How do you make a series of jpegs into an animated .gif using Adobe Image Ready?

Answer 1

Don't save your files as individual gifs!!!!! You'll lose color information.

1. Take all your jpgs and bring them in Photoshop.

2. In a new document the size of your jpgs, bring all the images as ordered layers. (These layers will then become frames)

3. This is a good time to see if your images are registered (or lined up).

4. on the TOOLS toolbar, click the icon at the very bottom of the toolbar (Edit in ImageReady), or hit Shift+Ctrl+M.

5. Once in Image ready, locate the Animation toolbar (where it shows your frames)

6. At the very top right of that toolbar, there is a little triangle pointing right under the close "X". Click it and choose "Makes Frames From Layers".

7. Hit the Play icon on the animation toolbar. If the animation is playing backwards, click the little triangle again and choose "Reverse Frames".

8. If you want you can change the timming of your frames (individually, by chunks or all). Select the frames you want the same way you'd select files in windows (Ctrl+click for individual, Shift+Click for a serie).
Click on "0 sec." and choose the timming you want. You can put your own as well. Experiment timming ; if the animation is too fast, input a higher value. If it's too slow, bring it down.

9. Once you're happy with your animation, click the "2-up" tab on your MAIN ARTWORK WINDOW. It'll show you the original and how it will look once optimized for GIF.

10. Go to the Optimise toolbar.The default is GIF format.
Color Table : Perceptual (best to fool anyone's eye)
Colors : If you have a lot of colours in your animation, go with a high number. Beware tho, as it makes your GIF very heavy. Try a good balance with file weight and appearance by judging the right side of your main window.
Dither : Diffusion (this is the best way)
Amount : 100% (may vary but usually is best)

11. Now that you'r ehappy with what your GIF will look like, go in File, Save Optimised As...

12. Keep your PSD file (you never know) by then going to File, Save As...

You now have an animated GIF file and a source file of your work you can archive.

If you need more help, holler. Cheers!

Answer 2

Within ImageReady, go to Help > How to Create Web Images > To create a web animation

This might help:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060725200506AAYdcoj

Other:
http://www.mediacollege.com/graphics/adobe-imageready/animation
http://www.ethicsdesigns.com/tutorial_animated_gif.php