How can I edit an animated GIF?

Question

is there a way to add a animated GIF into your work, when I try to add one I am told that it will be a single layer. I downloaded a GIF from the web and trying to incorparate it into a web site header.

Answer 1

Well, you are in luck, sort of. You have all the apps needed to create an animated gif. However that does not mean that the image you download was already or not. It could be a single image.
A couple of things to go over
1) When downloading from the net make sure you have permission to use that image before sharing with the public, as the image is protected by copyright laws in the US. (Images that state - Permission to use commercially, copyright free, common law licence - Generally are meant to share with the general public, granted that you post somewhere who you got the image from(the Least anyone can do it give credit where credit is due)
2)Since you have the Master Collection or the CS4 Master Suite, you have every app that is need to create your own works of art. Photoshop, After Effects, Premeire pro are all capable of creating animated gifs. With the latter two being easier than photoshop.
Since you have CS4 photoshop and this is the photoshop forum, we will keep it there.
The version of Photoshop that comes in the master suite is the extended version of photoshop which is require for most of the animations it can do. Though, think and am not certain that the standard version can create animated gif files.
OK, ok we got a lot of mumbo jumbo above so lets get into how to create an animated gif.
First we need to determine if we are editing an animated gif or creating one from scratch. To load an animated gif all you need to do is file>open then select the file. Simple enough.
The file will place each frame onto its own layer and if you have the animation panel open (If not select Windows>Animation ) Each frame will be placed there as well.
Lets say we are going to edit a frame or better yet introduce a new frame. In the upper right hand corner of the animation panel is a small icon. Clicking it will pop up a menu. In that menu select delete animation. Don't worry your layers are safe, it only removes the frames from the animation panel.
Now you can either change something in one of the layers or add a layer where you want the frame intoduced.
When you are done you can select that same icon in the animation panel to pop up the menu and select Make frames from layers This will place all the layers back into the animation panel. This has to happen in order to save an animated gif.
You can now use the File>save to web or File>Save to web and devices (This optiuon changed during one of the version, I don't recall so both are listed or look for something close to that)
Select Gif for the format then the save button, where you can choose a location and file name. It will automatically add a hyphen between any words that normally are spaces for the web.
OK, If you read the above, you probably alread realize how to create one from scratch. Just add a new layer for each frame and follow the steps above to add it to the animation panel and save for web.
I know it sounds like a lot, but once you have done it a few times, it actually fairly simple.
OK, Bonus round - What about After Effects and Premeire Pro?
Well both of those apps Use a timeline instead of frames. Which makes them much simpler and more powerful for animations, since that is what they are dedicated to do.
It is as simple as open the gif file, edit it, save it, done.
I won't go into how the timeline works as that would require a long , long post. But once you understand it, it is much quicker and can do way more feature wise.
One last thing, play around with it and see what it can do before commiting time to creating or editing a gif. It goes much easier once you get the hang of it.
If you have any questions, issues, etc. just post away...
Well, I got to go, I hope this helps.