How to put multiple gifs in one (& shape them).

Like this one:

Note: Quite long and image heavy.

If you know the basics of shapes and photoshopping in general, you may want to skip to the essentials.

  • Shape Essentials {E01}
  • Multiple Gifs in One Essentials {E02}
  • Gif Shaping Essentials {E03}
DEFINING YOUR SHAPES 

So start off by choosing what size your gif is going to be. This one is 245px by 175px. 

Grab your Line Tool - not Rectangle, because with line you can define the weight (or width) of the shape - and make the weight half of the gifs width, like so:

If your width is an odd number, just round up.

Then drag your shape out (hold shift to keep the edges straight) and position it so that it’s in line with your gif edge:

Do the same for the other side with a different color.

And now, make your circle (in a different color) and position it where you want.

{E01} ESSENTIALLY: You can have as many shapes as you want, wherever you want. Just make them different colors so that you can differentiate between them easier. The number of shapes should correlate with the number of different gifs you want in the one.

GETTING MULTIPLE GIFS ONTO ONE 

As with making any gif, stack your images and set your delay. Crop so that they fit the basic area of your shape. Eg: Gif 1 (orange area) and Gif 2’s (maroon area) sizes will be 123px by 175px while Gif 3’s (pink area) will be 245px by 77px.

How did I know it was 77px for the circle? 

To determine the width or height of a shape, grab your marquee tool and select the entire shape:

Make your background layer active, and Ctrl (or Cmd for Mac) + C to copy. Ctrl/Cmd + N for a new layer, and look at the height (or width, depending on which way your shape is).

Crop accordingly.

Sharpen, color etc. your separate gifs however you like, then select all your layers, right click and link them. This is so that later on, when you put them all in one gif, you can move them as a group to the position you want.

Drag your selected layers down into a group.

Select all your frames and copy them.

Head back to your shapes PSD and paste your frames there (over selection).

Keep all the frames selected and do this with your other gifs. Each one must have the same amount of frames. Once that’s done, you should have 3 groups and 3 shapes (or 4 groups and 4 shapes etc.)

{E02} ESSENTIALLY: Make your gifs as per usual, link and group the layers and crop so that they’re the right size for the shapes. Make sure each gif has the same amount of frames. Name your groups to differentiate when they’re all on one PSD. Select and copy all frames and paste over selection with each set onto the PSD with shapes. 

SHAPING YOUR GIFS 

Gif 3 is the only one we really need to shape since it’s above the other two, so let’s start with that. Move your shape layer so that it’s in the correlating group.

Then Ctrl/Cmd + Click the Mask,which will select your shape.

Now invert the selection (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + I) so that everything but your circle is selected.

This is where it gets tedious. Now you go through every frame/layer and delete the excess. It shouldn’t be too bad - I can’t imagine anyone fitting more than 40 frames onto the one gif, so it won’t take too long. 

You can end it here now (obviously yours will be much nicer with colors and that, I just got lazy OTL) OR if your gif is too big, you can freeze/delete the parts on the other two gifs that are hidden by the gif on top.

For example, I cropped all three of my gifs so that they looked like this in the end:

..which made my gif size smaller. :D

{E03} ESSENTIALLY: Start with the topmost layer. Move shape layer into corresponding group. Select inverse of shape and crop the excess from each layer. You can end there, or crop/freeze the hidden areas of the gifs behind to reduce gif size.

And that’s it! I hope it helped, but if anything is still unclear or you have any other questions, please feel free to ask!


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