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JULY 09, 2003 Customizing iDVD 3, Part 4
Highlight shape OK, now that we can change the color and opacity of our highlight, we have many, many more options available to use for the highlight shape. It used to be that if you changed the highlight shape, you might wind up with some fantastically terrible results, such as a heavily aliased effect over your button. Now, however, the ugly effects can be toned down with opacity control, and you can even do color overlays for some interesting results.[an error occurred while processing this directive]For example? For example, you could create an overlay that actually overlaps the media displayed within your button; you create a highlight file that subtly accentuates portions of your image; hey, you could even use the highlight to create color effects, such as using a red lens to reveal hidden images or text within your button. Whatever you want to do, color and opacity controls will help. And now here's how you alter the shape of your highlight itself. If you're using one of the preset buttons that appear in the button menu list, changes to highlights are no different than they were in iDVD 2. You can find an explanation of the process here, way back in my very first iDVD customization tutorial. The above process is really the easiest way. That is, you modify the default buttons to create new sets that can be used regardless of the theme you're working with. However, some of the newer themes have multiple button styles, which many of you would want to take advantage of. So let's take a look at one of these and modify the highlights to create new ones with custom colors and custom shapes. Now, if you're familiar with the old way of modifying highlights, the first thing you'll notice about the new way is that there are, apparently, no graphics files to modify. There are. They're just hidden. For this example, let's work with the Brushes Metal Two theme--not because I don't like it, but because I don't like the highlight. So I'm going to give it something of a beveled appearance and make it a gray color (RGBA values: 22,22,22,200) to go along with the theme. If you'd like to follow along, the Brushed Metal Two theme file is located in the same place as the rest of the themes and is called 020_Brushed_Metal_Two.theme. Show the package contents on this file and navigate to the Resources folder. Here, locate the file called Brushed.Media.pox.  This is another package file, though it looks like a folder. Show the package contents on this file, and navigate to Contents/Material/. Here you'll see three ordinary document files with important-sounding names ("523D62CB-0893-11D7-8617-0003939BA86A," "523DBF1C-0893-11D7-8617-0003939BA86A" and "523E35EC-0893-11D7-8617-0003939BA86A"). These represent your highlight, button and mask, respectively. If you're working on a different theme for this tutorial, the names of the files will be slightly different, but they should be in the same order.  But you can't modify them just as they are. First, choose the highlight file (the one listed first in alphabetical order), and copy it out of the Material folder and onto your Desktop. Then add a .tif extension to the end of the file name, and open it up in your favorite graphics application. Prev 1 2 3 4 Next Related sites: • AV Video • Creative Mac • Digital Media Designer • Digital Post Production • Digital Producer • Digital Video Editing • DVD Creation • Film and Video Magazine • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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