re: Asking for GIF editing advice

OPEN

If you find something that's already a gif on the internet, save it to your computer and open in Ps. If you have a video you want to use, save it then you must do [import>video frames to layers]. The important thing here is to choose do every other frame. Gifs can be done at a max 15 frames per second. Most video is 24 or 30. So if you did all frames, it would playback really slowly.

WORK

When it loads into a new document, you will see every frame as a layer in the file. But that is generally not how you edit gifs. You will go in to [window>timeline] and then you will see all the layers in a horizontal arrangement. In that panel you can play the gif and do a few other things.

The best way I can explain it is that whatever frame you have selected on the timeline will show different layers visible in the layer panel. So if you had a 5 frame gif and you wanted to add text on frames 3-5, you would add a new layer of text, then select frames 3-5 on the timeline, then turn on visibility of the text layer in the layers panel. Then make sure visibility is off for layers 1-2.

SAVE

To save with the animations, you have to select [save for web] and make sure its set to animate. You will know because it will say frame "x of y" at the bottom of the dialogue box.