 540 for Foundation students using iStopMotion and iMovie
- Frame Rate: Using the pull-down menu, choose the “Document Frame Rate” or enter another value.
- Field Order: Use the pull-down menu to select “Progressive.”
- Range – Choose one of the following:
- “All Frames,” to select all frames in the Photoshop Timeline
- “Start Frame” to begin at a specific frame number, and “End Frame” to end at a certain point
- “Work Ara” refers to the frames selected by the Timeline work area
- Render Options:
- Alpha Channel:
- If you are working with basic flat images, select “None”
- If you intend to export transparent components, select “Straight – Unmatted”
Press “Render” to export the QuickTime Menu. The file will appear in the folder that you selected earlier (i.e., see “Location” above).
Exporting an Image Sequence
Referring to Photoshop’s Main Menu, go to File > Export > Render Video. From the Render Video dialogue box, choose the following:
- Location:
- Name: Give the file a name. It’s best to use one-word names; that is, don’t leave spaces. Instead, you should use the “_” or “underscore” to represent spaces (e.g., project.mov). You should make sure to add the “.mov” suffix (which stands for “movie”).
- Select Folder: Choose a folder on the Scratch Disk or Temporary Workspace, where you want Photoshop to export the file to. Later on, you must either copy the folder to a portable drive of some kind or FTP the folder to your network space.
- Use the pull-down menu to choose “Photoshop Image Sequence.”
- Format:
- Use its pull-down menu to choose “PNG.” Then, clicking on its “Settings” button, select:
- Compression: None
- Interlace: None
- As an alternative to the PNG format, you could also select another lossless image file, such as:
- TIFF
- Targa
- BMP
- Starting Number: Enter the number you would like to begin with, like “1”
- Digits: Add the number of digits in the file name, typically “3” or “4”
- Document Size: Choose from the pull-down menu. It would be best to keep the movie the same size as what you established originally in Photoshop:
- 1080p at 1920 x 1080
- 720p at 1280 x 720
- 960 x 540 for Foundation students using iStopMotion and iMovie
- Frame Rate: Using the pull-down menu, choose the “Document Frame Rate” or enter another value.
- Range – Choose one of the following:
- “All Frames,” to select all frames in the Photoshop Timeline
- “Start Frame” to begin at a specific frame number, and “End Frame” to end at a certain point
- “Work Ara” refers to the frames selected by the Timeline work area
- Render Options:
- Alpha Channel:
- If you are working with basic flat images, select “None”
- If you intend to export transparent components, select “Straight – Unmatted”
Press “Render” to export the Image Sequence.