Expert: Andre Hickman - 11/16/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hi,
I am trying to take a jpeg picture (photo) and put an animated gif on top of it so I can later pull it into Moviemaker and have the gif "playing" on top of the photo.
For instance: If I had a photo of a man golfing, then I wanted to put a transparent gif of an animated cartoon gif on top of that photo showing the cartoon person swinging a golf club.  How would I do it?  Thank you so very much!  
Cindy :)

ANSWER: Hey Cindy,

There are a ton of ways to do it IF you have any of the right software, so you are going to have to give me some info on what you have at your disposal. Do you have any photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop, or After Effects, or even Flash.

I think MovieMaker can do it if you have an external pluging to "overlay" the image onto video (i.e. overlay the .gif on your photo), but I'm not sure that it can do it alone.  If it can, the place where you would to it would be to add a title, and if it gives you an option to use an image, then do so.  So far all I've read about the program, the only thing that it can do in the basic program's titling layer is basic text titles, but I could be wrong, or there could be an update...I don't have or use it.

At any rate, see if you can do it on the title layer by adding a title and using your .gif as the title.  If that doesn't work, write back with any resources that you may have in software, and I will try to develope a nice work-around for you.

Cheers,
Andre

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Andre,
Thank you for your speedy reply.  I have Animation Shop2, Adobe Photoshop, PaintShopPro and Microsoft Picture It7.  I was only going to place it into the moviemaker after I created it.  So if any of these programs would be easier I'd love to find out how.  Thank you so much again.  
Cindy :)

Answer
Hey Cindy,

I'm not sure which version of Photoshop you have, but try this:

1) Choose File » Import » Video Frames to Layers

2) In the file browser in Windows, type *.* in the File Name and press Enter or click Load.

It will not open any file, but it will view every file without restriction of Type of Files.

3) Open your animated GIF files, it will show you a dialog box regarding the imports. Press OK to import as default.

4) Voila! The file is opened in animation frames. You can view the animation frames from Windows » Animation

Now make your changes...etc, and go back to a new animated .gif.  Here is a link to a tutorial that will explain the process instead of me typing all of the steps...(hey, why re-invent the wheel?...lol)

http://creativetechs.com/tipsblog/build-animated-gifs-in-photoshop/

I hope this helps.  Let me know if there is anything else that I can help you with.  I am here to serve.

Cheers,
Andre