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Create an Animated Equaliser in Photoshop
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Posted on January 17th, 2010
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Adobe Photoshop

Step 1

Create a new document with the following settings:

Width: 150 px

Height: 150 px

Resolution: 72 px/inch

Colour Mode: RGB, 8bit

Background: Transparent

Document Settings

Step 2

On the only layer (which should be transparent) fill it with solid black, by going to edit>fill...

Name this layer "background".

Step 3

Go to View> New Guide... and Type "20%"

do this with 40%, 60% and 80%.

Your document should look like a black square with 4 vertical lines running down it, dividing it into 5 equal sections.

Guides

Step 4

Create a new layer, call it "Gradient". Set this layer to "Multiply" and position above the "background" layer.

Click on the Gradient Tool and edit the gradient. Change the gradient to one like the one below, going from red to orange to yellow to green.

Gradient Colours

Set the tool to linear and draw a gradient from top to bottom as show in the diagram.

Creating the gradient

For the moment you can hide this layer.

Step 5

Create a new layer, call it "rectangle"

Using the Rectangle tool, set it to Shape Layers. Also edit the Geometry Settings (Rectangle Settings) ; make it a fixed size of width:16 px and height:7 px. Make the shape colour white.

Rectangle Settings

Click to create the shape. Using the Move Tool (V), position the rectangle in the bottom left hand corner of the document, a few pixels from the bottom and the left side.

Step 6

Duplicate the rectangle layer 8 times, resulting in 9 rectangle layers. Using the Move Tool (V), position each rectangle above each other, forming a column, making sure there is gaps in between each one and there is a steady border from the left document edge. Refer to diagram.

Column of rectangles

Step 7

Create a new group. Place all rectangle layers in this group. Duplicate this group 4 times, resulting in 5 groups. Position each rectangle column beside each other with a few pixels gap in between.

Now the document should be full of rectangles: 9x5. Refer to diagram.

If you unhide the "gradient" layer you should see that the gradient is only displayed where the white rectangles are.

Group of coloured rectangles

Step 8

Make sure the order of layers (from bottom to top) is "background", all the groups and then gradient.

And make sure all the layers are shown (not hidden).

Step 9

Label the 5 groups in correspondence to their position: far left, inner left, middle, inner right, far right.

Layers

Step 10

Goto window>animation. Show Animation (Frames).

Animation Window (Timeline)

Animation Window (Frames)

Step 11

To make the lot of rectangles look like an equaliser, what we have to do is hide and show various layers each group.

In each frame of the animation make sure that each column is going up or down by only ONE square. E.g. in frame 1 a column has 6 rectangles and in frame 2 the column has 7 rectangles.

This is to ensure the animation is smooth.

Create about 11 frames or whatever you like. Focus on one column at a time, hiding and showing layers in each frame.

You can use my animation frames as a guide. (Refer to diagram)

Each frame delay should be about 0.05 seconds.

Equaliser Frames Example

Step 12 (optional)

If you want to make the animation to have a bigger border, goto Image>Canvas Size.. and

Type; Width: 250 pixels, Height: 250 pixels.

Should look something like the diagram.

Bigger Border

Step 13

Goto Save for Web & Devices.

Save as a GIF.

TEH END

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