Kissing
Fish Animation
Software Used: Photoshop 5.5 and ImageReady 2
We'll be using Photoshop and ImageReady to create the animation shown to the
right. This tutorial uses Photoshop's layers, channels, and transform functions.
The ImageReady portion shows you how to use layers and tweening to create an
animation.
If you'd like to follow along with this tutorial, you can download this zip file containing the two images you will need.
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This red fish is a little bit shy, so for our animation we want to have him hiding behind the coral shown in the lower left corner of the background image. In order to do this, we first need to isolate the coral and copy it to another layer so it will appear to be in the foreground. We'll be using channels to do this.
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A duplicate of the green channel is added to the channels palette, by default it is named Alpha 1. |
1.)
Open the two images in Photoshop. The two images we'll be working
with are shown here. The red fish has already had the background removed.
2.)
Select the background image and go to the channels palette. If your channels
palette is not visible, go to Window > Show Channels. Look at each
of the channels and choose the one that has the most contrast between
the coral and the surrounding area. In this case, it's the green channel.
Drag the green channel to the new channel icon in the channel palette
(see below).
3.) Click on Alpha 1 in the channels palette to select it.
4.) Go to Image > Adjust > Levels.
5.) Move the sliders in the levels dialog until the outer edges of the coral become mostly white and the surrounding area is mostly black.
Before Levels Adjustment: |
After Levels Adjustment: |
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7.) Next click the RGB thumbnail at the top of the channels palette to view the color image. Then switch over to the layers palette. 8.) Go to Select > Load Selection. The dialog shown below will appear where you can choose Alpha 1 from the channel menu. |
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6.)
Select the paintbrush tool and use black to paint out the non-coral white
areas in the Alpha 1 channel as shown in the image to the right.
9.) After loading the selection, you'll see a marquee surrounding the
selected area in your image.
10.) Go to Layer > New > Layer via Copy. The coral will appear
on a new layer in the layers palette.
11.) Select the 
move tool. Click on the redfish.psd image and drag and drop it onto the background
image.
12.) It will be placed into a new layer above all the other layers.
Since we want to have this fish peeking out from behind the coral, we need to
move it down one layer. Click on the layer and drag it down between the background
and the coral as shown in the animated screen shot below.
13.) Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-T to transform the layer. (Mac users
use Command-T)
14.) Flip, rotate, and move the fish into place behind the coral. If you're not familiar with working in transform mode, see my tutorial on layer transformations.
Once you've positioned the red fish, double click inside the transform box to apply the transformation.
At this point, we need to save our file so we can switch to ImageReady to complete the animation.
After saving your file, click the last button on the Photoshop toolbar to launch
ImageReady.
Continue on the to next page to learn how to animate the scene in ImageReady...
Questions? Comments? Post to the Forum!
Some images from Nova Development's Art Explosion 600,000.
