Things Which Can Be Done with PTE

[Lin Evans]

Warning: This demo contains tasteful nudity - do not download if this will offend you... the images I used in this demo are not my photography - they are web images chosen for specific reasons pertaining to their suitability for demonstration and construction purpose. The two images of the girl lying in the branches of a tree were monochrome images which I colored in Photoshop. They were chosen for their complexity to experiment with Photoshop coloring techniques. The "bubbles" were created in Photoshop. The rippling water in the fountain bowl was created as an animated gif with SqirlzReflect, an excellent freeware product available on the web. PTE's built-in masking was used to confine the effect to the desired place. The fountain effect was created with ParticleIllusions as an RGBA alpha channel avi. On the second image, the canal, the rippling effect was also created with the aforementioned program, Photoshop and PTE. Note the rippling water in the reflection of the large rising bubble. This was done via a mask created with Photoshop. The third image was a difficult one to create. The multi-object format presented a "head scratch" to determine a way to achieve the rippling water with all the rocks and shadows and get it correct. I worked out a way to do this using a combination of PTE, SqirlzReflect and a complex mask created in Photoshop. The details of how to do this will be made available via a tutorial if anyone is interested and lets me know. This effect can't be achieved without an image editor such as Photoshop to build the mask or without SqirlzReflect and PTE's ability to mix images via opacity and masking. The "Dreams" text was created with a Photoshop action which I will make available for anyone interested.

http://www.lin-evans.org/ken/dreams.zip (about 70 meg zipped Windows exe file)

http://www.lin-evans.org/ken/dreamsmac (about 70 meg zipped MacIntosh native exe file)

Added one summer sequence to the original on 4/15/14

As promised - here's the explanation - tutorial for the rippling water on a complex image:

http://www.lin-evans.org/tutorial/ripplewatercompleximage.zip (about 111 meg zipped avi)

Best regards,

Lin

[cead]

Lin,

Thanks for this interesting, beautiful and complex demo series.

I am very interested in the development of eg. the third picture.

However, is it true that when you use a 'homemade' mask you always should have to add a (white) rectangle here?

This is in contrast with the two template masks.

Or maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Regards,

Frans

[Lin Evans]

Hi Frans,

Thanks!

There is no need to add a white rectangle. The mask you create is easiest if it is a PNG file with pure white where you want the image contained within the mask to show and transparency or black where you wish to show the image in the layer above the mask construct.

I will create an AVI tutorial and post it here sometime later today.

Best regards,

Lin

[Ken Cox]

beauty

am fascinated by the b/w to colour transition - thankfully manual control is provided for examination

ken

[tom95521]

Hi Lin,

Very cool. It would be interesting to create a mask with an inverted water drop/glass sphere moving across the background.

http://fiveprime.org/hivemind/Tags/refraction,sphere

Thanks,

Tom

[cead]

Hello Lin,

I can not get it without an additional rectangle.
Is it possible I may sent you a small example?

Regards,

Frans

[Lin Evans]

Hi Frans,

Yes please send me a link or the PTE file and I'll have a look.

Best regards,

Lin

[Lin Evans]

Hi Frans,

The second slide doesn't require a mask, just place IMG_6309w over wolkenpanorama. The transparency on IMG_6309w lets the sky panorama show through. When you use Photoshop or other editor to create a mask, the easiest way to proceed is to first make a copy of your original image so you never do anything to affect it. Then take the copy into Photoshop and determine the actual pixel size such as 1024x768. Next copy it to the clipboard and close that file. Create a transparency of the same size (in Photoshop the procedure is File, New - set the pixel size equal to the original, color mode to RGB color, 8 bit and the mode to Transparent). This will produce a checkerboard rectangle having the same pixel dimensions as your original. In this case 1024x768. Then Edit, Paste which will paste the copy of your original over the transparency leaving you with two layers. The top layer which you actually see looks just like your original, but the file has a transparent layer underneath. Next use the brush tool with pure white set as your color choice at 255, 255, 255 and paint over the areas exactly where you want to see inside the mask. Once you have painted all the areas where you want to reveal those parts of the image in PTE, then use the eraser tool to make all areas where there is no white paint transparent. Save this file as a PNG.

This mask when used with PTE will allow the image you place inside the mask to show only where the white paint is. For example, let's say you were going to play a video of a fire in a fire place and you wanted to see this video in a different fireplace in a different image. So you just take the different new image and paint the white mask exactly where the fire place is and make everything else either black or transparent. If you make it black you can save the mask as a jpg. If you make it transparent you save it as a PNG. Then you place your image with the fireplace underneath the Mask construct and the mask with the painted white fireplace and everything else either transparent or black as the mask and put your burning fire video inside the mask. Then you adjust the placement and size of the fire video so that it shows through the area masked (the area which is white).

That's essentially how you make a mask outside of the internal rectangle or square in PTE. There are other things you can do which I will show in my tutorial a bit later. One ot the things you can do is use the original image on the top layer and vary its opacity. The opacity will not affect the area of your image outside of the masked (the white) portion, but you can "attenuate" or "subdue" the amount of affect the mask has by varying the opacity of the original image in the top layer. This is how I control the amount of "ripple" in the image in my demo. I think once you see the tutorial, it will become clear.

Best regards,

Lin

[cead]

Hi Lin,

Thanks for your quick reply.

So I did chosen a not straightforward solution (but it did work). I did not know you could use a mask (made in Photoshop)

directly in 'Objects and Animation', and you do not need to go via the 'add mask' button.

Regards,

Frans

[Lin Evans]

I posted a link to the tutorial/explanation on the original post...

Best regards,

Lin

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tom,

That's an interesting concept. I think Dominique (theDom) once had a crystal ball which rolled across the screen and magnified as it did that. It was done in a similar way to the method we use to create a "magnifying glass" and move it about the subject area magnifying what lies beneath. To make it accurate, some distortion would need to be implemented.

I've been corresponding with Panos Efstathiadis (PanosFX) about the possibility of creating a Photoshop action for iridescent soap bubbles. He's taken it under consideration and if he does it, it wouldn't be too difficult to then perhaps create a crystal ball action with the same type construct. That would greatly facilitate doing something like that with PTE.

Best regards,

Lin