Changing ONE colour in a bitmap.

terrypin wrote on 10/12/2011, 2:04 PM

My family movies include a lot of maps. One operation I frequently want is to briefly change the colour of an element on the map. For example, in the following image, at one point in my timeline I want to change the white colour of the text 'Palm Springs' for a second or so.

Note: I don't trust that embedded image. It looks circular here as I compose this, yet it should be an ellipse! So here's a direct link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/20110226GEO-1.jpg

So far the only way I've been able to achieve this is by working in my external image editor and swapping sections of the image, but that's messy.

Is there some clever way of doing this in MEP17 itself, without changing the colour of any surrounding parts?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Comments

cpc000cpc wrote on 10/12/2011, 5:23 PM

Terry,

I can't think of anything in MEP the would change just one bit of text color. I tried a small alpha mask between your original and a copy with 'Effects' >> 'Video effects' >> 'Color' set to 100 red, 100 green and 0 blue. That gave a yellow Palm Springs but also a yellow mask shaped background.

You might be able to create a mask of just black text on white but suspect that getting the exact scale and position might be difficult.

Regards,

Carl

johnebaker wrote on 10/12/2011, 6:05 PM

Hi Terry

If that is a screen capture from Google Earth, turn off place names and capture the image.

Add your own place names in MEP then you can do anything you like with them

Cheers

John

cpc000cpc wrote on 10/12/2011, 6:43 PM

JEB is a DLT!

(decidedly lateral thinker)

terrypin wrote on 10/13/2011, 2:52 AM

Carl, John,

Thanks both.

That idea would be OK for a still image GE screenshot, John but mine are usually movies. So embedded placemarks are usually needed. (Mind you, GE has an annoying flaw: the placemarks sometimes fade out during tours.)

I settled for using my image editor, as I'm sure now that there is no way of achieving it in MEP itself.

A flashing line underneath the text, or a flashing ellipse or rectangle surrounding it also work quite well and are easily achieved in MEP. I quite like a simple animated underline, as shown in this example underneath Best Western, together with the original Palm Springs requirement achieved as described. Simplest of all yet still a reasonable 'highlighter' is a plain rectangle with partial opacity, as under San Diego.

Edit: This site really is flakey! The above was a simple YT URL. Yet it ends up as two identical strange-looking image thumbnails.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK