Abstract Shine Animation with Photoshop and ImageReady
Now let us start something more informative & usefull with Photoshop and ImageReady. We will now be doing some work regarding "Abstract Animation" using both the environments. Here is an animated Display Picture or Avatar for Windows Live Messenger 9 (which supports recently animated avatars). So it is an amazing technique that is explained step by step below. Note that this is an advanced tutorial because it involves the usage of Pen Tool, Layer Mask and Tween (ImageReady). Here is what we will be working on (figure below).
1. Open Adobe Photoshop and press CTRL + N to create a new image:
2. Set the background color to #000000 (black) and the foreground to #122c52.
3. Filter > Render > Clouds to get something like the following:
4. Select the Pen Tool, make sure the "Paths" option  is selected in the toolbar. Draw the following shape:
5. CTRL + SHIFT + N to create a new layer (Layer 2).
6. Select the Brush Tool, set the Foreground color to #ffffff (white), master diameter to 4px and hardness to 100%.
Make sure your selected brush supports Simulating Pressures:
7. Select the Pen Tool again, right click on the image and press Stroke Path.
8. Set the following options in the Stroke Path dialog.
9. CTRL + SHIFT + N to create the third layer.
10. Select the Brush Tool again and increase the Master Diameter to 5px.
11. Right click again on the image and press the stroke path. Then apply the same options.
12. Hide the Layer 3 by unsetting the eye in the layers panel.
13. Select the Layer 2 from the Layers panel. Then, Layers > Layer Style > Blending Options. and set the following settings (Outer Glow and Color Overlay).
14.You will get something simillar to this (do not remove the pen tool selection).
15. Now we are done with Photoshop, we may start editing with ImageReady.
16. ImageReady will open. Window > Workplace > Default Workplace to arrange your windows.
17. Window > Animation to show the animation window.
18. Now, we will show the Layer 3 (that we already hided in Photoshop) by setting the eye back.
19. Be careful here!! Drag the Layer 3 in the Layers Panel to the "Add a mask" button in the bottom to create a mask of that layer. Select the Brush tool and clean up the white area in the mask. Then unset the link between the layer preview and the mask.
20. Now the tricky part of this tutorial. Although it can be done in many ways, but this is the easy way. Select the Brush Tool, set the foreground color to #ffffff (white) and select the following Brush.
21. Make sure the mask is selected! draw with you free hand a line like this (Note that you will only see this line in the Mask preview in the layer panel):
22. You should see in the Layers panel the following.
23. Now to start with the animation now, press the 1st Frame in the Animation windows and press "Duplicate current frame" icon to duplicate the layers state.
24. Now make sure the the mask of the layer 3 is selected, select the Move tool and Press Shirt + Right like 25 times to reach the following state.
25. So, we have moved the line mask from left to right. It is time to animate it! The frame 2 is selected, hold CTRL and click on frame 1 to make them both selected. Then press the Tween icon.
26. Apply the following Tween settings.
27. A set of frames will be created for you. Select the 1st frame, scroll to the end, hold SHIFT and click the last frame. You will have all the Frames selected. Click the delay drop down on any of the selected frames and choose "Other".
28. Enter 0.02 seconds as a delay between the frames.
29. Now select the last Frame alone by clicking on it, and set its delay to 5 seconds.
30. Since we are done. Now let us save the animation as gif. Make sure the format in the "Optimize" panel is GIF.
31. File > Save Optimized As:
Open it with Firefox, because Firefox renders the Gif formats faster than Internet Explorer but you can use internet explorer also.(Not sure about other browsers, so better check this yourself).
Finally this is the avatar we discussed earlier in this tutorial.
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