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1.
How
an Overlay Works:
A
Still Menu can be made up of one or two source files. The still
menu, your background, and the overlay, the file that will actually
become your buttons. You will import them both into Reel seperately
or together as one ".PSD" file. This tutorial will be
based upon seperate files. The background comes first, then the
overlay on top. The pics below demonstrate how Reel treats these
files. The pic to the left is the background, or stationary portion
of the menu. The pic to the far right is the overlay file I created
in Photoshop. The center shows how Reel merges, or layers, the
two together.
- Notice
how the background file contains almost all of the information...
title etc. If there will be any still items on your menu that
will not be involved with the interactivity of the menu, I recommend
you keep them within your background. When within the background,
many effects are available to you, but not when used within
an overlay for ReelDVD. Overlays have numerous limitations that
will be discussed below.
- The
checkerboard pattern in the still overlay is used by Photoshop
to denote a transparent background. When it is imported into
Reel, Reel recognizes the background as white. Reel reads all
pure white as transparent by default. This may seem redundant
to mention, since it all ends up transparent, but it will be
important to know later.
2.
Acceptable
Colors in overlays.
Reel
will recognize only four colors in a menu overlay. If any item
in your overlay is not made up of one of these pure colors, Reel
will not display it. The following colors are acceptable:
Pure
White
(255,255,255) |
Pure
Black
(0,0,0) |
Pure
Blue
(0,0,255) |
Pure
Red
(255,0,0) |
- It
is unimportant if these are not the colors you'd like
to see in your final menu. These are simply the base colors
Reel will recognize. They can be adjusted once overlayed
in ReelDVD.
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- The
numbers in parentheses, i.e. (0,0,255), refer to the RGB
standard, or Red, Green, Blue. These can be easily selected
in Photoshop using the Color Picker shown to the right.
- Double
click on the color swatch within the toolbar (highlighted
area to the left. This loads the Color Picker window.
Change the RGB values in the fields to the right of the
color palette window to select the pure colors as the
foreground, or working color.
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- Import
your still shot into Photoshop.
- Add
a new layer onto the image using the layer palette shown
to the right.
( If you Photoshop will not allow you to
do this, you must go to "Save As" and save the
file as a .psd. This is Photoshop's format, and also the
format that ReelDVD identifies the best.
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- Draw
or type your highlights on top of this screen shot.
- When
done drawing, remove the visibility of the screen shot
background by deselecting the eye next to the "background"
layer. Save your image as a new .psd file. If a
layer is marked not visible when it is saved, ReelDVD
will not see it. Don't delete the layer, as you may want
to return later to adjust highlights. You can do so by
opening the saved .psd file in Photoshop and clicking
on where the eye would be in the layers panel again to
make it visible once more.
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Note:
If
including text in your overlay, be sure to TURN OFF Anti-aliasing
on your new type layers. Anti-aliasing smooths the edges
of text by blurring and blending them slightly. This will
create very jagged edges when the .psd file is imported
into Reel. Reel will automatically convert all imported
files into a .bmp file. Bitmaps (.bmp) do not support anti-aliasing.
To do this: Choose Layer > Type> Anti-Alias None
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Need
more detailed training?
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