AV News 201 - August 2015
Drop-shadow lines will often
improve readability, and are easy
to achieve within PicturesToExe
now. There's a drop-down and
some controls in the 'Common' tab
of Objects and Animations that
lets you make the shadow as dark
or as light as you like, or even
change its colour - how about a
dark blue or a soft purple shadow
for those mountain sequences?
Similarly an outline is fairly easy
to create and can help readability,
this facility isn't in PicturesToExe
yet, you'll have to do it with the
'stroke' tool in PhotoShop for the
present at least - this can help
make lettering more readable if
you are committed to light on light,
or dark out of dark.
Graduated tints on lettering give
it a feeling of solidity which might
give you the look you want too.
Sometimes a texture can give mass to a piece of lettering too - again there are
some available in PhotoShop. A word of warning here though - don't do all of
the above unless you really think it helps - too many effects can distract, just
as too many fancy transitions may detract from your sequence! Be sure not to
overwhelm a simple and unassuming little sequence with titles that are more
appropriate to Ben Hur!
Give due thought to backgrounds to your lettering too - often sequence
makers will just 'super' their type matter against the opening picture, and there
is nothing wrong with that. A slide with a blue sky, or an expanse of green
foliage for example, will make a very adequate background - it's often good in
this case to fade the lettering in, and/or out, so that you still get the benefit of
the entire background image. You might also make the words persist over the
following slide, only then disappearing. I would probably use a lighter colour
for this kind of situation - you would hardly use black lettering over a pretty pale
blue sky!
Another alternative is to create a special background for your titles. I often
use a version of one of my show images that has been heavily modified to be
a suitable field for lettering. It may well be much darker than the original, and
have been colourised, posterised or otherwise 'mucked about with' in
PhotoShop, to produce a version with a very limited tonal range and a very
limited colour palette. Many of mine are darker than the original, but there's no
reason why you can't go the other way, with a high key frame for an ethereal
effect maybe.
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