Interest Gauge for an Effects Guide

[Sierra Lorna]

I've had a lot of people e-mail me, first asking what program I use, then how I do my effects. I find myself explaining a lot of the time how to do AMV effects using just Photoshop. Since there's already an After Effects guide, I thought it might be worth it to do an easy-to-understand guide about how to do some popular effects using only Photoshop and Premiere (and possibly other editing programs). I'm thinking of covering rotoscoping (cutout) techniques, credit/subtitle removal, and compositing for crossover AMVs. I've taken some Photoshop classes myself, so I think I would be able to cover the program pretty well. A lot of people (such as myself) don't have any cool compositing programs like After Effects, so you guys think this would be a useful guide to some people?

[trythil]

It'd be a lot more useful to point people to a book on computer graphics, so that they could learn what's going on at the deepest level and apply that knowledge to whatever they had available.

That approach has the additional benefit of making people think about what they're doing instead of haphazardly throwing around Bézier curve masks and color correction.

I guess you can tell that I'm against this idea, but I bet nobody else is, so it's probably safe to proceed.

[trythil]

Something like this book would be a useful reference to get both technical and artistic points, I suppose.

[Sierra Lorna]

Something like this book would be a useful reference to get both technical and artistic points, I suppose.

I've heard from my teacher as well that that's an awesome book--I would probably recommend it in my guide if I did it. However, I think that most people on this site who want to learn AMV effects don't care about how masking actually works, they just want to know how to do that cool cutout effect that everyone does. Most aren't out to be proffessional digital artists or anything, and so really don't care about theories and the details behind what they're doing, they just want to get it done. That's why I would try to make it as simple as possible (and I would also try to give hints about where in an AMV it would be a good idea to put effects, instead of just throwing them around).

[Scintilla]

I had no problem learning how to do cutouts in Photoshop 5.5 (despite the fact that our manual is long missing and the help file never worked, and yes it WAS a completely legal copy; I think the fact that it was an upgrade on top of another upgrade may have had something to do with this problem), first with the Polygonal Lasso and then with paths, without help. So I personally don't see the need for a guide.

But then, I said the same thing about learning digital video concepts from AD&E's A/V Guide when someone proposed making a simpler version of that. So there probably aren't many people who share my view on this, either.

[Sierra Lorna]

I had no problem learning how to do cutouts in Photoshop 5.5 (despite the fact that our manual is long missing and the help file never worked, and yes it WAS a completely legal copy; I think the fact that it was an upgrade on top of another upgrade may have had something to do with this problem), first with the Polygonal Lasso and then with paths, without help. So I personally don't see the need for a guide.

But then, I said the same thing about learning digital video concepts from AD&E's A/V Guide when someone proposed making a simpler version of that. So there probably aren't many people who share my view on this, either.

Yeah, I didn't think it was too difficult to figure out either. But I've actually had a number of people ask me about it, so maybe some people don't understand stuff like that so easily. I'm just wondering if a guide would be worth it, and if there are enough people who would need it.

[godix]

I suppose the question really comes down to do you want to see a bunch of people do poor carbon copies of your videos? That's what the end result of a detailed guide on how to do YOUR effects would be.

Personally I think the most useful effect guide, if any could be called useful, would be a generic and very basic one. Photoshop use, for example, should be four sentances "Export from permiere. Import to photoshop. Do whatever changes you want and save. Import back to Premiere". The transparency setting of premiere should be explained with NO mention of what to use it for. The only mention of default Premiere transitions and most default premiere effects should be 'Ignore them.'

Anything more than that and you're telling people what to edit rather than how. "To do rotoscoping export to photoshop and..." has an implication that the ONLY use of photoshop is rotoscoping. "Piano keys are done by masking..." means that masking will only be used to do piano keys. "Lipsync is done by..." ignores that I can list three very different ways of doing lipsync offhand and I'm sure there's more I don't know about. If you go into details you aren't teaching someone how to use effects in THEIR video, you're teaching someone how to make a Sierra Lorna video.

[downwithpants]

while it's good to keep your explanations general to promote users to make their own decisions on how to apply the effects (and provide suggestions on how to make these decisions), it's more persuasive to supplement the explanations them with specific examples. in other words, don't present your guide with generalizations only or specific examples only.

and if you've received many emails on the topic, then it's obvious that there is interest.

[Scintilla]

"Lipsync is done by..." ignores that I can list three very different ways of doing lipsync offhand and I'm sure there's more I don't know about.

I would advise skipping lip synch (if you had even planned to include it); <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... /">there's already a good guide for that</a>, and it already includes Photoshop and Premiere screencaps.

[bum]

NO NO PLEASE FOR GODS TAKE DO NOT MAKE A GUIDE ON VIDEO EFFECTS.

Fact is, once you spend a little time learning they're easy. Even complex effects are simpler once you understand a program and how effects are structured. Once more people know how to use them, more people will abuse them and the end result is editors who've taught themselves and used the effects well will get less appreciation for there hard work.