Mac OS X Poof Tutorial

Short Description
a new Adobe Photoshop document, and size it to fit into the. 128 x 128 pixel frame, leaving a little room around the edges …

Website: examples.oreilly.com | Filesize: 2298kb

Content
Creating a Custom
Mac OS X Poof
You know that little puff of smoke that appears when
you drag an icon off of the Dock in Mac OS X?
Well, that little animation is called a “poof”.
(That’s a technical term.) It is merely a PDF file
that consists of five frames of an animation and
the shadow masks for each of those frames.
This document outlines the basic steps for creating a
replacement for the default system poof on Mac OS X.
This document does not cover the creation of the original
artwork. The artwork used in this example was created in
Adobe Illustrator. The poof that is illustrated here is
available for download on ResExcellence.com.
. 2001 PMSG Design
pmsg@mac.comStep One
Create a new Adobe Photoshop document with a width of
128 pixels, a height of 128 pixels, and a resolution of 72
pixels/inch. For the color Mode, select “RGB.” Under “Content”
select “White”. You should have a square document filled with
white, like the one pictured at right.
Step Two
Create a new layer and fill it with black using the paint bucket.
This black background layer will be used later for creating the
final frames of your animation.
Step Three
Hide the Black layer you just created for now, so you can create
a new layer for your first frame of the animation. Open the first
frame of the Bomb animation, created in Adobe Illustrator, into
a new Adobe Photoshop document, and size it to fit into the
128 x 128 pixel frame, leaving a little room around the edges
for the drop shadows (which we will add later). Copy and paste
this new artwork into your original 128 x 128 pixel document,
and name the resulting layer “First Frame Art.” (You can close
the second window.)
Step Four
Turn on the black layer again, and you have your first…