A Tricky Transition...???...!!!...???

[ameerat42]

Yes! That's right! You read it first on AP!
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It ALL STARTED as an idea for an Animated GIF transition, but I don't have very comprehensive GIF software, and so
I have NOT been able to GIFFer (or figger) it out:(

It is simply (the idea is simple, I mean)...
You look at an image and it transitions from a normal positive image to a negative one (and back if you want).
Now that was for the animated GIF, and I couldn't get it done:o

Next, I thought it might be easy to use Photoshop to do a SIMILAR effect but on ONE image and without animation.
The image changes from normal positive tones on one side to negative tones on the other (say L to R).

...
Some time later...
...

I still couldn't work it out (using CS2, but who knows about later versions?).

So I'm putting it out there: Does anybody know a way to do either, Animated GIF or single image?
Ta.
Am(a bit miffed:()

[pyRRhic]

Perhaps something like a movie tool? Animate the two pictures to fade/wipe/peal/etc from one to the other and save it to loop.

I've used MS Movie-Maker to do something along the lines of your plan.

cheez

[ameerat42]

Ta. A movie, eh! Well that makes it sound bIGGer than Ben HUR, but...
Ta...

[bobt]

There's a free website where you have an animated GIF made at no cost ..... http://gifmaker.me/

Never used it, but there are lots of similar places around.

[ameerat42]

Ta Bob. I'll have a look at it...
Am.

[farmmax]

Back in the days of having to create our own web graphics or go without, I made my own animated gifs, but I used Macromedia Flash, now taken over by Adobe. Photoshop will create animated gifs, but I'm not sure about CS2. Go and look in photoshop under Window/ and see if there is a Window/animation. If so, you are in luck :) Here are some instructions that may help you on your way http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/how-to-make-an-animated-gif/ Look down the bottom for creating the gifs using still images.

Just had a quick look and good old Faststone can create animated gifs very quickly , but you will have to create the individual image files in photoshop.

I'm a bit confused by what effect you are trying to achieve. If it were to be a single image, would it be something along the lines of this photo?

[ameerat42]

Ta Fmax. That is exACTly what I was talking about for the single image. Good ole FastStone, eh? I will go and have another good look there.
Ta.
Am.

PS: BWOO-AAHHH!:vomit1: - I just started the video in your link and the horrible voice MISpronounces it to "animated Jifs". Such an IGGMORONis since
the "G" in GIF stands for Graphic.:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Ta for the rest, though:D

[ameerat42]

...Some time later...
All those options are pretty modest. Will now try something called Photoscape:rolleyes:

[farmmax]

The most comprehensive software to create your animated gif would probably be Adobe flash. It is part of Adobe Creative suite. Now if I remember correctly, somewhere, not just could you download CS2 Photoshop, but also creative suite. Creative Suite CS2 will provide you with Adobe flash.

The best thing about Flash is that you only have to provide the first and last photo of the sequence, then use "tweening" and Flash creates all the inbetween images for you. Trouble is, like all Adobe products there is a steep leaning curve.

[ameerat42]

Ta again. The whole suite is not (apparently) free, only the PS part:(
No matter. I'll kee plooking. Meanwhile, did you do that still transition image?
If so, howish? Bare bones will do.
Ta.
Am.

[farmmax]

Creative suite 2 is available from the Adobe downloads page along with their other CS2 products. It is 3 discs plus a few other pieces and it let me start downloading disc one. The license number to use is provided. Where is someone trying to charge for it?

I went and checked because Flash was originally produced by Macromedia, and it is NOT in CS2 :( It became part of the Adobe suite from CS3 onwards.

I have a cd of the old macromedia MX suite with flash on it here. It can run on XP, but I've never tried it on Win 7 or higher because I have Flash in my creative suite 5.5 on this computer.

I created the above image myself. Didn't think Rick would approve if I used someone else's image :D

How I did it


Opened the church image.
Duplicated the church onto another layer so I had two identical church layers.
Inverted the colours of the top church layer to simulate a "negative".
Put a layer mask on the "negative" church.
With the layer mask active, clicked on the gradient tool and made sure the black and white gradient was selected. Drew a horizontal line across about the middle 50% of the layer mask to put a gradient on the layer mask


The above image resulted. I didn't like the grey in the middle, and that doesn't normally happen when using a gradient to blend two layers. In the end, I put it down to the fact that the two church layers were the exact opposite colours of each other and where part pixels of both layers were showing, the colours cancelled each other out to produce grey.

[ameerat42]

Ta for that, Fmax. The grey in the middle is technically correct, though, as you figgered.
I slipped up somewhere in the layers...:o

[farmmax]

I think the grey looks YUK, but guess it is showing something technically interesting. Learn something different every day :nod:

I took the psd image of the above, without the layer mask in it, and manually created 9 images between the full colour and full negative. I did that by lowering the opacity of the top layer by 10% at a time, and saving each results as a jpeg. Put the resulting 11 images into Faststone to try the animated gif thing and it was a breeze, but the resulting muddy grey between the two end images was so unappealing I wasn't going to post it :D

[arthurking83]

Hey Am.

Just some more info for 'ya, if you're interested.

I just created a very simple animated gif using PaintDotNet software .. and I know you're a UUUGE fan of free software .. like myself.

There is a small trick to getting it all to work, but even for a non technical luddite like myself .. the process took about 5 mins to install some needed plugin, and then just fluff about looking for a way to make something happen.
The hardest part of the entire process was to figure out how to create(ie. save!) the gif in an animated manner.
It was actually easier than I thought .. but it wasn't as obvious at first glance as it could have been.

Anyhow. just in case you're interested(and I'm pretty sure I think you may be) ..

1/. firstly download and install Paintdotnet.
Then once you do that, up in the top right corner of the main window is a ?(question mark) that you hover over and cursor down to a selection of help topics.
2/. Do that and go to Plug ins
This takes yoo to the PDN website where you will see some lists for available plugins. You can look under author or plugin name. An author by the name Simon Brown has a plug in suite which contains the ability to save as an animation. He has a ton of plugins, the one you'd look for (for this) is called Animated Plugin 1.7.
3/. download this plugin to your computer. I recommend that if you do this, create a directory for PDN, and a sub directory for any plugins you may want to then download as well .. it'll keep everything nice and neat.
Extract the zip file and you'll get two folders and two text files. Folders are the only important parts here. Copy them into the [Paint.net] folder in the programs folder on your PC. If x64, then look in Program Files .. not Program Files x86!(it is 64 bit afterall!)
4/. it's safe to copy and paste and overwrite the existing folders with the same names(they will be [File Types] and [Effects]. PDN comes with nothing in those two folders, so they are empty.
(any further plugins installed have to go into the relevant folders too!)
5/. I didn't pre warn you, but PDN is supposed to be closed before you do all this, but I didn't and it all still worked fine. Just know that if it's already open, you need to close it for the effect you want to work! So if not already close it and reopen PDN.

What I did to make a quick gif(you can also save as animated png too, but not many browsers support this type yet.. FF and Chrome do)
So I had 6 quick and nasty jpgs to play with .. large 900+ pixel images.
I opened them all at the same time in PDN and you can see them at the top of the main window.

a/ .Select one file as the base file to work with.
b/. now click on the next image icon (at the top of the main window) that you want in the sequence and with the selection tool enabled, click on it to select the part of the image you want.
This obviously moves to the next image in the main window. I tend to use the keyboard shortcuts to do copies pastes etc.
c/. Click back to the base image, and press Ctrl-Shift-V(paste). What this does is paste the next image in the gif process as a new layer(which is what you want/need).
d/. repeat the process according to the number of images you want in the animated gif process.
e/. this was the hardest part for me to figure out! with all layers still open(not flattened), go to Save As, and choose the selection labelled animated(file type).
This is what caught me out .., remember I already had PDN opened and when I clicked to open PDN again, it was already opened. Once I closed it down a restarted it, all good and it made a helluva lot more sense :p
Once you hit the save as type to save your animated gif, it offers you a selection of delay and loop methods you enter your values and save. Longer delay values obviously mean a longer transition time from one slide to the next. 5 = very short, 50 = medium long time.

All of the above took me about 5 mins to download the plug in, install it reload PDN and then do the keyboard shortcut shuffle to finalise the 6 image gif and save it.
Had I known what I was doing, I reckon it'd have taken about 1-2mins from open all files to save the animated gif.

If you choose to give this a go, note one important thing about the saved animated gif. The file extension is .agif(not! .gif) there is a technical internal reason for this in PDN. All you need to do to get it to work as a regular animated gif is to rename the file by removing the a in .agif , and simply make it .gif
Checked it's operation in a few image file viewers and IE and FF .. and all is good! :th3:

All of the above assumes you have your selection of images you want to transition into an animated gif too tho. PDN can do all that too .. it's basically an alternative to PS/Gimp/etc.

[ameerat42]

Ta AK. I will havver look at this stuff later. Somehow painting/and prepping now...

[farmmax]

Hey Am ... I just found a use for this effect. It's different. All I've got to do is think of the perfect photo for it to work best for. Thanks :th3: :th3: :th3: