How to use photo-editing software to turn a stack of images into an animated GIF
The planet Jupiter is great for capturing and presenting as an animation. The gas giant has a fast rotation period that can easily be seen and captured to create a satisfying animated GIF This is achieved by taking individual images over a span of time, which can be less than 30 minutes. In this article we will show you how to create an animation of the rotation of Jupiter from a series of pre-processed images using Adobe Photoshop. Then, we will look at how to export it as an animated GIF, which is ideal for posting on social media, websites and for presentations.
To begin, we import the already captured and processed images into a stack in Photoshop by clicking ‘File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack’ from the main menu. In the ‘Load Layers’ panel, click on the ‘Browse…’ button and navigate to the folder where the processed images are stored, and select all the images required. Click ‘OK’ and the images will be imported into the stack (see Screenshot 1).
Once the files are loaded the ‘Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images’ box becomes active, so tick it and then click ‘OK’ at the top right. Now make the ‘Layers’ panel visible by clicking ‘Window > Layers’ from the main menu. Here, the new image stack can be viewed as a series of layers (see Screenshot 2). Using the mouse, drag each layer into time order, with the earliest image at the top and the latest at the bottom. Using WinJUPOScompatible file-naming at the time of image capture will help with this process.
A world in motion
After the files are in the correct order, check each image and crop as appropriate to remove any blank edges created by the image alignment process. Next, open the ‘Timeline’ panel from the main menu by clicking ‘Window > Timeline’. In the centre of the ‘Timeline’ panel, click the down arrow to select ‘Create Frame Animation’. Double-click on ‘Create Frame Animation’ to create the first frame of the new animation sequence. This can be seen in the bottom of the ‘Timeline’ panel.
To add the next frame in the sequence, click the square with the ‘+’ sign at the bottom of the ‘Timeline’ panel. A second frame will appear beside the first one. As no changes have been made, this is identical to the first frame. To change this, go back to the ‘Layers’ panel and scroll to the very top of the image stack. On the top image layer, click the eye icon next to the thumbnail to hide the top image. The second image is now visible in this new frame. The animation now consists of two frames. To add the next frame, once again click the square with the ‘+’ sign at the bottom of the ‘Timeline’ panel. A third frame will appear. Once again, go back to the ‘Layers’ panel. On the second image down in the stack, remove the eye symbol next to the thumbnail. This will now hide that image, so the third image down is visible in this third frame. Continue adding new frames in the same way, hiding each image layer until all the images have been added as frames (see Screenshot 3).
By double-clicking below each frame, you can change the duration each frame is visible for when playing, to speed up or slow down the animation. It is best to keep them all at the same timings. You can now save them as an animated GIF. To do this, select and click ‘File > Export > Save For Web (Legacy)’ from the main menu. If the image is not fully visible in the window, click the down arrow next to 100% at the bottom left and select ‘Fit in View’ (See Screenshot 4).
If the image size is big, you can reduce the size of the exported GIF by adjusting the size at the bottom right of the window. The ‘H’ (height) is locked to the ‘W’ (width) by default, so making a change to one will keep the image proportions correct. Then click the ‘Save’ button and scroll to the folder where you want to save the GIF and name it. Click ‘Save’ and you will have an animated GIF of Jupiter rotating.
3 QUICK TIPS
1. Keep consistent timings between the images being captured and it will help to produce a smoother animation.
2. Keep the camera orientation consistent when you are capturing the images – by using an equatorial mount – as any rotation in your images can make aligning them difficult.
3. Include the Great Red Spot or shadow transits by Jupiter’s moons, as these always look spectacular when included in animations.
Dave Eagle is an astronomer, astrophotographer, planetarium operator and writer