Create a magnificent animated lightning strike.
1. Create a new document or open an image.
2. Create a new layer and use a lightning brush to create a nice lightning. I got my brushes from here.
3. OK, now export the document to ImageReady. Click the icon on the bottom of the tool window.
4. Open the Animation Window (Window >> Animation) and press on Duplicate Current Frame and create 4 frames.
5. In the first frame, make the first layer (the one with the lightning) invisible, by clicking on the eye icon in front of the layer. Do the same for the 3rd layer.
6. Ok, now select the first frame, hold Ctrl key and select the second one also. You now must have both frames selected. Click on the tween button, enter 7 frames and hit ok.
7. Now select the third and the fourth frame and add another tween, only this time put 2 or 3 frames. And that’s it.
8. If you use an image, you can make something like this. Pretty spectacular, huh? Enjoy!
I’m doing these exact steps, and this isn’t working at all. Perhaps you could be more specific about what to do in image ready? The lighting isn’t animating, it just goes through the frames and nothing happens. The first time I tried all it did when it went through the frames, was the background kept getting brighter.
hey man nice tutorial i like it but… i don’t know how to place the lightning on another picture without the black… plz if you read could you send a message to my e-mail. thx
It works for me…after a while messing around..
(dont take me to serious n00b here 
)
Only one mistake… dont create 4 frames but 3 frames.
at least thats the way how i did it
only one thing…how do i save it..cause when i go back to PS the animation is gone.. :S
how do you add the brush so you can use it in flash?
Hi, great effect I only have 1 problem, when I try to save as, the animation stops therefore it’s just an image. My image will not stay animated.
@Stacey…make sure you save it as gif
I tried to save as gif but when Ido that it asked if it is ok to flatten layers and discard animation.
Hey man thanx. I got it to work. It was hard but I got. Look at the results.
Just to let you all know, you don’t need to enter Image Ready to create animations. I make all mine in Photoshop, and it’s a lot easier. Just open the image, duplicated it a few times, make a new layer over the frame you want the lightning to appear in, stamp the new layer with a lightning brush, double click the layer to open the layer options, add an outer glow, than merge the layer with the one below it. Then open the Animations palette, make the same amount of frames that you have background copies, then match each frame up with each background layer and press play. Then save it by going to Save For Web and select GIF format. Simple as that.
I figuered it out, what I was doing wrong… The reason why I couldn’t save the file was because after I was done with the image in Imageready I was tranfering back to photoshop and saving from there, WRONG! So, I remade a new image and save it in Imageready via Save Optimized As or Ctrl+shift+alt+s and that’s it!!!
Your image will stay animated. Here’s is what I came up with.
[IMG]http://i10.tinypic.com/2ldhoom.gif[/IMG]
@Stacey…congratulations and nice result
@Christine
only people with photoshop cs2 can do that xD
also im too lazy to post that shit in easier form because im too lazy good tuturiol though
GET PHOTOSHOP CS2 PPL
Wow excellent work!
My animation looks good and it fits good in a sig. or whatever
Great Work.
Turbo Driesel
Very good tutorial! Adding into a pre-made image was easy too. Thanks for this tutorial!
BTW…here is the header that I did it on: http://theguttersource.com/store/includes/templates/mihluna/images/header_bg.jpg
nice work there Jeremy
This is so cool and really simple to do, thank you for the tutorial.
how do i save it? i dont understand how?
Heyy
im new at animating and i tried this and kept playing about buh it wouldnt work .
i got it to animate fine but i wanted to upload it to my bebo and when i did insted of just flashing lightenin i also had the background goin black confused me alot.
can anyone help
how the hell do i make it like a normal image
Thank you very much for the tutorial after all u taught me to animate!
thank you very much
Yuvraj!
Ughhh, I get confused at the 5th step.
I don’t get the whole layers thing.
SOMEONE HELP ME.
erm, when i try to make the first layer on the first frame invisible, it goes invisible to the other frames aswell, thats not right is it?
I’m totally confused about the whole thing-where do I create a new document or open an image? HELP!!!!!!
I use photoshop CS3 and I can’t find the Imageready button :’( HELP
lightning brush?
And you got the frames mixed up it’s first and third that should have the lightning on. Nice work though.
HI, I’ve created an animated gif file but I’m having problems uploading a gif file in my Bebo photo album to use as my profile photo. It plays the first couple of frames and thats it. I have tried a 600 K file and than a smaller 147 K file, no change. I opened both files in IE without problems. Bebo however doesn’t seem to want to play my 10 second animation. Any ideas??
@N00Bie
in cs3 just click animation on the window tab, and you got same animation feature from image ready
@stacey: Press; Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S To save as animation