Question: As a follow up to [Highlighting specific parts of a TikZ drawing](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/23548/highlighting-specific-parts-of-a-tikz-drawing), I'd like to know how to generate an animated image (`gif`) from a series of `beamer` slides.

Martin Scharrer came up with this example:

![Drawing 1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3w9Xr.gif)

Some hints on cropping the PDF file are also welcome. `=)`

Answer: 
I generated that animated GIF the following way under Ubuntu Linux. It should work under other OSs as well because the external software is also available for Windows, Mac and others.

This assumes a `beamer` `frame` with several overlays as a starting point. The code for the GIF above can be found in my answer to [Highlighting specific parts of a TikZ drawing](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/23548/highlighting-specific-parts-of-a-tikz-drawing/23550#23550).

1. Ensure otherwise empty slides, e.g. `\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}%`
2. Ensure that all slides have the same size.
3. Compile to PDF (directly or indirectly).
4. Crop the PDF, e.g. using `pdfcrop <file>.pdf`.
5. Use [ImageMagick](http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php) to generate an animated GIF from the multi-page PDF:

```
convert -verbose -delay 50 -loop 0 -density 300 <file>-crop.pdf <file>.gif

```

Change the settings to your liking.  

`-verbose` is not really required.  

`-delay` states the duration of every image in the animation in 1/100 s.  

`-loop` states the number of repeats. `0` here means repeat indefinitely.  

`-density` determines the density for the raster image in dots-per-inch (dpi). This will influence the GIF size and is required because the PDF is a vector graphic. You can also use `300x300` etc. to select the X and Y density separately.

Here also an external example showing a diagram I had in one of my scientific publications: [MP-DPWM](https://i.imgur.com/mhphx.gif) (300k)

I might add support for this to `standalone`. Conversion support is already added in the developer version.
After spending a few hours on ImageMagick with no result (I kept getting error messages), I decided to go for a Photoshop + Acrobat Pro solution. Here's how I did it.

---

Required software

* Acrobat Pro (I'm using Acrobat X), or any other PDF reader that allows you to export or save the PDF pages as images
* Photoshop (I'm using CS3, and presumably newer, or even slightly older, versions will work as well)

---

Steps:
------

1. Generate a PDF file of your Beamer slides
2. In Acrobat Pro, go to `File` > `Save as` > `Image` > `<select PNG or JPEG>`. In the pop-up window, select `Settings...` on the right, and under "Coversion" change "Resolution" to `600 pixels/inch` or above (the default resolution is very low). Then click `OK` and `Save`, and images of each page will be saved to the specified location as `<PDF_Name>_Page_#.png`.
3. Open Photoshop, go to `File` > `Script` > `Load Files into Stack`. `Browse` and select all the image files generated in step 2 and click `OK`. Now all the pages should be imported as layers of a Photoshop document.
4. Go to `Window` and select `Animation` to show the animate panel.
5. From the flyout menu in the top right of the animation panel, select `Make frames from layers`, and then `Reverse frames` to set the frames in correct order.
6. Select all the frames in the animation panel (click the first frame, and then `Shift`+click the last one), and choose a frame rate at the bottom right corner of any frame. You can also set the repeat option at the bottom left of the panel. Preview by clicking the play button.
7. Lastly, go to `File` > `Save for Web & Devices...` > `Save` (top right) > give it a name, and make sure to select `.gif` as the extension. Then we're done!

Note: If you want to crop the PDF file, then after step 6, select all layers in the layers panel, use the Crop Tool to crop the images.

![gif of string recognition](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1bphp.gif)

![gif of wave](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DPLAX.gif)