Photoshop - Moving Flag - 2

Add a new transparent layer above this layer and then Ctrl + click on the active flag layer thumbnail in the layers pallet to get marching ants going around the flag. Make sure the new transparent layer is the active one.

13. Choose a soft round brush of a size that is proportionate to the size of the area to be shaded (about 125px), make sure Black is the Foreground Color. Set the Opacity and Flow to around 25-50% (it depends on the colors in the flag - white areas benefit from lower opacity than deeper colors) and draw down over the flag to apply a shadow line. If it looks like there are 2 or more areas where a shadow might fall, draw in a shadow in those areas too. When you finish each layer, and are happy with the result, merge the shadow layer with its flag layer. This should test you! In the example to the right, the first "shade" had an Opacity of 50% and the second (the one at the right-hand edge of the flag) 75%. Use your History palette, take your time - nearly there!

14. Repeat this process for each of the flag layers.-

• Select a flag layer
  Click the icon to create a new layer above the flag layer
  Crtl + click on the flag layer below to get the ants going
  Paint on the transparent layer above (remembering that if you want more than one shadow on a layer you must swap tools to prevent the stroke joining the last one)
  Deselect and merge the flag layer with the transparent one above

It will probably help to turn off the visiblity of every flag layer apart from the one you're working on. As all the flag layers were displaced in a slightly different way, the shadows should all be in a slightly different position on each of the flag layers.

15. If you still have a background layer, delete it now. Make sure all of the flag layers are visible, and do a final crop to remove most of the transparent area around the flags.

To do this, select a flag layer, Ctrl + click on it to get the ants going around the flag, Ctrl + Shift + I to inverse the selection press delete and deselect.
Repeat this process with each flag layer - it will get rid of any stray pixels around the flag

That's the basic image created and sufficient frames created to begin making the animation.

16. Now switch to ImageReady either via the icon at the bottom of the Toolbar or by pressing Ctrl + Shift + M.

Open the Animation palette and add a new frame for each of the flag layers, that would be around 9 additional frames for this tutorial.

Select frame 1 and then in the layers pallet, make sure only the first flag layer is visible.

Select frame 2 and make sure only flag layer 2 is visible.

Repeat this for each of the flag frame, making sure that only the corresponding flag layer is visible for each animation frame.

Next set the frame delay for all of the frames to 0.2 seconds.

Press the play button to view the animation.