Make an animated color transition

Kendall Plant creates subtle motion through color. See how Plant transforms a gradient and animates it in Adobe Photoshop.

Kendall Plant is a designer, content creator, and art director whose unique creations incorporate nature, street photography, and even skulls. She works at Adobe as an associate creative director.

Before Plant defined gradients and animations, she created an elegant design using decorative typography against a solid background.

Plant used a Solid Color adjustment layer as the background for the composition. She set the initial color to blue (#2727D5).

She then added a new layer and selected a Soft Round Brush (B), set it to pink (#ff25de), and brushed a large swatch of color in the corner. Plant added a third color, cyan (#4befff), to create a custom gradient.

To enhance the colors in the gradient, Plant applied a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and increased the Saturation.

When Plant finished creating the gradient, she used Shift+click to select the two adjustment layers and the gradient layer, then right-clicked and chose Create Smart Object. She right-clicked on Smart Object and selected Create Clipping Mask to bound the gradient to the text.

To animate the effect, Plant selected Window > Timeline, and clicked Create Video Timeline. Photoshop added each of the unlocked layers to the Timeline.

The animation Plant created included a series of transformations of the text and color gradient. To start, she held Control+T (Windows) or Command+T (macOS), scaled up the gradient, repositioned it, and pressed Enter/Return to commit the changes. She then clicked the drop down arrow next to the Hue/Saturation layer in the Timeline and the Stopwatch next to the Transform property to set the first keyframe in the animation.

Plant then advanced the playhead on the Timeline, pressed Control+T / Command+T, moved and rotated the gradient layer, and pressed Enter/Return to create the next keyframe. She repeated this process to add two more keyframes to the animation.

To finish the animation, Plant moved the playhead to where she wanted the animation to end. She right-clicked on the first keyframe, chose Copy, then right-clicked on the last keyframe and chose Paste.

Plant defined the extent of the animation by right-clicking on the playhead in its final position and chose Set End Work Area. She clicked the gear icon and checked Loop Playback to create a looping effect. She then clicked Play to test the animation.

If the edge of the gradient is visible at any point during the animation, you can fix this easily. Just scrub the playhead on the Timeline until the white edge is visible. Use Control+T / Command+T to transform and move the gradient to fit within the bounds of the design. Repeat these steps as necessary. Photoshop adds a keyframe each time you transform the gradient.

Note: Project files included with this tutorial are for practice purposes only.