Sun Animation

This is the image i started with and went ahead and went to Filter/Render?Lighting to give it a darker morning look.

After that I created a new layer made a quick sphere and gave it some glow for my sun.

On my sun layer I went right clicked and chose one of the new option in Photoshop CS2. Group in to Smart Object. (This will keep the mask we will create stay in place)

As you can see the layer now has a icon in the bottom right telling you this is now a smart object.

Now we want to add a mask to this layer.

Select your new mask and grab your Brush tool (low opacity around 30%) and completely mask the mountain area where the sun is now positioned, and above the mountains give it just a little bit of masking so that when we animate the sun will brighness as it comes up.

Example of my mask layer.

After that's done create a new layer and change the blend mode to color. Again select your brush tool and a bright orange and paint over some of the areas in the photo, like the sky , wood, and rocks Then set the layer opacity to 0%.

Now go to Windows/animation.

For the animation click the add new frame in the animation palette and each one we click the sun layer and move it up just a few pixels. I created 11 layers in this animation.

Around the 6th layer start to increase the opacity on the orange layer. just 2-3% each frame. See the examples below.

Example of Orange layer Opacity.

A few of the Frames in my animations showing movement and color change.

Now click play to see your animation.

Saving- File- Save for web - save it as a .gif.