My guide to 'anti-aliased' subpictures

[fankey]

I'm not sure if this is obvious to most people, but it's something that I have tried to figure out for some time. Hopefully it will be of use to someone.

Note : This guide references DVDMaestro and Photoshop 7.

I was getting frustrated with making nice looking menus. Basically, I just wanted a nice soft glow to follow the current selected button. The jagged edges that I was getting with subpictures looked like crap. I played around with menu groups, but that took too long to author and was also slow navigating. The solution I came up with seems like a nice compromise of quality vs. time.

1. First make a menu using photoshop and save it as a single layer bitmap.
http://home.comcast.net/~john.dunn1/1.jpg

2. Create a subpicture image in grayscale.
http://home.comcast.net/~john.dunn1/2.gif

3. Next, convert the subpicture to a indexed 4 color image.
http://home.comcast.net/~john.dunn1/3.gif

4. Open the color table of your image ( Image | Color Table... ). It should look something like this.
http://home.comcast.net/~john.dunn1/ct1.gif

We need to map these 4 colors to black, white, red, and blue ( the 4 colors Maestro recognizes ). Click on each color swatch, and assign it to one of the mapped colors. I went red->black->blue->white, since that's the order they show up in Maestro. It should end up like this. Save this image as a single layer file.
http://home.comcast.net/~john.dunn1/ct2.gif

5. Import both images into Maestro and assign them to the appropriate layers. I set the tranparency for each map to be approximately the original gray scale value. It looks best to use the same color for mode.
http://home.comcast.net/~john.dunn1/5.jpg

The end result looks pretty nice. The effect is pretty subtle, but I think it's worth the effort. Here's a close up shot of the end result.
http://home.comcast.net/~john.dunn1/zoom.gif

Let me know if anyone finds this useful - or if you have any suggestions on how to improve on this.

[Arky]

Looks pretty decent to me Fankey. Good work :)

I think I'll make this a sticky, at least for the time being, so everyone else can read it.


Arky ;o)

[TRILIGHT]

That's similar to what I did a few days ago for my Harry Potter project (http://www.trilight.com/menu.jpg) although it was a bit more time consuming since I created the sub-layer manually. The indexed 4 color is a great idea! Thanks for the tip, Fankey!

[Fmazzanti]

Hey, pretty cool!
However I'm not the king of photoshop, so could you explain a little bit on how do you perform steps 2) and 5) ... ?

[fankey]

Originally posted by Fmazzanti
Hey, pretty cool!
However I'm not the king of photoshop, so could you explain a little bit on how do you perform steps 2) and 5) ... ?

No problem.

Step 2 is done using the built in Photoshop layer effects. It's basically white text with a black 'Outer Glow'. To get the glow to show up properly you need to change the defaults. I changed the blend mode to Normal and opacity to 100%. The drop shadow effect is also pretty useful.

As far as step 5 goes, do you mean the color mapping part? What part are you having problems with?

[SVCD4Me]

Excellent post Fankey!

I used your method to create subpic words that look embossed and match the menu fairly good. Way better than just flat text.

Thanks again.

[midiguy]

hey question. I have never really messed with menus for DVDs (never really ripped to DVD-R), but I'm just wondering.. if you're menu that you are creating in photoshop is 720 x 480, won't it look skewed when it is resized to 4:3 by your DVD player? cause, I look at it this way.

the MPEG-2 video in the DVD is 720 x 480 with a 4:3 aspect, so it looks ok when it is played, but hte menu is 720 x 480 with a 1:1 aspect, so won't that mess up the aspect ratio of the menu and skew the image horizantally? correct me if I'm wrong here!

[Arky]

I'm just wondering, has anyone actually tried the following software instead (this was posted quite some time ago, but seems to have fallen by the wayside on the forum , which I find strange)? I intend to buy it soon because I really liked the demo I used for 30days. You can get some really great soft drop-shadow effects etc., with minimal effort. Another really powerful option is the vector editing toolset, which allows maximum creativity and even allows limited extrusion into 3-D shapes ( hints at Boris RED/Effects in this particular respect) Great stuff:

http://www.mediachance.com/dvdmenu/index.html


Arky ;o)

[mikecito]

Originally posted by midiguy
hey question. I have never really messed with menus for DVDs (never really ripped to DVD-R), but I'm just wondering.. if you're menu that you are creating in photoshop is 720 x 480, won't it look skewed when it is resized to 4:3 by your DVD player?

That's exactly right Midiguy. In order to have menus that are not "squished", start with a photoshop image that is 720x540. Then, after saving all your changes and to export, resize the image to 720x480(allow distortion). This way, when the dvd player restretches it, it is the right size.

Hope that helps!

BTW - don't save after resizing... always keep your work file in 720x540 except when exporting to BMP for Maestro/Scenarist.

[mikecito]

Arky - is it just me, or does DVDLab look like Maestro? Did they buy out Spruce? I know Spruce dropped the Maestro product... maybe these guys bought their code to make the program even better. If so - this looks like it could be really great!

[Arky]

No, I know what you mean regarding the similarities, but to the best of my knowledge, Steve Jobs (Mr.Apple!)will be using the Spruce engine underneath future MAC products.

The MediaChance stuff is all written by one man, "Oscar", from the ground up. I don't think he's used an SDK. Most of his stuff is C++ with no formal training - quite remarkable when you see how good his software is. I'm really excited by DVDlab's potential.


Arky ;o)

[BQuicksilver]

Just curious, guys...could you point me to a good tutorial on BASIC sublayer creation via photoshop 7 and maestro? I feel like I'm on the cusp of getting this all straight, but I could still use some help...too much to be asking specific questions yet.

[mikecito]

Starting on page 7-24 of your Maestro User's manual there is a great overview and walkthrough on this very topic. Very informative and easy to follow.

[BQuicksilver]

Therein lies my problem. I bought my machne off a pseudo-friend who had it on there and didn't give me the manual. Anyone know of how I can get a copy?

Edit: My version doesn't even have the proper help file, what gives?

[sunnysixkiller]

My problem is when change the image mode to indexed it doesn't offer me any options, it just changes it, so I can't select 4 color.

:(

[sunnysixkiller]

Update: You must convert the image to RGB first, then index to bring up the index properties box.

[AudioVideoMaster]

@ Fankey
Could you please fix your images. I get 404 not found errors on all the links. I'm interested in your anti-alised tutorial here.

Thanks

[mpucoder]

I think Fankey has left the building. Fortunately, I saved the images a long ago, you can find them here (http://www.mpucoder.com/fankey/)

[AudioVideoMaster]

Thank you. :D

[bode]

Just what I've been searching for. Thanks for keeping those images available. :)

[fankey]

woops - I forgot my ISP changed hands. Pictures should now work.

[Dave82]

Maybe this is already a well known thing...however you can use this method with DVD-lab too.
The color order is different: black ---> blue ---> red ---> white (instead of red ---> black ---> blue ---> white).
You have to import the subpicture bmp with "Load External Sub-picture".
If you check "Antialiased", only color 3 (black) will remain active: you can map it to any color and set its transparency. Color 2 (blue) and 1 (red) will be the same color as number 3 and will automatically have such a tranparency level that 2 will be a little more transparent than 3 and a little less transparent than 1.
If you want to obtain a different transparency gradient than the default one, just don't check "Antialiased", map all the 3 colors to the same color and set for each of them a different transparency.
You can also achieve strange effects if you don't map the 3 colors to the same color. ;)

[Shinigami-Sama]

Originally posted by midiguy
hey question. I have never really messed with menus for DVDs (never really ripped to DVD-R), but I'm just wondering.. if you're menu that you are creating in photoshop is 720 x 480, won't it look skewed when it is resized to 4:3 by your DVD player? cause, I look at it this way.

the MPEG-2 video in the DVD is 720 x 480 with a 4:3 aspect, so it looks ok when it is played, but hte menu is 720 x 480 with a 1:1 aspect, so won't that mess up the aspect ratio of the menu and skew the image horizantally? correct me if I'm wrong here!

If I remember right photoshop has an option for the pixel size so that it look "correct" on a sa player :)

[wasp]

Scenarist settings for example...

http://www.damianl.neostrada.pl/temp/doom.jpg

Regards!

[forex2409]

That's similar to what I did a few days ago for my Harry Potter project although it was a bit more time consuming since I created the sub-layer manually. The indexed 4 color is a great idea! Thanks for the tip, Fankey!

[neil wilkes]

No, I know what you mean regarding the similarities, but to the best of my knowledge, Steve Jobs (Mr.Apple!)will be using the Spruce engine underneath future MAC products.

The MediaChance stuff is all written by one man, "Oscar", from the ground up. I don't think he's used an SDK. Most of his stuff is C++ with no formal training - quite remarkable when you see how good his software is. I'm really excited by DVDlab's potential.


Arky ;o)

Hi Arky.
With apologies for resurrecting an old thread I had to chime in & agree with you here - Oscar is a top man. I think I recall that he used to either work for or use Scenarist a lot, but did not like some of it's quirks & foibles so he came up with DVD-Lab Pro.
Even though it is still not under development any longer (but on the other hand the DVD specs have not changed either) it is still supported.
Spruce Maestro was bought out by Apple, who turned it into the Apple DVD application DVD Studio Pro (DVDSP) and ruined it in the process.

DVD-Lab is a superb & extremely powerful tool.