Can I take a series of photos and animate them in one gif file?

u can do it by using softwares like Animation shop

or ulead gif animator etc.

Cut them off of the background, open up gimp (its free) and stack all of the animation frames on top of each other. Save as. It will ask if you want save as animation. Say yes and you are done.

In photoshop. cs4

put all the photos, each in its own layer. Try to keep them in order from first frame being on layer 1, last frame being the top layer. Turn all the layers off. hide all visible layers.

go to windows>animation

on the bottom right corner of the animations box, click the three squares icon to convert frames to animation.

now this is really simple,

create a new frame for each corresponding layer. Turn the layer on respectively.

Frame 1, turn on layer 1, Frame 2 turn on layer 2.

by putting them in order I like said above, its easier to manage.

Pay attention to the delay and loop for desired settings.

finally to save it, go to file "save for web and devices" depending on what you want for quality choose a preset on the top menu. Trial and error to see what is it that you want.