------------ INSTALLATION ------------ 1. Open Photoshop go to menu 'Window' then select 'Actions', the Actions panel will open. 2. On the acitons panel click the arrow icon at the top-right corner, when the drop down menu opens select 'Load Action'. Select the action file 'Animated Glitch - Photoshop Action'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------- BEFORE PLAYING THE ACTION ------------------------- 1. Make sure your image is in RGB 8 bit color mode. 2. You're on the English version of photoshop 3. That you have only one layer and it is marked as 'Background' 4. Open the layer panel option, to do it click on the arrow icon on the top-right corner of the layers panel, then select 'Panel Option'. Make sure that the option 'Add "copy" to Copied Layers and Groups' is active. 5. If you want you can open the Timeline before the playback. To do it, go to menu 'Window' > 'Timeline' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------- HOW TO USE THE ACTION --------------------- 1. Open an image to work with in Photoshop. Try the action the first time with a low-med resolution image, something in the scale of 1024 or 1280 px should work, this will keep the workflow fast and understandable 2. Make sure that the image's layer is locked and it's set as 'Background'. To set a layer as Background go to menu 'Layers'>'New'>'Background from Layer' 3. Open the actions panel, select the action 'ANIMATED GLITCH' and click play 4. The playback will take about 2 minutes (depends on the size of the image) and it will generate many animated glitch clips that can be tweaked and combined. 5. When the playback finishes, the layers panel will look messy. To reorganized it quickly, go to the first group wich is 'GLITCH OUTPUT', hold 'Alt' (or Option on Mac on your keyboard and then click the arrow at the left of the group's name, this will close the group, then release 'Alt' and click again the arrow to reopen the group. All the layers inside the main group will be better organized now. 6. Go to the timeline and click play (top-left of the panel) to see the animation. The action created an animation of 100 frames at 25 fps (4 seconds), the first playbacks of the animation will probably be slow because Photoshop needs to cache the newly generated information. You can move the cursor of the timeline by Left clicking it and dragging, notice that in the basic setup after the action's playback all the effects are placed approximately between frame 0 and 75, in the remaining 25 frames from 75 to 100 it's applied only the Post FX group (grain, scanlines, vignette...). When exported the animation will loop with 3 seconds of glitch effects at the beginning, then 1 second with only the base image and post fx and so on. --------------- ADDITIONAL INFO --------------- 1. You can set the timeline of Photoshop in looping mode, to do it click the arrow facing down at the top-right of the panel, then select loop playback. 2. I suggest to view the timeline in small Thumbnail size mode for a better control over the layers, to do it click the arrow facing down at the top-right of the timeline panel, then select 'Panel Option', then select the small thumbnail and click Ok. 3. After the action playback you can make a snapshot of the history. To do it go to your History panel by going to menu 'Window'>'History', click the arrow facing down at the top-right, then select 'New Snapshot'. The snapshot will save the current history state, if you make variations to the glitch output and for example want to go back to the situation you had at the beginning and re-start the customization from scratch, you can do it by double clicking the Snapshot. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------- LAYERS DESCRIPTION / EFFECTS TYPES / CUSTOMIZATION -------------------------------------------------- This is a desciption of layers structure, types of effects and customization methods, for a detailed walkthrough please watch the video tutorial. The various types of effects are packed in sub-groups inside the main group 'GLITCH OUTPUT', each one is color coded. The purple and yellow groups contains color-correction and post effects layers. The glitch effects are in the red, orange, green and blue groups. -HELP LAYER- The first layer of each of these sub-group is a Help layer, it's a reminder of some of the customizations that can be done to the elements of each group. -BASE- Starting from the bottom there is the grey layer 'Base' wich is a copy of the starting background, it's the main image and effects will run above it. -GLITCH LAYERS AND TIMELINE CLIPS- Now go to the timeline and open the blue group 'Glitches' to reveal the clips, each clip correspond to a layer in the layers panel. As you can see the clips are spreaded in the timeline, you can easily select them one by one and move them in the timeline, to change the animation. Drag the timeline cursor over the 5 clips to see what kind of effect each one does. As the help layer of this group says you can do many customization on these 5 glitches layers, for example you can duplicate one of the glitch layers by selecting it then CTRL+J (or CMD+J on Mac) then move it to a different position in the timeline, or also change blending mode/opacity, scale/move/rotate, animating values, move in timeline... -BLURS- The group above the Glitches is the green one 'Blurs'. These are 4 blur effect, 2 in vertical (VR) and 2 horizontal(HR), the usage is similar to the Glitches. Notice that Blurs and Glitches are both set to Normal Blending Mode, so if two of these clips overlaps only the top one will be visible, in this case you can modify the blending mode (try lighten then the others) or opacity of the top layer to make both clips visible. -COLOR OPTIONS- Next sub-group is Color Options, unhide one color option at a time and choose your favourite, you can also open the group of each option and tweak the layers inside. Take note that you can animate the opacity value for example of 'Color Option 1' in the timeline. This can be useful to make flashes of a different color correction. Try also mixing a Black and White option with a Color option, modify then the opacity value of the group of the Color option to make it more or less visible. -CHROMATIC ABERRATIONS AND GLITCHES- The usage of Chromatic Aberrations and Glitches are similar to the effects described previously. The main difference is that these layers are smart objects and contain a keyframe animation that can be modified. For example double click 'C/A Option 01', this Chromatic aberration effect is made with 3 layers (R,G,B), each one has a keyframe animation in the timeline that can be modified. To see the animation, select the layer in the timeline and click the arrow at the left of the name of the layer. Now let's take a look at 'C/G 01 RGB Glitches', double click this smart object, the effect is made with 10 layers with the opacity animated, you can modify this animation or also hide some layers if needed. Also This RGB glitches are spreaded in different positions and when using the action on small images they can be positioned outside of the canvas, you can reposition each layer by selecting it then CTRL+T (or CMD+T on Mac), then dragging with the mouse or using the arrow keys on the keyboard, then ENTER to apply the adjustment. -POST FX- In the Post FX group there are the Scanlines, Vignetting, Grain effects and also 3 layers for Global Color control, use these last to make the final tweaks. The grain layer is the only effect in this group that is animated, you can modify opacity and blending mode of this group to suit your needs. Take note the grain effect finishes at about frame 100. if you want to make a longer animation open the Grain group, click on layer 'Grain 08' and duplicate and reposition the times needed to cover the rest of the frames. Adjust the Blending Mode and opacity of Scanlines and Vingette to suit your needs. -MASKS- As you can see each sub-group has a white mask channel, this is useful when you want to hide a certain effect in a part of the image. For example to hide the chromatic aberration from the area of the eyes of a character, select the orange layer 'Chromatic Aberrations', click on the mask channel, pick a soft brush with black color and paint over the areas needed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------- IMAGES WITH ALPHA ----------------- If you want to use the action on an image with alpha, there is a workaround. When you set a layer as background in Photoshop, this automatically becomes a layer withouth transparency channel, so instead of setting it as background just rename it 'Background' and play the action. After the playback on an image with alpha you can put any background behind it, also a video! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------- WORKING ON STILL IMAGES ----------------------- If you want create a still image with glitch effects, after the playback make sure the timeline is set to frame 0, move the effect clips you want to use at the begining of the timeline, move the clip over the cursor (behind zero) and choose the frame of the effect that you want to use. Now you can apply also an inverted mask to this layer and decide where the effect will be visible, to do it hold 'ALT' while clicking 'Add layer mask' at the bottom-right of the layers panel. Select the mask channel, pick a withe soft brush and paint where you want the effect to be visible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------- EXPORTING --------- You can save the file in many ways now, it could be a normal image, animated gif or video. To save a normal image go to menu 'File'>'Save As', remeber to position the timeline cursor on the frame you want to export. if you want to save an animated GIF go to menu 'File'>'Save for Web', there are various setting you can modify here to better optimize the final size of the output, here is a standard export settings setup: TYPE: Gif PALETTE: Perceptual 256 DITHER: Diffusion 100% (lower dither = lower file size, but less quality) TRANSPARENCY: Yes LOSSY: 10 (higher lossy = lower file size, but less quality) LOOPING OPTION: Forever For exporting a video go to menu 'File'>'Export'>'Render Video'. Select the folder where to save the video and then select format and preset, try these two: - H.264 with High quality Preset, it'll be a nice quality video and the size will be very low - QuickTime with Animation High Quality, it'll be a very good quality video, the file size will be higher Please Visit http://www.designoptimal.com/ to Read Awesome Graphic Designing Tips and Tricks, Secrets and Full Step by Step Tutorials 100% FREE...Thank You!!! For more eBooks and Magazines visit my Profile - click at my nickname.I share many new interesting eBooks and Magazines every day Enjoy and Support Authors, Buy It, They Deserved It!