File > Save for Web

Those are just about all of your options.

Really? I can't embed a gif into a file in the background at all?

Do you know of any programs which CAN do that? EDIT: The moderators have it going on. A moving background.

Inserting a GIF should be easy as File > Open, selecting your .gif, and then, once the file's open, dragging it from it's own document window to your sig's document window using the move tool.

All that seems to do is place the first frame of the GIF in the image without any animation.

Oh, for that you'll have to learn how to use the animation window, which I don't have much experience with. There are about a gazillion Photoshop tutorials on the internet though, and I'm sure at least a few-dozen deal with animation in Photoshop.

Well I'm not really sure about getting the gif open. Sounds like some shenanigans are going down with PS. I've personally never gotten gifs to open proper either.

As for keeping the file size down the big things I found though experiments are the dimensions of the sig, the length of the animation, and the number of colors.

Smaller sig size naturally gives smaller file size. Not having an overtly long animation is pretty key to. I typically try to stick between 30-60 frames but definitely under 100. Lastly having fewer different color for me seem to keep the size down without killing off quality.

Also the Save for Web.. dialog box has some settings you can tweak to help with the file size, the dither and lossy settings are usually what I mess with.

Maybe the are better ways but that what I've figured out though my own messing around.

Your sig is a perfect example.

You have an animated background, behind still images correct?

How did you do that?

Through a probably unnecessarily long and complex process.

I layout the base static imagery in photoshop with a transparent bg. Then I bring it into after effects to make the animation and place the psd on top of it. I then render it as an avi file.

When it's done rendering I import the avi into photoshop using the import video to frames (or something like that).

I always tell it to frame skip every 2 frames and set the frame animation speed at 0.07 seconds. This cuts the number of frames in half and still looks pretty smooth.

Lastly I export using the Save for Web... option, tweak the settings I mentioned before and make that the sig combined with my avatar doesn't exceed MKO's 250mb limit.

...in a nutshell

Worked!

Thanks!

Just a note, its stupid how difficult they made it in photoshop to make a gif. Its infinitely easier to make animated gifs on GIMP. Thats prolly cause Adobe wants u to buy flash or fireworks.