Hello Everyone,
I was searching for help on Alpha Mask and found this fantastic post from last August... Shredder (Jon) is the Bomb!!!!!
Excerpt from Original Post (8/6/2002 4:06:12 PM (Shredder)):
My nephew's a huge Star Wars fan, and I made him a photomontage of stills from the star wars website.
Since I did mine for free (and your $25 isn't much better), time was of the essence to do this efficiently.
Here's a quick way to create a highly stylized photomontage for 10 or 1000 images:
1. In "Preferences...Editing", set the "New still image length" to the number of seconds you want to show each still. This way, when you drop them on the timeline, they'll already be the right length. -- I used 4 seconds, but you may want to use more so people can absorb the images
2. In "Preferences...Editing", check the "Automatically overlap multiple selected media when added" box and set the "Cut to overlap conversion...Amount" to the number of seconds you want the images to overlap. Now, when you drop them on the timeline, they'll be transitioned. You can leave the transitions as dissolves for a classy feel, or simply drag whatever transition you want at a particular part over the dissolve... Simple drag-n-drop. -- I used 1 second for the 4 second images, choose this base on the tempo of your music
3. Now go the Explorer, select ALL the images you want to include, and drag-n-drop the batch onto the timeline. -- You may want to pre-number the pics in the order you want them to appear
Now, if you want to stylize the montage quickly, and want to deal with those awful black borders around portait images dispayled in a landscape monitor, you can do the following:
4. Duplicate the track & then hide the duplicate
5. For track 1, go into track motion and size the frame down so you have a black border all the way around the image - the size of the broder is up to you. Hold down the alt key while resizing a corner to resize about the center. (basically zoom out)
6. Now hide track1 & unhide track 2.
7. For track 2, go into track motion & resize the frame larger, so that your narrowest picture can fill the whole frame (basically zoomed in). Don't forget the alt key!
8. Assign the following track FX to track 2:
- Black and White, 0.750
- Gaussian Blur, .02x.02
(You've now created a blurry, desaturated version of your foreground image, a perect background to elimnate those black borders)
9. Add a layer in between 1&2 and insert a Solid Color Generated event of all black for the entire length of the montage. Set the Level of this layer to 25% -- This will darken the background and thereby highlight the foreground image.
10. Now unhide track 1 & you should have a highly stylized (yet simply done) photomontage. -- Make sure layer 1's compositing mode is 'source alpha' -- Just add music & you're done!
Obviously, you can play with the desaturation & blur levels, or create your own effects for the background.
This is simple enough that it's roughly the same effort for 10 pics or 1000 pics - just scanning time & render time is the issue.
Here's the Star Wars Montage so you can see the effect (needless to say it looks much better on video):
High: Windows Media - 256Kbps
http://www.creativeshrapnel.com/swmontage256.wmv
Enjoy!
- Jon
I was searching for help on Alpha Mask and found this fantastic post from last August... Shredder (Jon) is the Bomb!!!!!
Excerpt from Original Post (8/6/2002 4:06:12 PM (Shredder)):
My nephew's a huge Star Wars fan, and I made him a photomontage of stills from the star wars website.
Since I did mine for free (and your $25 isn't much better), time was of the essence to do this efficiently.
Here's a quick way to create a highly stylized photomontage for 10 or 1000 images:
1. In "Preferences...Editing", set the "New still image length" to the number of seconds you want to show each still. This way, when you drop them on the timeline, they'll already be the right length. -- I used 4 seconds, but you may want to use more so people can absorb the images
2. In "Preferences...Editing", check the "Automatically overlap multiple selected media when added" box and set the "Cut to overlap conversion...Amount" to the number of seconds you want the images to overlap. Now, when you drop them on the timeline, they'll be transitioned. You can leave the transitions as dissolves for a classy feel, or simply drag whatever transition you want at a particular part over the dissolve... Simple drag-n-drop. -- I used 1 second for the 4 second images, choose this base on the tempo of your music
3. Now go the Explorer, select ALL the images you want to include, and drag-n-drop the batch onto the timeline. -- You may want to pre-number the pics in the order you want them to appear
Now, if you want to stylize the montage quickly, and want to deal with those awful black borders around portait images dispayled in a landscape monitor, you can do the following:
4. Duplicate the track & then hide the duplicate
5. For track 1, go into track motion and size the frame down so you have a black border all the way around the image - the size of the broder is up to you. Hold down the alt key while resizing a corner to resize about the center. (basically zoom out)
6. Now hide track1 & unhide track 2.
7. For track 2, go into track motion & resize the frame larger, so that your narrowest picture can fill the whole frame (basically zoomed in). Don't forget the alt key!
8. Assign the following track FX to track 2:
- Black and White, 0.750
- Gaussian Blur, .02x.02
(You've now created a blurry, desaturated version of your foreground image, a perect background to elimnate those black borders)
9. Add a layer in between 1&2 and insert a Solid Color Generated event of all black for the entire length of the montage. Set the Level of this layer to 25% -- This will darken the background and thereby highlight the foreground image.
10. Now unhide track 1 & you should have a highly stylized (yet simply done) photomontage. -- Make sure layer 1's compositing mode is 'source alpha' -- Just add music & you're done!
Obviously, you can play with the desaturation & blur levels, or create your own effects for the background.
This is simple enough that it's roughly the same effort for 10 pics or 1000 pics - just scanning time & render time is the issue.
Here's the Star Wars Montage so you can see the effect (needless to say it looks much better on video):
High: Windows Media - 256Kbps
http://www.creativeshrapnel.com/swmontage256.wmv
Enjoy!
- Jon