How to Create a Video Avatar in Photoshop

An avatar is a small graphic used as a logo on various website forums, chat rooms and other online spaces. A video avatar is nothing more than an animated avatar made up of frames, which come from screen shots of a video. Photoshop offers a simple method of creating a video avatar. The following tips will guide you as you attempt this creative project.

Things You'll Need

• Photoshop
• ImageReady
• Video

Instructions

1. Take screenshots of the video. A variety of software can be used to do this step. Many media players, such as WinDVD, have a screen capture feature. Video editing software, such as VirtualDUB, also has this capability. For WinDVD, open the DVD, play the movie, use the scrollbar slider to locate a scene you want, and press "Pause." Click on the "Capture" icon at the top to take a screenshot. Go to the control panel and click "Step Forward" on the lower left to move forward one frame and take another screenshot. Keep doing this until all of the frames are done. Click "Save All." Try to take less than 20 screenshots or the file size will be too large for use of an avatar. One option is to take a screenshot of every other or every third frame. Click the "Disk" icon on the capture window and choose "Save All."

2. Open the screenshots in Photoshop. Go to "File," click "Open," and browse to the image folder. Highlight all of the images to be included in the avatar and click "Open." Place the images in chronological order.

3. Add each screenshot as a layer onto the first screenshot. Go to the second screenshot, go to its layer palette, and hold down "Shift" while clicking and dragging the background layer onto the first image's image window. Continue until each subsequent screenshot image is added as a layer on the first image's layers palette. Using the "Shift" key keeps subsequent layers perfectly centered onto the previous layer.

4. Open the layered image in ImageReady. Click on the first image with all of its layers. Click on "Edit in ImageReady" (bottom icon on Tools palette) or press "Shift+CTRL+M." ImageReady opens with the layered image.

5. Add images to the animation. Go to "Window "and choose "Animation" to open the Animation editor. Look on the upper right side of this window and click on the "Circle" icon beneath the close icon to open the animation menu. Choose "Create Layer for Each New Frame" to add all of the image layers as frames in the animation window.

6. Set the frame length. Highlight all of the frames in the Animation editor. Click on the "0 sec" label beneath any of the frames and choose "0.1 seconds" on the drop-down menu. Any duration can be used; smaller means a faster animation and larger means slower.

7. Preview the animation. Click on the "Preview Document" icon (hand icon on the left, third row up from the bottom) or just press "Y" on the keyboard.

8. 

   Edit the animation size. Edit the size and crop the area of the image that you want to be seen in the avatar. Determine what size is required beforehand, as every forum or other use has a different size limit. You only need to edit the first image window in ImageReady for the entire animated avatar.

9. Save the video avatar. Go to up to "File" and choose "Save Optimized As." Enter a file name with all other options left as the default settings, and click "Save."