The first thing you’re going to need is Jasc Animation Shop. You’re probably thinking “Uh oh, I don’t have that!”, and it costs 40 bucks to purchase. Don’t worry! There’s an absolutely FREE trial download of this fabulous program HERE!

Once that’s installed, start the program. This is where it all begins!

So, now it’s time to think about what you want your picture to do. Take a look at this :

Okay, so now you need to pick out the pictures that you want to be animated! You can use basically as many pictures as you want, but I’d recommend using two or three. You might also want to make sure that the ones you pick out are all the same size. It’ll look better this way. If they are not the same size, simply use an image editing program and resize them!

Okay, now open the picture that you want to be shown LAST, in Jasc Animation Shop.

Then, bring the rest of your pictures into the animation. This can be done by going to:
Animation–>insert frames–>from file
Then click “add file”, and add the other pictures you wanted to use. For “insert before”, make sure that says 1.
And finally, the “frame delay time” is up to you. If you want your animation to move fast, then you will want to use a smaller number. However, if you want a slow-moving animation, then you should use a higher number. I’m going to use the number 10, because I want my animation to be relatively fast. Click “OK” when you’re done.

If you notice that your pictures aren’t in the order you wanted them to be, don’t worry. All you have to do is drag them to move them to the right frame. If you didn’t care to have them in a particular order, then don’t worry about it.

Now, maybe you want to add text to your animation. If you haven’t already, you can do it now. To do this, use the font tool:

And finally, here comes the fun part! Giving your pictures animation effects! I bet you’re excited.

All you have to do is go to:

Edit–>select all

This way, all three of your frames are selected, so the effect will happen with all of them!

Now, go to:

Effects–>Apply image effect

You’ll see a BUNCH of options for animating your picture! You can experiment with all of these.

If you want to preview what your image will look like before you save it, just go to:

View–>Animation

Like what you see? I would surely hope so! But if you don’t, you can always go back and tweak some things. When you’re satisfied with everything, all you have left to do is save the picture and upload it to your favorite image hosting site! That was easy enough, wasn’t it? =) It gets even easier with practice.