What I was after

Looking at my Timeline in Photoshop, I couldn’t see an option to reverse my video in order to create a slightly smoother looping GIF of something embarrassing my friend did (you know, the best catalyst to learn something new). Basically, I wanted to accomplish what Boomerang for Instagram does since the video was not conducive to being looped directly start to finish and over again due to camera zoom (I mean, I could have done that, but it would have been a more abrupt loop).

The result(s)

I found that the first result on Google for my search, a YouTube tutorial called 0400 Photoshop : How to reverse a video sequence by user EPFLDITSUP did a decent job of explaining how to accomplish the task through a kind of indirect workaround method.

Watch the video yourself here if you like, and see my summary for a list of steps if you can’t be bothered:

The important bits

In essence, the video tells us to:

  • Open our video file, find and cut the part we want to loop and export it as a new video (File \ Export \ Render Video)
  • Create a new document importing the cut video as layers (File \ Import \ Video Frames to Layers)
  • In the Timeline panel (Window \ Timeline), click the menu option on the top right and select Select All Frames
  • In that same menu, select Copy Frames
  • In that same menu again, select Reverse Frames
  • In that same menu again, select Paste Frames…

There you go, you’ve now got the video going front-ways then back-ways. Export your GIF and laugh at your friend’s shame.