Sometimes a GIF alone isn't enough; sometimes you want to add a little bit of text. Photoshop can do the chore, merely the process isn't as intuitive as you'd imagine, especially if you lot've never edited blitheness in Photoshop before.

When you import a GIF in Photoshop, you'll notice that every frame shows up in "Layers." Notably, changing the social club of the layers does not change the order that frames play back in. What'southward going on, exactly?

To find out, you need to open up the Timeline window, which you lot'll detect under Window > Timeline.

This will add a new window, where y'all can come across the frames in your GIF, and fifty-fifty hitting the play button to preview playback.

Things can go a little confusing, and so permit'south review. For the purposes of our exercise…

  • The Timeline window lets you control what guild your frames play back in, and to preview your animation.
  • The Layers window controls which frames transparent overlays volition show up over. An overlay at the top of the list will evidence up over all frames, for example.

With access to this, permit'southward go ahead and add together our overlay. For this example, we'll exist calculation text, and so create a text box as yous normally would.

As always, your text will be added in a new layer. Get ahead and drag this overlay to the superlative of your layers listing.

Simply like that, your text overlay will show up over all of your GIF.

If that's all you lot desire to practise, you're done! Merely if you want your overlay to show upwardly at a certain point in the animation, things go a little more than complicated. Drag your text box to the middle to run across what I hateful.

In my case, doing this caused the text to show upwards for the first one-half of the frames, then disappear.

That'south probably the opposite of what yous want, and the only manner to fix it is to rearrange all of your layers. Drag the early frames to the top of the list, put your text in the heart.

This makes it possible for your text to prove up halfway through the GIF. You can even add another flake of text, afterwards.

Get it?

Getting things only correct can take a while, simply play with the layer society long enough and your text volition show upwardly exactly when you want it to.

When you're ready, I suggest yous click File > Save For Web to export the GIF; you'll get a lot of control over the quality, which tin can help reduce file size. Enjoy your newly complete GIF!