1) Open up Animation Shop.
2) Click on the "Open Animation" icon, or click on "File / Open".
3) Use something like a scenery animation that is something of the style of my examples, and about that size too.
4) Once it's opened, you will see the animation in frames. You can use the scroll bar at the bottom and scroll horizontally to see how many frames there are. If you want to view the animation, click on the "View Animation" icon, or right click on it and choose "View Animation".
5) Now you have to save each frame individually. First, get rid of the View Animation screen and get back to the seperate frames. Now highlight the first frame (they are numbered F1, F2, etc.) and then click on "File / Save Frame As" (NOT Save As"). In the "Save As type" area, make sure that the file extension of .jpg is there. Click on the dropdown arrow to put it there if need be.
6) Now what I do, is say I am saving frames to an ocean scenery that I have in my "Tropical / Nautical" folder. I also have a sub folder in that called "Tropical / Nautical Frames". It makes it tons easier to keep frames in their own folders for each category
7) So just save it to your folder of choice. Don't change the file name. Animation Shop will automatically number these frames. Just click on SAVE once the folder you want to save them to is in the 'save in' area.
8) Now highlight frame number 2 and do the same thing. Do the same for all of the frames.
9) Now open up PSP
10) Open the frames you just saved by highlighting the last frame, then hold down the shift key on your keyboard, and then highlight the first frame. All of the ones in between should highlight too. Now click on OPEN and they will all open in PSP. If you get an error code that says "Please enter a valid name", you may have to open them up individually, starting with the last one. Or you can highlight half and open them, then the other half.
11) They should open up with the last frame on top of all others, so now minimize them, starting with the last one. That way, they will be in order at the bottom of PSP.
12) Now you need to open a new image big enough to accomodate your text.
13) Also, use a nice fat font so the graphic shows up well within it.
14) So now open up the text box and put the cursor as close to the middle of the new image page as possible.
Now click in it and make sure that "selection" and antialias" are chosen.
Kerning and Leading at 0, Auto Kern unchecked.
Type your text, then highlight it to choose the font and font size.
OK the box.
15) If the text is cut off, undo it and start over, making sure the cursor is more centered. You may have to use a bigger "new image". You can always crop it in Animation Shop later. You can't crop it in PSP when it's a selection because it will unselect all. And you can't crop it after you are done putting the graphic in it because every frame has to be the exact size for animation and the text has to be in the same exact spot.
(In the text box, you can choose your text to be a vector selection instead, then crop off the extra white background. Then click on Layers / Convert to Raster Layer". Then click the magic wand in each letter to make it selected before you duplicate it. Hold down the shift button on keyboard to be able to select more than one.)
16) If the text isn't as big as you would like it, even using the largest font, you can highlight the text size in the text entry box and type in whatever you want.
17) Once it is good, you need to duplicate it so you have as many of the text selections frames as the graphic frames.
Duplicate by clicking on "Window / Duplicate".
18) Now use any of the text frames for the next step. Maximize your first graphic frame. Make sure it is indeed the first frame of the animation. The name of it and it's number are on top of the animation frame. You may have to magnify it to see the entire name.
19) Now copy the graphic, get rid of it, and right click on the text frame and choose the option "Paste Into Selection"
20) Now save it by clicking on "File / Export / JPEG Optimizer".
Set the compression value to 1 and click OK.
Bring up the folder you want to save this frame to. I save the sig tag frames the same way I save the animation frames, in a sub folder in my sig tag folder named "Sig Tag Frames".
So save it to where you want, and give it a name and number it, because you will have several frames.
21) Now you can get rid of the first text frame you saved. A prompt will pop up asking you if want to save changes to it. Click NO if you already saved it...trust me, LOL!
22) Do the same with the rest. Copy the second graphic frame, and right click on any text frame and choose the option "Paste Into Selection". Now save it the same way as above and number it, and finish the rest.
23) Now go back to animation shop and open up the animation again if you closed it. Not the sig tag frames yet, but the animation you used. Right click on the first frame and choose "Frame Properties". Click on the 'Display Time' tab.
Remember the number there. Most likely all of the frame times are the same, but sometimes not. Check them all.
Jot down each frames number properties if they are all not the same.
24) Now get rid of the graphic frames. Click on the "Animation Wizard" icon, or on "File / Animation Wizard".
25) At the first box, make sure that "Same size as the first image frame" is chosen.
Click Next.
At the next box, it's your option of a transparent or opaque background.
Click Next.
Choose "Centered in the frame" and "With the canvas color". Do NOT choose 'scale frames to fit'.
Click Next.
Choose "Yes, repeat the animation indefinitely" and put the number in the box that you were supposed to remember from the frame properties of the animation.
Click Next.
Now click the "Add Image" button.
Navigate to the folder your sig tag frames are in, and highlight the last frame, then hold down the shift key on your
keyboard, and then highlight the first frame, then click on OPEN.
They should be in order, but if not, highlight the out of place ones and choose either the move up or down buttons to
move them.
Click Next, then Finish. Maximize your frames.
26) Click on the "View Animation" icon. After you view it, get rid of that window to get back to the frames.
27) Crop the animation if need be to get rid of the extra background. Click on the crop icon and as you crop the first frame, all frames get cropped with it. Pretty cool, huh?! Click in the middle of it to finalize the crop.
28) If the animation had different numbers on different frames, look at the numbers you jotted down for each frame.
Right click on the frame of the animation you want to change and choose "Frame Properties".
Click on the 'Display Time' tab.
Put the number here and OK the box.
Do that for each frame that needs to be changed.
29) Click on "File / Save As" (not save frame as). Save it to your folder of choice.
