In this tutorial we're going to learn how to make an animated link back button.

From thisto this:

• Open photoshop. Make a new canvas and make it size 100x35 pixels. It can also be 88x31 pixels (wxh). Those two sizes are the usual sizes for link back buttons.
• Take a graphic of yours, make one, cut an image, or just fill a layer with plain color. Whatever you want. This is just going to be the background.I took a random graphic of mine, cropped it and fitted it onto my canvas. Mine:
  
• I usually like to apply a border to my linkback buttons so they look better. I think something simple like white will do for me. To add a border, select the layer you want your border to apply on to, go to Layer > Layer Style > Stroke: 1 pixel, inside. Make sure that you're image is cropped and it all fits into your canvas, otherwise your inner border will not show up.Mine:
  
• We're going to add text now. It's extremely important you get this part right because it will either make your button or break it. For graphics this small, you should use Bitmap or Pixel fonts. You can get different types of those fonts here at dafont.com.

  I'm going to use the font Pixies which you can download here. Write your text and put it wherever you want. For my text color I used #ff0080. Depending on which type of Pixel font you use the size should varry. However, they're usually from 6pt to 9pt. Pixies works at size 7pt.

  THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT

  Make sure your text properties look like this

• Using the Rectangle Tool, make a rectangle behind your text. The color of the rectangle should be the same color as the border you used for the base. Don't put your rectangle/text over the face or main subject, keep it towards the border as much as possible. You can also make a rectangle that runs along the bottom and then a rectangle that runs along the top. Some examples:
  
  I'm going to use the last one.
• This step is going to include the animation part. Go to Window > Animation, if you have Adobe Photoshop cS 3. If you have anything lower than that, you should open ImageReady.This is what the animation box looks like.
• Duplicate your text.The number of copies that you need to make will depend on how many letters there are in your text. Mine has six letters so I'm going to make six more copies of my original copy. To duplicate a layer, right click on your text, and select 'Duplicate Layer.' So including my original layer, I have, seven layers
• Before you do anything else, go to each of your text layers and turn off their visibility using the little eye beside each of them. The layer will become invisible once you click on the eye.
• we have to make new frames for each of the color changes. In your Animation window, you already have the first frame ready for you. Click on the little paper that is folded on the edge. It looks like this. Make six other frames so there will be a total of 7, including the original.
• 1st Frame: Turn on the visibility on the original text. 2nd Frame: Turn off visibility of the original text and turn on the visiblity of the 1st copy.

  Do the above for each of the frames. Each frame should only have 1 text layer visible. Frame one=original copy, Frame 2=2nd copy, Frame 3=3rd copy, etc...

• Select the 2nd frame and change the color of the first letter. My second color is going to be #01dafa (light blue). This is how each of my seven frames look like:
• Now we're going to play with the time between each frame or the spead of the text change. The default setting is 0 seconds. I think that's a little too fast so I'm going to set mine on .2 seconds. To change the time you just click on the black arrow:
  
• Go to File > Save As >, name your button, and save it as a .GIF, otherwise it won't be animated. That's it!