How to create a Stop Motion Animation, as an mp4 movie and also as an ani.gif.

In this example seven photos have been used of the one object (a lamp) at various stages of completion.

1/. Ensure all the images you are going to use have been Photoshopped and are of:

The exact same size - width and height.

Probably no larger than 1280 wide x 860 high, though in the example the sizes are smaller at 570wide x 1000htigh.

Try ti ensure you gave a good background - to attract attention to your subject. In this case in the first section yellow has been used and in the second a brick wall and white bench top.

2/. In Photoshop

Check the images are all the exact same size.

Open the Timeline and ensure it has been set at - Create Video Timeline and not Create Frame Animation. The initial opening of the Timeline usually looks like this:

The eventual setting to Create Video Timeline is this, with a video icon left and a + sign right on the same layer.

Using the + select the images you want to include in your stop motion (there's no real limit to how many frames/images).

Using the play command, play your stop animation, to check everything is working properly.

Select the rounded right facing arrow, then this screen will appear:

Enter a file name and file destination. You may wish to change the frame rate. In this case a slower 25fps has been used. If you used a lower fps rate your movie plays faster. But 25fps is really good.

Go to the folder where your slow motion animation is and play your mp4 slow motion animation movie. This movie only plays on a local machine.

Now for something quite different, make an aminated.gif, which plays locally (on your computer) as well as on the Internet.

This screen will appear:

Select Save (at the bottom - partly obscured). Make sure you use a different filename to your movie. Here the letter 'g' was added to the filename.

Go to your folder and select the animation, right click and open in a browser. If you miss this step and double click to open only a still image will appear.

Both the movie and animated gif look similar when played. The main difference being the file formatting.

The animated.gif is on the left and the stop motion video is on the right. Is there any real difference?

The animated.gif - plays on the Internet, also a local computer.	The stop motion mp4 movie - only plays on a local computer.