Photoshop animation export: why do I keep getting a single frame?

If youre googling how to export animation from Photoshop because you hit the button and got one sad static image, youre not crazy. Photoshop basically has two working export paths for animations, and theyre annoyingly not the ones people click first.

A couple of things to mention:

• gifs can only store a limited set of colors, so Photoshop has to “cheat” to make gradients look smooth. Thats why a gif can come out looking kind of ugly (banding/stripy gradients).
• If youre exporting for social media, consider MP4 anyway. A lot of platforms will convert gifs to video under the hood, so you might be doing extra work for the same result.

1. If you want an animated gif: the reliable route is File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy) (yep, Legacy). From there set it to GIF, then pick the preset GIF 128 Dithered. Right after that, switch Colors to 256 if you want it to look cleaner. Adobe literally recommends that exact combo (preset first, then 256 colors).

Know issues: 

• if the preset name changes to “Unnamed” after you tweak Colors/settings, thats normal.
• if the file is huge, shrink the Width/Height right in that window. 
• make sure looping is set to Forever (either in the Timeline repeat menu or in the Save for Web looping option).

2. If you want a video (mp4): go File > Export > Render Video. Choose Adobe Media Encoder as the export method, then pick your Format/Preset, and choose a frame range (All Frames, Start/End, or Work Area) depending on whether you want the whole timeline or just a section. Hit Render.

If I have multiple animations, I export and just batch-convert in video converter (i personally use Movavi Video Converter) to the same format/size.