[Suerender]

thanks – gives the problem a new perspective. to clear it up a little: i did the prerendered animation in a 3d application- and mapped an old 19th century map onto the globe- then rendered. a quick googlesearch showed me i could have done all the mapping work in AE itself 😉 –>>>https://www.creativecow.net/articles/mylenium/layered_earth/index.html
since i dont really want to redo the whole animation in AE (and i cant find the ccsphere plug in my AE folder/even though its pro6.5) ill keep your input in mind for the next situation that pops up. thanks mylenium

[Suerender]

registered and got a reply – but cant see a place to download the beta! am i missing something? looks like a great addition for every AEpluginfolder on this planet.

[Suerender]

you could try magic bullet…i know thats not really professional but it gets the job done in most cases…

[Suerender]

color range from the key-effects tab works pretty well…

[Suerender]

thank you spritemaster! sometimes the obvious just doesnt seem to be so obvious!
as a matter of fact – since the blur doesnt really “generate” pixels i went on to paint/clone the extended pixels myself. time consuming – but i hope it will work out.