Jeff Hinkle
18
AE Expressions Coins
2
After Effects Coins
56
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
-
That is a puzzler. Sounds like you’re doing everything correctly. I guess a few basic troubleshooting questions:
How are you duplicating the layer to a new document? Dragging to the new doc or right-click>duplicate layer?
Which version of Photoshop are you running?
Mac or PC?
—
It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too. -
How are you doing your cropping? Actually using the Crop tool, or merely changing the canvas size? If you select a portion of the photo with the Crop tool, hit Return, then drag that to a new image, that portion should be all you see. If you just change Canvas Size, the image data outside of the active image area is still there and will carry over to the new image.
—
It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too. -
Are you rendering with a straight or premultiplied alpha channel?
—
It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too. -
[Emanuel Ach] “So, what do you do in those moments? Curse? Drink?”
Both, usually.
-
With your pen tool, click on the last open point of the path. (The pen icon will gain a small square-on-a-line in the lower right corner when you’re properly positioned.) Once you click you’ll reactivate the path and can continue drawing as normal.
-
Along the top of the window, next to the tools, while you have a shape tool selected, there are two buttons: one with a star, one with a sort of dotted-line-shape thing. The star will make the tool create a shape, while the DLS thing will make the tool create a mask.
-
If the background is constant and indistinct, and you have a clean plate from later in the shoot, you could layer your clean plate on top of the hair and use the pen tool to draw a feathered mask around the part you need to cover. If the hair is small/thin enough and your background isn’t too detailed, you might be able to get away with that. Hard to say without seeing the shot.
If your backgrounds simply won’t match, there’s always the tedious approach of using the clone stamp tool in After Effects, or opening your movie in Photoshop and stepping through the frames, using whichever retouch tools you’re most comfortable with. I’d suggest making your camera assistant do it. Good learning experience.
-
Transform Selection does just that: transforms your selection boundaries, not the contents of your selection. To transform the actual pixels in a selection area, make your marquee selection, then choose Edit>Free Transform (control/command-T). Then you’ll be able to scale, stretch, rotate, etc. the actual pixels.
-
Just making sure I understand: You have a text layer set to 3D, and it’s fine until you add your red light, correct? If your red light is the only light in your scene, then any time the red light is not pointing at your layer (you say it’s sweeping across) the layer will be in complete darkness. Try adding an ambient light to the scene and see if your text comes back.
-
Just to cover all the bases: What are the dimensions and resolution of your original image? Are you having to scale it up larger in After Effects to get it full screen? Is your Quality switch in the timeline set to Best and not Draft?