Ulead GIF-X 2.0 is a set of 22 animation plug-ins for use with PhotoShop and with graphics editors that accept PhotoShop plug-ins, such as Paint Shop Pro.

In case you've never used animation plug-ins before, I'll take a moment to explain them. Animation plug-ins are similar to standard PhotoShop plug-ins—you can use them to create a special effect, such as a lens flare. Using a PhotoShop style lens flare is easy enough to do, but suppose you wanted to create an 8 frame animated lens flare, in which the lens flare is different in every frame?  You'd have to make 8 copies of your original image, open the lens flare plug-in 8 times, use 8 different lens flare settings, etc...

Fortunately, there is a better way: With GIF-X 2.0, all you have to do is adjust the plug-in settings for the beginning and the end of the animation. GIF-X fills in the rest automatically and saves the file to your hard drive as a ready-to-use GIF animation.

In this demonstration, I'll create a web button containing the animated lens flare. You can use the animated button as is, or you can use frame 1 as a standard button and the animated version as a "mouse-over" button.

GIF-X 2.0 is based on a professional video animation concept called "key frames." In any animation, you move from point A to point B. Key frames are used to tell GIF-X what point A and point B should look like. Key frames are set using the "Key frame control":

In this example, we're on Frame 1 of an 8 Frame animation. The diamond shape indicates that this is a key frame. The slider is used to move from key frame to key frame. In a moment, we'll use the key frame control to add a key frame to an animation.

Step 1

The first step is to tell GIF-X what frame 1 should look like. I'll use these settings:

Step 2

Use the slider to move to frame 8, and then click the plus button to add a key frame to frame 8.

Step 3

Click on the diamond for frame 8. We'll change the following settings for this frame:

Anthony L. Celeste