I like to take my pictures and color in the backgrounds using photoshop and I also add the text in photoshop, such as the dogs names (this is just easier for me because I use photoshop a lot for my website so I am more familar with it) then I save the photos as "save for web" so that it is a smaller file. The smaller the file size is, the more pictures you can use in your animated avatar. Then I open the pictures in imageready to create the slideshow animation avatar. But I really try to do most of the work in photoshop
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