Hey guys,
Recently I found myself in a bit of a dilema. I was creating animations by modifying static images one layer at a time...now, to do this, I was using the only software I had to hand, which was Photoshop CS3.
Now, if you have ever used Photoshop, you will know that every single time you save an image, it trys to save as .psd, which isn't helpful if you want to create a load of PNG files. Now...I know changing a file type and selecting if you want the image interlaced or not isn't that hard...but imagine having to do that a minimum of 600 times to create 1 short animated gif file.
Frustration and headache caused me to bang my head on my desk a whole bunch of times until it came to me..."omg, I could use SSC for this"
So, at that moment, I downloaded SSC, installed it and set to work.
My first 2 attempts at using SSC for this where complete failures, even after setting '#' as my quick snapshop key. That was because I needed SSC to remember the region i had selected in the photoshop window.
After getting SSC to remember my region size ("Preferences>Saving and Loading Files> On Image File Load>Reselect Actie Region"), and setting up my hotkey, and setting it to stay minimized after capture, I thought I was away...so I had a quick look at the settings to try and get SSC to save my files in number order (If you have ever created a LOT of images to peice together as a gif file, you will know that having them numbered 1,2,3,4,5 etc... if much easier than long file names)...DAMN...no default option available in SSC to do such a thing...plenty of other options, but not that one...so I proceeded to bang my head on the desk again. Then I made contact with mouser via
IRC, he informed me that SSC could not do this by default, but there WAS something that it did, that could make this option possible!
To do that, all i needed to do was go to Preferences>File Naming Template and type '%num%' into the Default New File Name area!
So now...instead of spending 30 seconds saving each file and naming them, and making you get RSI a whole lot faster because your having to do more work than required, SSC will do all that for you with ONE button...My button of choice was '#', PURELY because I was moving items within photoshop 1 pixel per time using the Arrow Keys, and # is close enough to them to make life very very easy!
Now I save around 45 minutes, 4 pain relief tablets, and a sore head per project if im doing 750-1000 statics!
