Alright guys, this is a tutorial that teaches you how to put any animated gif or movie inside of your signature. Patrick has been asking me about this for a bit, so I decided to go ahead and make it. It involves Adobe Photoshop & Adobe ImageREADY. I hope this helps some of you out.
First, in Photoshop, you want to completely design and finish your sig. Then, save it as a PSD, and close it. Then open up ImageReady, and open the PSD you just made.
At the very top, immediately go to Window, and make 100% sure there is a checkmark next to Animation.
Now, in ImageReady, open up the animated GIF that you will want to go inside your graphic. If your animated gif is large, you will want to shrink it down so it will actually fit inside your sig. To do this, at the top go to Image> Image Size. I shrunk mine down to 140x100. Just try some different sizes out until you get a good result. Once you're satisfied, click the "Animation Arrow" and click "Select All Frames". Click the "Animation Arrow" again and select "Copy Frames".
You are now done with the GIF, so you can close it and go back to your PSD. Once your PSD is in front of you again, click the "Animation Arrow" and select "Paste Frames". It will then ask you how you want to paste them, make sure you select "Paste Over Selection" and make 100% sure that the "Link Added Layers" box IS checkmarked. You should now have something like this (I used a very random gif that has nothing to do with the sig)
Now, you'll realize that your sig is only appearing in the first frame while the animation is continuing on. You need to make your sig appear in ALL frames. All you do is select all the layers that make up your sig, then at the top go to Layer> Merge Layers.
Once the layers are merged into one, then on the layers palette, click the "Unify Layer Visibility" button.
After that, make sure that it's on "Every Time" and then click Match. Your sig should now be seen in ALL frames of the animation.
Now click ANY layer in the layer palette that's apart of the animation. Then select the Move Tool.
Now click on the animation, and drag it to the position that you want it to be at in the sig.
From here, it's all up to you. If you still wanted to add other things before you want to finalize it, go ahead. Once you're finally satisfied, you're then ready to save. At the top, go to File> Save Optimized As. Name it whatever you want, but make 100% sure that "Save As Type" says "Images Only (*.gif)" Congratulations, you're done!
Here is an example of a matching gif & sig that I made not too long ago. The GIF is a scene from the Devil May Cry anime.
If anyone would like to make their own GIFs, I also know how to do that. I can make them from any source (DVD, Anime, Games, etc.) Just ask me and I'll probably make it. I just don't want to waste my time making it if anyone doesn't care, lol.
