Video In Photoshop - Say Whaaat?

DETROIT - June 4, 2017 - PRLog -- See the Example video of one of my animated PS templates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJu6O88tfnM


- PROLOG -

I will start with the reminiscence of a dark, rainy night some 2 months ago. Lightnings were flashing in a "Sin City" way, briefly removing shadows from my worried face. Bent over my Macbook pro, I was frozen. Actually, my mind was frozen, I was very much in sweat, saying to myself "Think, damn it. Think!"… but there was nothing. No inspirational spark, no great ideas. Total emptiness.

It's been weeks since I've uploaded anything to my online design store, which I felt obligated to do on a regular basis. Well, that used to be my routine until this dark, ominous, rainy night. I had no ideas, my mind was blank and there was nothing that a glass of Jack on the rocks could do to fix it.

After changing my music background few times (starting with Eisbrecher and going faster from there), I've realized that I have nothing new to offer to my creative portfolio and that was a very depressing thought.  It's been some time that I've realized that party posters, flyers and many templates of that nature are simply dead. Yes, those are not selling anymore, people are not printing posters or promo cards, the whole game is changing. I felt dry, so I closed my Photoshop, went on Facebook and got a short laugh from a random .gif showing a cat failing to jump long enough and falling over and over again. That's when it finally hit me!  VIDEO! (To see what it looks like check my gallery  http://scarab13.com/animated/)

- REVELATION -

I've been familiar with PS ability to do video since 2007. I remember myself proudly fascinating my bosses at the Agency by pasting videos to nice designed stages, warping them, adding glare and effects, then exporting as .mov files (that one popular auto company actually ran as some of their official online ads for a while). Then I stopped thinking about it, since I do my videos in Premiere Pro, After Effects and (rarely) in FinalCut Pro. The feature got forgotten, and underplayed. No one I worked with would use video feature in PS.
Well, I've decided that Video in Photoshop is Back!

- CHALLENGE -

Poor little kitten jumping short in loops showed me the path and I heard the angelic music while the gates of heaven opened for a brand new inspirational energy to stream into my mind, starting another chapter in creative resource production. See, there are so many possible ways to use short videos - especially since Facebook, Twitter and other soc. media started serving animated gifs. People love them - but many of them don't know how to do such things, using complex editing programs, and export settings, properly serving by a 3rd party providers, etc.
What if I could make an easy-to-use template in PHOTOSHOP, that would do just that - help people make some awesome short video backgrounds, cinemagraphs and looped .gif's; and then export them directly from Photoshop?

- TECHNIQUE-

Most people they have creativity they would like to express, but they don't care about pro video editing programs. I will give them the tools, so they can only focus on the final result with no complex work involved. So I got to work.
First I made a cool cinemagraph template (which is a still image with some areas moving), that let's people just paint over areas they want to keep in motion. Basically they would choose the still shot from the video that they would import to PS, then brush whatever parts they want to keep moving (eye, purse, water, flame, hair, etc), and they would use my provided export settings to save a perfect animated .gif. And not only that, I would also include the info on how to make the .gif play in Facebook and other soc. media, which is a bit tricky for a beginner with no instructions. I started creating those templates, usually in 2 versions, so every version of Photoshop could load and use the files with ease. At the same time, I was constantly improving my files by adding grunge overlays, halftone patterns, color correction.
And boy, those things are FUN to do, much more fun that figuring out yet another way to do a layout a party poster.

- EPILOG -

So, for the end of this post, my advice for new authors and the ones who have troubles selling their designs online is: don't waste too much time on flyers, posters, or vector kittens. Yes, they did sell in 2010, but there is a whole new, large and undiscovered world of creative tricks, styles and resources yet to be conquered, figured out, mastered and given to the World as our contribution. Be proactive, think of new trends, and try to envision where it's all gonna go in future. Just like Envato, who is adapting fast, adding new sections, killing the ones without future (ummm Flash, anyone?) and offering the best creative platform in the World, that changed the landscape of design and asset production.

Check out my animated PS template gallery here: http://scarab13.com/animated/