Question about DVDMaestro

[FerlUno]

i'm trying to figure out what exactly i'm supposed to put for the subpicture?? When i place a normal picture in there, it only comes out with like 4 colors, i think it's 4 bits. So another part of my question is, am I supposed to do the whole menu on the background image and then just highlight the parts that i want to be buttons? Also, what exactly is the subpicture for? any help would be appreciated. thanks.

[Jestorius]

Subpicture is for area selection on your background. Selection and Action color is reflected only on the subpicture surface.

[MickeyNBK]

The Background is your main picture and you can use the subpicture (you don't have too) to add text that will be highlighted or shapes that will be highlighted when you move through the menu. Once you have added the background and the subpicture you click your mouse, hold and make a square or rectangular selection around one of the objects in your subpicture (or where ever you want a button if you don't use the sub picture, the difference is then you'd just have a square/rectangular button rather than being able to have selectable text or a different shape as your button). Then on the Color Mapping tab you set the color and transparency level you want. But defualt 2 colors are assigned to your selection, one will color your subpicture that in in the selection and the other will fill the rest of the rectangular/square selection. I usually make one of the color solid and take the rest down to 0 so they aren't displayed. Then you can click on the pallet and edit the color to get the desired color you want.

[SiC]

To give you a better idea of a subpicture, let me tell you what I do.

First I find a suitable picture for the background then open it up in Photoshop. In Photoshop I add a clear layer over the picture and add text such as "Movie 1, Movie 2, Slideshow, Extras" to this clear layer. So now I save this picture as a *.psd file. This file now has two layers, the original background layer & the layer with the text. I import this file into Maestro and place it in the menu window. Maestro will automatically identify the text layer as the subpicture and the original picture as the background. I draw a box around these pictures and create buttons for it.

The subpicture doesn't have to be text it can be a shape like a star, triangle, square, etc. whatever you choose. The only thing about a subpicture is that the color is limited, that's why I like to use text.
Here's a sample of what I'm talking about:
http://members.home.ne.jp/sic/sample.jpg

[Jestorius]

As you can see on the picture the text is a yellow (transparent over the background). The sub-picture is actually black, but because the color definition for black (row 2) is sett to 5 (yellow) it is 30% transparent.

Just make a black shape (text or whatever) on a white background and import it over the menu-background picture. The color for your button you draw has to be 0.

[talman]

Anyone recommend a good resource for learning how to do simple things (like the one you mention Sic) within Photoshop? I'm a complete Photoshop idiot. Thanks.

[Jestorius]

The best learning resource is to watch the others and try to doing the same. Take a Google search and you gonna finde Photoshop tutorials.