This animated tutorial was written by me on November 11, 2026. The results are of my own imagination.  Any resemblance to another tutorial is purely coincidental.  

Please DO NOT claim this tutorial as your own.

This was written assuming you have a working knowledge of PS.

Please keep in mind that I write the tutorial as I am creating it.

Sometimes I may not explain properly where to place things so please see my example if you are ever in doubt :)

You will need to create the tag first.  The tutorial to the non animated tag can be found here.

Supplies needed:

I am using Adobe Photoshop 2026 but this tutorial should work with any version.

You can download the 7 day trial of PS here.

PTU Animation:  I am using Kiya Designs's animation from "Ghostie - Bats" animation pack which you can purchase here.  Please read Kiya's TOUs.

I learned how to use PS for tags by trying tutorials from Tutorials by Rene.  You can find her PS tutorials here.

I use the CTRL + T command for resizing and rotating.

Click on image to enlarge it.

Resizing:  Click on the link to lock the W: and H: for resizing.

Rotating:

This is for rotating to the right enter 15 degrees.  To rotate to the left you would enter -15 degrees

To mirror or Flip go to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal (mirror) or Flip vertical (Flip).

Remember to save often.

Let's get Started:

We will need to do a little bit of editing to the tag before animating.  This part is optional but I find the tube does not turn out so grainy when animating.

Open your tag psd file in PS if not open already.

Select your tube layer.

Right click on the tube and duplicate layer. 

Standing on the duplicate layer, right click and clear layer style and delete smart filter.

Still on the duplicate layer, go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian blur.  Set it to 5 and click ok.

Still on the duplicate layer.

Hold down your ctrl key and click on the thumbnail of the original tube. You will see marching ants around your tube.  Click on the mask icon on the bottom of your layer pallet.

Change the blend mode to soft light and lower the opacity to 30.

Right click this layer and duplicate it.

Standing on the new duplicate layer, change the blend mode to Screen and lower the opacity to 20.

Open Kiya's psd file in PS.  You will notice that there is 24 layers in this animation and it does not have the group layer.  That is ok as we are going to learn how to do this.

We need to group all the layers.  Starting from layer 24, hold down your Shift key and select layer 1.  Once all the layers are selected (the layers will be highlighted) we need to group them.  All layers selected? 

Go to Layers, Group layers.  You will see group 1 folder at the top. Make sure Group 1 is selected.  

Select the layer in your tag that you would like the animation to be placed.  I selected the Moon layer (element 91).

Back to the animation.  Click on Group 1 and drag it into your tag.  Hit Ctrl+T on your keyboard and resize 20%.  Move to a spot you like best over the moon.  I moved it to the top of the moon.

Close the original animation and don't save changes.

Click on the little white arrow beside Group 1 to expand it.  Click on the eyeball of each layer to hide it but leave frame layer 1 visible.  

Select element 91.  Right click and copy layer style.

Select the group 1 folder.  right click and paste layer style.

Click on the arrow beside group one to hide the layers as we do not want to accidentally make any changes.

Next make sure your Timeline viewer is open on the bottom of PS.  If you do not see a row at the bottom of PS that has Create Frame Animation on the bottom, go to Windows>Timeline.

Now we are ready to animate.

Next is animating.

Click on Create Frame Animation (this might look different depending on the PS version you are using).  The timeline screen should only have one frame in it.

Click on the little icon (three horizontal lines) at the top right end of the timeline screen.  A pop up menu will appear.  Select make frames from layers.

You are going to see a big mess in the animation window but we are going to fix this.

Click on the first frame and click on the trash can in the animation window (icon that looks like a trash can in the timeline viewer.  Repeat this until you reach the first frame of the animation.  

Now you should be at the first frame of the animation.  Click on frame 25 and hit the trash can.  Repeat for all the remaining frames.  

Note:  A faster way is to select the frame after the animation and hold down the shift key.  

Select the last frame in the timeline and hit the delete icon.  

You should be left with 24 frames in the animation window.  This is the amount of frames for our animation.

This next step is very important.  Any changes you do from here you must be on frame 1 in the animation window. It will be highlighted in blue.

Make sure you have animation frame 1 in the timeline selected.

Scroll down to the bottom of your tag in the layers pallet.  

Starting from the bottom of the layer pallet, click on the eyeball beside each layer to make it visible.  For the white base layer you may have to click on it a couple of times to make it visible in all the animation frames.  It's a Photoshop thing.  Do not touch the group layer.

This is what the animation window should look like once all the frames are visible.

Note:  My screen isn't large enough to show all 24 frames.

Next, I want to slow down the animation.  With the first frame selected, hold down the shift key and click on frame 24.  This will select all the frames.

Next, click on the little black arrow beside the 0 sec as we want to change the speed.  A pop up window will appear.  

I selected 0.1 Second.  

Now click on the play button in the timeline viewer to view the animation.  Click on it again to stop it.

Click frame 1 again so we don't accidentally make any changes.

Now to save our tag as a gif.

Go to File>Export> Save for Web.

A new pop up window will appear.  Change the settings to my screen shot below.  Click on the image to enlarge it if needed.  Click save.  Save it to your computer in your tags folder.

I hope you have enjoyed my tutorial.