I keep reading that you can decompile GIF animations in Photoshop to their individual frames without the source fie or resize an animation without the source file, but I can't seem to find any tutorial or editorial on the internet that tells users how to do this. I even looked in Photoshop's help files and went through some unrelated posts on the official Adobe forums for CS3. No luck.

Where am I supposed to look or what am I supposed to do? I need to break down the animation sequence of some images that need editing, but I don't have the source file.

Do you have ImageReady installed with photoshop?

ImageReady was taken out starting with CS2. I had Photoshop 7 with ImageReady installed before, but it didn't have a decompile option. ImageReady was merged with PS in CS2 and onward.

When I tried opening an animated gif, PS CS4 warned me:
"This is an animated GIF. You can only view one frame. Saving over this file will result in a loss of information."

You can animate an image in PS, but you can't open and edit and existing one. Fireworks can do this, however, if you have that.

I've tried it in Fireworks too, nothing comes up, gives me no warning and 1 layer and 1 frame. Pretty lost here and I've been avoiding posting this topic for a few weeks now.

Share a link to the .gif, I'll be glad to test it. Fireworks should be your friend here :)

I've yet to have one that was animated and didn't open with the frames/states intact in FW. I'd be keen to see it as well.

http://img130.imageshack.us/i/samplejp.jpg/

I had to use another animation I had for security reasons.

I mean, I do know from reading the Fireworks manual and box I have, that I should be able to do it, but I just don't see it. Plus, I can export as PSD and open it up in Photoshop.


Edit: No, I can't. I would rather work on these files in Photoshop than Fireworks.

That's really odd, and I can't reproduce it. Anything I open that's animated has states. Your version appears to be flattening it. Have you tried reinstalling?

Yeah, I have. But that's ok! I just found a solution.

http://freescreencast.com/screencasts/watch/234/Open-GIF-animation-in-Adobe-Photoshop-CS3


You use ' *.* ' and hit 'Return', and then it shows all file types, open with all frames and layers and you can edit. :D


I was using the wrong phrase in Google the entire time.

What a terrific find! I never would have stumbled onto that.
Be good to know why not in FW, though...

It might be a config file I saved when I first got it and then used it again. I'll track down the shortcut to use when the software is loading to delete it and use a fresh one.

CS2 could do it, but a workaround is available in CS3. My guess is Adobe tried to be sneaky and get people to buy Fireworks.