This is somewhat inside baseball, but I love using animated GIFs. They’re great for illustrating ideas and I use them in a lot of articles. Making them, however, used to be a pain, until I figured out this one trick.

这有点在棒球里面，但是我喜欢使用动画GIF。 它们非常适合于说明想法，我在很多文章中都使用了它们。 但是，制作它们曾经是一种痛苦，直到我弄清楚了这一招。

Designers are either Photoshop people or Illustrator people. If you’re a Photoshop person you don’t need this, PS does animated GIFs natively. Illustrator, however, does not. I used to output images and do the animation in Photoshop, but that’s a huge pain. If you want to fix one spelling you have to do the whole thing from scratch.

设计师可以是Photoshop或Illustrator。 如果您是Photoshop使用者，则不需要此功能，PS本身会制作GIF动画。 但是，Illustrator没有。 我曾经在Photoshop中输出图像并制作动画，但这是一个巨大的痛苦。 如果要修复一个拼写，则必须从头开始。

This is much easier. Here’s the method, in its entirety:

这要容易得多。 这是整个方法：

1. Make each frame an Artboard in Illustrator在Illustrator中使每个框架成为Artboard
2. Save As a PDF另存为PDF

3. Upload the PDF on ezgif.com

   在ezgif.com上上传PDF

That’s pretty much it, Ezgif lets you set the timing for each frame (and any transitions) and outputs an animated GIF. The cool thing is that PDF is a native editing format for Illustrator, so you don’t need to export anything. I just upload the same file that I work on.

差不多了，Ezgif可以让您设置每一帧(以及任何过渡)的时间并输出动画GIF。 很酷的是，PDF是Illustrator的本机编辑格式，因此您无需导出任何内容。 我只是上传与我相同的文件。

I’ll go through each step in detail.

我将详细介绍每个步骤。

使每个框架成为画板 (Make each frame an Artboard)

If you’re completely new to Illustrator, an Artboard is the ‘printable’ area. The thing you’re ultimately working on. You can create multiple Artboards. Just click on the Artboard icon in the toolbox or go to File/Document Setup/Edit Artboards.

如果您是Illustrator的新手，那么Artboard是“可打印”区域。 您最终要做的事情。 您可以创建多个画板。 只需单击工具箱中的Artboard图标或转到文件/文档设置/编辑Artboards。

From there I usually Option-Click and drag an old artboard to make a copy. It also copies all the objects as well. That makes it pretty easy to do basic animation. You can copy the old frame, make changes and so on.

我通常从那里按住Option键并单击并拖动一个旧的画板进行复制。 它还会复制所有对象。 这使得进行基本动画非常容易。 您可以复制旧框架，进行更改等。

另存为PDF (Save As PDF)

For me, this is the cool part. I can go from original artwork to animation really quickly because it’s all based on one file. In Illustrator you can save your files as PDF or AI. It makes no difference. So just go to File/Save As and save as a PDF. This means the file you’re working on is the same one you’ll upload, no exports required.

对我来说，这是很酷的部分。 我可以很快地从原始图稿转到动画，因为它们全部基于一个文件。 在Illustrator中，您可以将文件另存为PDF或AI。 没有什么不同的。 因此，只需转到“文件/另存为”并另存为PDF。 这意味着您正在处理的文件与您要上传的文件相同，不需要导出。

上传到Ezgif (Upload To Ezgif)

Finally, I go to Ezgif and use their PDF to GIF convertor. There may be other services to do this, but I use Ezgif. It lets you upload the PDF and then you can check ‘Create animated GIF’. You can set a delay time for every frame, or change the delay one by one. You can also crossfade between the frames.

最后，我转到Ezgif并使用其PDF到GIF转换器。 可能还有其他服务可以执行此操作，但是我使用Ezgif。 它可以让您上传PDF，然后可以选中“创建动画GIF”。 您可以为每帧设置延迟时间，或一一更改延迟。 您也可以在框架之间交叉淡入淡出。

Then it outputs an animated GIF, which you can optimize or resize if you want.

然后输出动画GIF，您可以根据需要优化或调整其大小。

And that’s basically it. I just thought I’d share because it’s the best way I’ve found to make animated GIFs. This lets me use my preferred tool to make my preferred image format — animated GIFs.

基本上就是这样。 我只是想分享一下，因为这是我发现制作动画GIF的最佳方式。 这使我可以使用自己喜欢的工具制作自己喜欢的图像格式-动画GIF。