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  • The Still Menu Application (PG 3 of 3)
  • This page will offer the practical application of Still Menus in Reel DVD 2.5. It is highly recommended that you read The Basics before trying this tutorial.



Now you're ready to adjust the colors (home stretch)
14. Earlier I mentioned that the moons were made in pure black. This was, of course, so Reel would see them when we imported them as an overlay. We will now change the color for the three stages of a button: Display, Selection, and Action. The first stage on the toolbar is Original. This will show you the actual colors contained within the .psd file. These stages can be displayed using the buttons to the right side of the preview window toolbar.

15. We will first adjust the display color. We want this display color to be transparent. To do this we click on the display color mode button on the right side of the toolbar, this would be the second button highlighted in Fig. 13. We then adjust the black contrast. The four colors ReelDVD sees in the overlays are adjustable across the very bottom of the toolbar. The buttons were drawn in pure black. Click the (-) button next to the black setting until is shows zero. You will notice that all of the moons have gradually disappeared... They will now display transparent.

Note: As mentioned in the Basics, ReelDVD sees only four colors in the overlay. The four contrast selections allow you to set the states of each of these colors within your overlay individually. If you used pure blue within the overlay, you'd be changing the contrast to the far left. If you used pure red, you'd be changing the contrast one in from the left, etc. This flexibility also allows you the ability to display more than one color in your menu overlay.

16. We will now adjust the selection color. This will be the color of the dots when they are selected by the end user. For this application we want them to be blue. Select the selection color button at the right of the toolbar, this would be the third button highlighted in Fig. 13. We go back to the same color adjustment location we were in the step above. We are still adjusting the selection color of pure black, so we stay in the same location. If the color displayed in that spot is not already blue, we can change the color we want displayed by clicking on the color in-between the (-) and (+) signs. This will bring up the 16 color palette shown to the right. These are the available choices for our selection color.

You can add colors to this palette by using Edit>Project Settings>Color Palette. This can be done at any time during the building of your project, but you can never exceed 16 total color choices.

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17. Now that Blue is selected, we will leave the contrast at 100, because for this project, we're not looking for translucent buttons. However translucent buttons can be used for several applications, and I encourage you to experiment with them as you gain experience.  
18. Finally, we will select the action color. This is the color the dots will be for the second or so after the user has hit the SELECT button on their remote, as the video clip loads. Select the Action color button, the far right button highlighted in Fig. 13. If the action color is not already red, click the "100" between the (-) and (+) buttons and select the bright red. Leave the contrast at 100.
19. You can now enter simulation mode, by pressing the small red dot in the lower left corner of the preview window. Once pressing play, you should be able to have your blue moon jump downward or upward next to the four different menu selections. When a button is selected, it will turn the action color of red. Congratulations your done!