Animated banners - recommend me a tool!

I am very skilled with Photoshop (CS3) but the problem is, it's dead when it comes to animations and I do need it for animated banners/headers.

Text effects such as motion-blur fadeaways (not just instant drop of the text) and all sort of fades/intros, what do you recommend since Flash doesn't have a pre-made effect for this kind of stuff.

I remember I was using Swish back in the day..

Go ahead, I'll green rep!

 

Image Ready is an good program to make gif animations that you seek. Also swift is an flash program with pre made flash effects.

 

as jaybreeze said this can be done with illustrator. I suggest you find some tutorials on it to first make your way round animation.

 

You can do some pretty nifty animated gifs with Fireworks if you know your way around it, it's a bit pricey though if you don't have it already - same goes for Flash of course, I think the above mention Swift 3D is a good alternative to Flash also.

P.S. Swish has come a long way too I think http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?area=products&product=max&tab=demos

 

i use image ready since it's so compatible and convenient in photoshop

 

but the motions in imageready are effect-less! uhhh

 

I'll do a second vote for Fireworks. It's always been my go to program for web stuff over Photoshop.