How to open animated gifs in Photoshop CS4

If you try to open an animated gif in Photoshop CS4 it only shows the first frame.

  • 1. Go to File->Import->Video Frames to Layers
  • 2. In the File Name box type “*” ( or you can type the name manually) The window will now show every type of file
  • 3. Select your gif and you have done

solution by adum

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~ by grafikdesign on November 17, 2008.

Posted in Photoshop
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33 Responses to “How to open animated gifs in Photoshop CS4”

  1. I don’t remember it being like this CS3. But progress is progress.

    Joseph said this on November 19, 2008 at 3:14 am | Reply

  2. You forgot that you need to install 40+ megs of Quicktime malware crap to import them and then you get to watch how you Vista media player goes to hell as the battle for player dominance ensues.

    CS3 was the same…and they should all hang for killing off Imageready.

    Doc Holiday said this on December 12, 2008 at 8:15 am | Reply

  3. This doesn’t seem like a very good solution — there mist be some kind of plug-in which can also handle saving animated GIFs. Any ideas?

    Calabria said this on December 12, 2008 at 7:40 pm | Reply

  4. Huh? How does this work on OS X? I can’t select the animated gif.

    Erik Kambestad Veland said this on January 22, 2009 at 3:23 am | Reply

  5. Mine doesnt even show Video Frames To Layers… It just shows WIA and notes

    ImmortalBlack said this on February 23, 2009 at 6:16 pm | Reply

  6. you are a life saver.. this worked perfectly!!

    shaymein said this on February 23, 2009 at 9:02 pm | Reply

  7. It works great on the PC, but there is no place to type a file name on the Mac. How do you do it on the Mac?

    Gale Franey
    website: http://www.thegraphicgroove.com
    blog: http://www.galefraney.wordpress.com

    galefraney said this on February 24, 2009 at 8:40 pm | Reply

  8. @galefraney u can give the direct path to image

    selami said this on February 24, 2009 at 10:36 pm | Reply

  9. I don’t understand …. I choose Import / Video Frames to Layers, then navigate to the file folder but I am unable to click on any of the gif files, they are grayed out, and there is no field to type in *.gif (as there is with the PC)

    galefraney said this on February 25, 2009 at 1:10 am | Reply

  10. You can’t open an animated GIF on the Mac in Photoshop CS3 or CS4.

    Import/Video Frames to Layers does not work consistently.

    Opening an animated GIF in Fireworks does not give you the editing capability of Photoshop. Even if you save the Fireworks file as a Photoshop file (PSD), if you open that file in Photoshop you only get one frame.

    The only solutions are (1) to keep your old ImageReady from CS2 to open existing animated GIfs and (2) save all the new animated GIFs you create separately as PSD files.

    Jerry Engelbach said this on March 1, 2009 at 11:34 am | Reply

  11. Oh, that’s too bad. I can open them in Photoshop CS4 on my PC, but I’ll be teaching Photoshop CS4 to a group of students who will all be on the Mac. I wanted to do some demonstrations with simple gif animations … I guess that idea is out.

    :-)

    Gale Franey said this on March 1, 2009 at 12:05 pm | Reply

  12. Thanks for the great solution!

    Anonymous said this on March 11, 2009 at 5:30 pm | Reply

  13. Import animated gif to psd:

    1. Convert .gif to .mov in fireworks:
    In fireworks: open>(select file)>save as (animated gif) (no extension)>close
    (find the file and add extension .mov)

    2. Then:
    In psd>open>(select .mov file from fireworks) format must be set to quicktime movie in open box, enable: all readable documents>open (it should come in as a move with no frames, but should be animated)

    3. Then:
    resave as .mov from psd:
    File>export>render video>(quick time export:quicktime movie)>(rename)>render

    4. Then:
    Importing movies to photohsop:
    file>import>video frames to layers>(select file)>(to limit frames) select range only>(shift key to set slider to frames to limit movie to)>ok

    5. Then: edit frames and save as animated gif:
    File>save for web and devices>gif>(rename)>save

    6. Be sure to save a psd version to re-edit latter if desired.

    Anonymous said this on April 10, 2009 at 6:38 pm | Reply

  14. Holy Adobe… This works indeed on a Mac Intel CS4 etc, but did I really pay all that, to do all this, to make a little change in my CS1 animated gifs? These Adobe Maffia deserve a Big Bonus don’t they?

    Anonymous said this on May 14, 2009 at 8:07 am | Reply

  15. To open an animated .gif on mac cs4, click [open], then in the open file dialogue box click [format] and select Quicktime Movie, then open your gif.

    Now click the options in the animation window and select “Flatten Frames into Layers”… now click the options again and select “Make Frames From Layers”

    jimbo jones said this on May 31, 2009 at 3:43 am | Reply

  16. I’m on a PC with cs4, but in the file browser i don’t even see any filenames, unless they are .mov .mpeg etc. gif doesn’t show up. if the gif is in the folder though, just type in the name of the file and click open/load, and it will actually do it.
    I thought Adobe made this impossible just for the sake of their hustle, but i’m happy this still works.

    thijs said this on June 19, 2009 at 3:41 pm | Reply

  17. Thaks dear friend

    orkuts said this on July 2, 2009 at 2:24 am | Reply

  18. oh hello. Just came across this page.

    actually there is a much easier way of doing that without using an import function. as some users don’t even have that command,

    You can just as easily just go file > open as..

    then choose quicktime movie. It’s as easy as that.

    Azezaroo said this on August 4, 2009 at 3:54 pm | Reply

    • THANK YOU! I am delighted to see the mystery of GIFS resolved for MAC on this forum. Azezaroo, I can’t stop smiling.

      Cheryle said this on September 29, 2009 at 7:56 pm | Reply

  19. I found another quick and dirty way of opening up an animated GIF on a Mac using Photoshop CS4 Standard:

    - Open up the GIF in Quicktime. (I just dragged and dropped into onto the Dock icon)

    - Save the GIF as a self contained movie (.mov)

    - Import it via the method described above.

    Works like a charm…

    hausofwong said this on August 6, 2009 at 7:03 am | Reply

  20. thanks adum . . . surprised it is this difficult for a program which costs hundreds of dollars.

    Anonymous said this on August 6, 2009 at 2:08 pm | Reply

  21. ^^ what they said.

    why pay shedloads for an application that doesnt do what a). it prevously allowed the user to do very quickly and easily, and now b). has a really inefficient UX/work-a-round process in its place??!

    Its all very bad for Adobes reputation as both GUI/UI/UX and application development world leaders.. maybe they want to create work/money for 3rd party plugin developers?? But then what do they care, theyve long since eaten up, and in turn monopolized, any real market competition out there.

    I wonder if Bill Gates/MS bought majority shares in Adobe (pre-Macromedia)….

    anon-and-on said this on August 12, 2009 at 11:57 am | Reply

  22. It has absolutely nothing to do with Adobe or Photoshop. It has to do with proprietary rights of the company Compuserve’s gif (graphic interchange format). Other companies such as Adobe must pay a royalty fee … so don’t blame Adobe or Photoshop or try to conjure up conspiracy theories. Photoshop is one of the best software apps for any digital artist or photographer. The software continually improves and Photoshop CS4 is beyond amazing with the new Open GL features. Besides, Flash still opens gifs without any problems at all, and places the frames as keyframes on the timeline.

    galefraney said this on August 12, 2009 at 5:51 pm | Reply

  23. doesn’t work with the 64x version of CS4, only wprks with the 32x one…

    self said this on August 18, 2009 at 12:55 am | Reply

  24. Thanks so much, been struggling w/ this for a while. Doing it that very way… Such a time saver.. :)

    Jgtilove said this on August 21, 2009 at 5:38 am | Reply

  25. I have both CS3 extended and CS4 extended running on 64 bit Vista.
    There is not a (File->Import-> Video Frames to Layers) option in my CS4, but the option is there in CS3. When I try the solution in CS3 however, and type the suggested “” in the file name box, it jumps me out of the folder I was trying to load the file from and still only allows me to see files of the type that it wants to import.

    RocketArtist said this on August 26, 2009 at 5:27 pm | Reply

  26. Easy task for Windows users, dont know if it works for others.

    Click File -> Open as…

    Select your animated gif and choose the type as Quicktime movie format.
    Wait a bit, boom theres your editable gif in photoshop.

    The legendary $hadow strikes again.

    $hadowpt said this on September 8, 2009 at 8:17 pm | Reply

  27. On the Mac:

    1) Open your gif in Quicktime
    2) Export as MOV, using PNG compression (or anything else that’s lossy)
    3) In Photoshop, Import Video as Layers

    Works like a charm.

    Benjamin Allison said this on September 30, 2009 at 1:59 pm | Reply

  28. Importing animated gifs in this way does not preserve individual frame timings, so if you’re hoping to edit an existing animated gif which has a large number of frames with different delays, PS is now completely useless. Adobe blandly state that Fireworks is now their gif editing and creation application. Unfortunately it’s a bloated abortion of an application.

    mofaha said this on October 19, 2009 at 2:48 am | Reply

  29. thanks. it works smoothly.

    claud said this on October 20, 2009 at 7:16 am | Reply

  30. None of the above solutions worked for me. I’m using Mac OS X version 10.6.1 (Snow Leopard) on an Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, with Photoshop CS4 verion 11.0.

    My Photoshop doesn’t have an [Open As...] item in its [File] menu, and the [Format] drop-down box in [Open...] doesn’t include “QuickTime Movie” as one of the options. In fact, my version of QuickTime Player can’t open GIFs at all!

    The only workaround I’ve found after almost two hours of browsing help menus and forums is this:

    1. Download GIMP (the current version as of this writing is 2.6.7)
    2. Create a new image with the same dimensions as your GIF. This seems pointless, but if you don’t do it this way, GIMP will preserve the frame durations and Photoshop will treat the end result like a normal GIF, showing only the first frame.
    3. Go to [File] > [Open As Layers...] and select your GIF
    4. Delete the Background layer.
    5. Go to [File] > [Save As...]
    6. Click on “Select File Type (By Extension)” at the bottom of the dialog.
    7. Scroll down, select “Photoshop image”, and click Save.
    8. Open the new file in Photoshop. You will need to make it into an animation again with the Animation tools.

    What a pain.

    Ben said this on October 22, 2009 at 12:14 am | Reply

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