It's fun and easy to create an animated GIF of My Coloring Book in action, using Adobe Photoshop.

(You can also probably do it with GIMP)

The basic process is pretty simple...

• Choose a page in My Coloring Book.
• Use Print Screen to copy images into Photoshop.
• Turn the layers into an animation.

For licensed users, we have some free animated GIFsyou can use.

1. Choose a page in My Coloring Book

Just choose the page you want to use.

You may also want to resize your browser window so that the coloring page is taking up all the available space (no grey area above/below or left/right).

2. Take a screenshot

Hold down the Alt key and then press PrtScn (or Prnt Scrn depending on your keyboard).

Hint: When taking screenshots it's important to make sure that your browser is the active window.  It probably will be, but if you get some other part of the screen, just click on the browser and redo the screenshot.

3. Run Photoshop, create a New File, and Paste

Run Photoshop and select File > New, and then click [OK].

Press Ctrl + V to paste the screenshot into the first layer.

Hint: Don't worry about the extra parts around the coloring book, we'll get rid of those later.

4. Add more screenshots

Go back to My Coloring Book, do one or more brush strokes or fills, and then take another screenshot (Alt+PrtScn).

Paste into Photoshop, and repeat until the picture is colored in.

Hint: Each newly pasted screenshot will be a layer in Photoshop.  You should probably aim to do about 10-15 screenshots in total.

5. Trim the image

In Photoshop use the Crop tool, to cut the image down to just the coloring book.

6. Hide all except first layer

In the Layers window, select all the layers except the first one (Layer 1), then go to Layers > Hide Layers.

7. Animating

Make sure the animation window is on (Window > Animation).  If it is showing a timeline, click the button in the lower right to switch to Frame Animation.

Initially there is just one animation frame.  Change it's timeing to 2 seconds.

Click the new frame button in the animation window (duplicates the current frame), and then turn on the visibility of the next layer (Layer 2).  Change the timing on the new animation frame to 0.5 seconds.

Continue adding new animation frames as above, each time making the next layer visible.

Set the timing on the last frame to 2 or 3 seconds.

8. Saving the animated GIF

Go to File > Save for Web and Devices.

Make sure that the file type is GIF.

I also like to set it to Selective, No Dither, and 128 Colors.

Make sure Transparency is ON.  This is important to keep your file size small.

Adjust your image size as needed.

Change looping options to Forever (or some other value if you prefer).

Click [Save] and save the new file.

9. Saving the Photoshop file

You should save your Photoshop file, in case you want to make a different size later, or do other changes.

 

Notes:

• Save the Photoshop file at the size of the screen-shot.  You could resize the image, but then if you later decide you want a different size you'll lose quality.