IamSam and Paul...........
Paul - Interesting tutorial for making GIFS. Mine is already made by my phone. Skimming through the photojojo tutorial for gems and perhaps the answer, I see that they are making a cinemagraph where I want to make adjustments to one that is already made. You know, those neat PS adjustments like vibrance and contrast...
The tut says to test the GIF by playing it in the Photoshop "frames" window. I wonder where that is? Probably the 'play' arrow under the frames? I have seen two other ways to test it. After going to 'Save For Web,' there is both a 'play' arrow, and a button for 'open in browser.' Both of these yield a good test, but a failed GIF with the streaming masked frames individually displayed, while not having the individual still first frame (which is the whole still picture). You see that with the linked samples, above.
BTW - I'll look over the other links in the article eventually. To just be literal: if I remove all the weird frames (150 of them) there will be no animation.
The weird white part of the layers should have been transparent, and overlaying the still frame. Maybe that's a clue. My settings in the 'Save for web' window match everything I've seen...
IamSam - Really, thanks for the links. I am bound to learn some things from that phlearn site. Although my GIF has already been made by my phone, the vid I watched helped me understand a lot...even though they are making a GIF from a video. Can't wait to find out what the difference between 'fill' and 'flow' are (lessons on their site). There is SO much to learn in PS. I am rather addicted, although I am sometimes slowly struggling through, self-taught, trial and error, just "helping" my photos out a bit.
I'd love to see what you did post, so, yes please, re-post or whatever. Sometimes I learn even if the answer is not completely a direct answer.
To clear up the 'a bit lost' part for you (and me), here is a story: I needed a new smart phone so I did my usual TON of research and acquired a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 which is better than all of the Apple products (multitasking), and even better than the Note 5 just released (128 GB micro SD card, removable battery).
The phone has a native camera app with a mode called "Animated photo" which produces cinemagraphs! As I am still in the learning stages, learning what's on my palette, I experiment. Pretty cool stuff. I shot the hummingbird hand-held (braced beside a window) while/after making coffee. Looking a bit pekid and not very crisp or colorful, I know that my good friend PS can be of assistance.
I opened the Note 4-produced GIF in Photoshop, all 150 pre-masked frames are there. The first frame is the still shot, the rest are just the result of masking for the moving parts. I made some changes to the first frame, but then the rest of the frames did not match. Then, I learned a new thing online (here in fact). "Adjustment layers" added to the 'top of the stack' (kind of like Adobe Illustrator stacks - which I am a total noob at). OMG! THAT's what those little icons are for!!! I just recently learned about "Open as" for Camera RAW, and last year spent many days learning a little teeny bit about sharpening.
I made some adjustments and before going too wild (these are only rudimentary experiments so far) I decided to save and test it. That's where the problems began. No matter what I do, including doing nothing, the saved GIF demonstrates everything (all the motion) except the important still image background.
I don't know if it's a setting I need to make in PS or what? That's how I came up with "need to learn how to save a GIF cinemagraph." Technically, the answer to that question is "Shift-Ctrl-Alt-S."
What I might have asked is "how do I save a cinemagraph GIF that was made by my Note 4, and make the still image remain behind the masked individual frames?" (but even there I am probably using the term "masked" improperly - (since it's the ~result~ of the masking that remains, not the actual mask...which was probably left far behind in the phone long ago - lol?)
So, I shot a VERY rudimentary cinemagraph with my Note 4, and I want to tweak and save it.
As I mentioned, even if I do NO adjustments or tweaking, the GIF just doesn't 'save' right. It is certainly user error. With some hope, the user can be fixed!
That's my story and I am sticking to it.
Thanks for your, well, for everything.
Best,
DrCarl