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- Jan 14, 2007
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Photoshop CS Tutorial: How to include a video into your signature
In this tutorial I want to show you guys a slightly faster way to add a video into a signature to turn it into an animated gif. Demonflair's full signature tutorial ( click here )shows you how to add a video into a signature, too, but if you ask me who is a really lazy person, I have found a faster way to do it. In fact, there is a better way to add a video to a signature than always having to add a new frame, change the layer's visibility etc. But just read.
Of course, you need a completed signature to start off. I'll use my own crappy signature. Load it into Adobe Photoshop CS.
First, create a sector in the signature in which you want to have your video to be played later. This isn't a have-to, but it really looks nicer in the end. The outlines shout match with your signatures colours. You can also change the layer to overlay or what ever to make it suit with the signature even more.
For the next step you have to change to ImageReady by clicking on this button:
Now your signature should be fully loaded into ImageReady. Open the Animation Window by clicking on Window -> Animation . The window that now opens should look like this:
Now you should load the video into ImageReady that you want to have in your signature. To do this either press on File -> Open and select your video and press Open then, or just load it into ImageReady Drag'n'Drop style. Just drag it into ImageReady, then a window like this should appear:
of course, it looks slightly different in the English version of ImageReady... like demonflair's ( click here )
Attention: the video must be either a .mov (Quicktime) or .wmv (Windows Movie Video thingy) file. I recommend the Quicktime files.
Now you have to select the part of the Video that you wish to see in your signature.
If you want to have the full video in your signature, just leave the settings on "From beginning to end".
If you want to have only a part of the video in your signature, select the "Selected Range Only" Setting.
Now you have to select the part of the video by clicking to the beginning of the part that you want to see and holding shift and then clicking on the end of that prefered part.
The selected part of the video should turn grey in the timeline.
In both cases, I strongly recommend you to also select the "Limit every [2nd] frame" setting and changing it to 3rd frame.
This will make your video have less FPS in the signature, but will also keep the size small enough.
When you're done, just hit OK and let ImageReady load it.
Now that you have done this, you're finally ready to embed it into your signature. Go to the Animation Window which should have a thumbnail view of the video's frames. Select the first frame and scroll to the end of the Animation Window and select the last frame while holding Shift to select every frame of the video.
Press on the >> button at the top right of the Animation Window and select "copy frames". Again, my ImageReady is German, but the button and the copy frames buttons should be on the same place. Also remember the number of total frames. In my case, it's 112 frames.
Next, first click on the Window of your signature, then on the Animation window, so that your signature is loaded into the Animation window.
Now you have to do 2 things.
1st, click on duplicate frame, so there are 2 frames of your signature.
Then click on Insert between or what ever it is called in English, then you have to add as many frames as you have to to have the same amount of frames as the video has.
In my case, I want 112 frames of the signature, 2 are already there. So I have to add 110 frames in between. But actually, ImageReady will only add 99 frames at once, so I have to add 99 and then 11 frames to have 112 at total.
Next, select all frames of your signature. Then click on the >> button and select "Paste Frames". Just put the Settings like I have them, make sure Paste over selection (or w/e) is selected, so the video will be pasted onto your signature.
Hit OK.
It should now look like this, because the Video is still far to big.
Now to the last real step:
The last thing to do, is to adjust the videos dimension and fit it into the spot that we created in the very first step.
To do so, select the first layer in the Layer Window, and the first frame in the Animation Window. Make sure all video related layers are linked with the first layer.
If not, link them by holding the left mouse button on the link setting and move your cursor up to scroll up the layer window and link every layer.
The layer Window should look like this; all 112 video layers are linked:
Now that every layer is linked and that you have selected the first video layer and the first frame of your signature, you can adjust the video by clicking on it and pressing CTRL + T . You can now adjust the video to make it fit into the spot. then just move it in.
My signature looks like this now:
Very well, you're done, now simply save it as an optimized version as a .gif and you have your own Signature with a video embeded.
Here's another outcome:
In this tutorial I want to show you guys a slightly faster way to add a video into a signature to turn it into an animated gif. Demonflair's full signature tutorial ( click here )shows you how to add a video into a signature, too, but if you ask me who is a really lazy person, I have found a faster way to do it. In fact, there is a better way to add a video to a signature than always having to add a new frame, change the layer's visibility etc. But just read.
Of course, you need a completed signature to start off. I'll use my own crappy signature. Load it into Adobe Photoshop CS.
First, create a sector in the signature in which you want to have your video to be played later. This isn't a have-to, but it really looks nicer in the end. The outlines shout match with your signatures colours. You can also change the layer to overlay or what ever to make it suit with the signature even more.
For the next step you have to change to ImageReady by clicking on this button:
Now your signature should be fully loaded into ImageReady. Open the Animation Window by clicking on Window -> Animation . The window that now opens should look like this:
Now you should load the video into ImageReady that you want to have in your signature. To do this either press on File -> Open and select your video and press Open then, or just load it into ImageReady Drag'n'Drop style. Just drag it into ImageReady, then a window like this should appear:
of course, it looks slightly different in the English version of ImageReady... like demonflair's ( click here )
Attention: the video must be either a .mov (Quicktime) or .wmv (Windows Movie Video thingy) file. I recommend the Quicktime files.
Now you have to select the part of the Video that you wish to see in your signature.
If you want to have the full video in your signature, just leave the settings on "From beginning to end".
If you want to have only a part of the video in your signature, select the "Selected Range Only" Setting.
Now you have to select the part of the video by clicking to the beginning of the part that you want to see and holding shift and then clicking on the end of that prefered part.
The selected part of the video should turn grey in the timeline.
In both cases, I strongly recommend you to also select the "Limit every [2nd] frame" setting and changing it to 3rd frame.
This will make your video have less FPS in the signature, but will also keep the size small enough.
When you're done, just hit OK and let ImageReady load it.
Now that you have done this, you're finally ready to embed it into your signature. Go to the Animation Window which should have a thumbnail view of the video's frames. Select the first frame and scroll to the end of the Animation Window and select the last frame while holding Shift to select every frame of the video.
Press on the >> button at the top right of the Animation Window and select "copy frames". Again, my ImageReady is German, but the button and the copy frames buttons should be on the same place. Also remember the number of total frames. In my case, it's 112 frames.
Next, first click on the Window of your signature, then on the Animation window, so that your signature is loaded into the Animation window.
Now you have to do 2 things.
1st, click on duplicate frame, so there are 2 frames of your signature.
Then click on Insert between or what ever it is called in English, then you have to add as many frames as you have to to have the same amount of frames as the video has.
In my case, I want 112 frames of the signature, 2 are already there. So I have to add 110 frames in between. But actually, ImageReady will only add 99 frames at once, so I have to add 99 and then 11 frames to have 112 at total.
Next, select all frames of your signature. Then click on the >> button and select "Paste Frames". Just put the Settings like I have them, make sure Paste over selection (or w/e) is selected, so the video will be pasted onto your signature.
Hit OK.
It should now look like this, because the Video is still far to big.
Now to the last real step:
The last thing to do, is to adjust the videos dimension and fit it into the spot that we created in the very first step.
To do so, select the first layer in the Layer Window, and the first frame in the Animation Window. Make sure all video related layers are linked with the first layer.
If not, link them by holding the left mouse button on the link setting and move your cursor up to scroll up the layer window and link every layer.
The layer Window should look like this; all 112 video layers are linked:
Now that every layer is linked and that you have selected the first video layer and the first frame of your signature, you can adjust the video by clicking on it and pressing CTRL + T . You can now adjust the video to make it fit into the spot. then just move it in.
My signature looks like this now:
Very well, you're done, now simply save it as an optimized version as a .gif and you have your own Signature with a video embeded.
Here's another outcome:
Comments, critics, corrections, w/e welcome.
