How to paint black mask in aftereffects? - photoshop

Ok, I have some custom effects that I need to paint a mask for in an animation - my idea was either to use AfterEffects or Premiere.
Id prefer AE. Basically what I need is to be able to paint with a soft brush, like in Photoshop, and apply a black mask:
online and attempting, I can only do hard shape masks. How can I do this?

Related

CreateJS: how to change color of bitmap image

I'm using createJS to build some easy game.
I have an image (white fill and black stroke) and I would change the black color to another.
Is it possible?
Thanks
The three ways to do color adjustments in EaselJS are:
Composite Operations: You can draw an image using a composite operation (such as "destination-in") to determine how pixels are laid down. This is probably not going to give you the result you want. Here is an example of a black PNG being changed to different colors using compositeOperation.
Color Filters. EaselJS has both a ColorFilter and a ColorMatrixFilter, which assist with modifying colors. The first uses parameters to multiply and add to the color and alpha channels, but is a little harder to use. The second uses a ColorMatrix to adjust hue, saturation, contrast, and brightness. This may not work for you, since changing the black pixels is kind of the opposite of color filters do.
A Custom Filter. EaselJS supports custom filters (such as the Threshold Filter in the extras folder. This is probably your best option, and might take massaging to get what you need.
Hope that sheds some light.

How to smooth images corner and merge background color?

Please see the above image. how to smooth imgaes corner and merge background color together? I searched some documents for smoothing corners said using feather and delete reversal corner. But I didn't get enough result. How can I do that?
Firstly choose a background color that can easily blend with the image, so that when you try to merge the image with background it should not look different.
Secondly, I prefer to use LAYER MASKING over FEATHER for merging image with background.
Layer Masking gives you more better options to make the edges blend more clear and merged.
You can see how to use Layer Masking in Adobe Photoshop with following links.
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/masking-layers.html
http://www.sitepoint.com/photoshop-fade-layer-mask/

Recreate Apple Watch fitness tracker ‘progress’ bar - gradient on CAShapeLayer stroke

I'm writing an app that could make good use of the Apple Watch's fitness tracker design, here:
So far, I've created the basic outline which is just a CAShapeLayer with a CGPath of an ellipse. I use strokeStart and strokeEnd to animate the progress. My problem comes when applying a gradient to the outline. How do I apply a gradient like above to the stroke of a CGPath?
The cleanest way to do this without having to drop down to Core Graphics or GL is to create a layer containing the angle gradient that you want the ring filled with, mask it with a CAShapeLayer containing your circular path (with the appropriate line width and cap settings), then, as you’re currently doing, use the shape layer’s strokeEnd property to set the “fill” percentage. Note that there isn’t a built-in way to create an angle gradient—you can use one of the suggestions in this answer for that.
edit: Also, you’ll need a pair of semicircular “cap” images, one at each end of the ring—as the fill percentage gets close to 100%, the region at the top will reveal the discontinuity between the start and end color. In your example image above, you’d need a red semicircle oriented like this ( at the start, and a pink one oriented like this ) with a translation/rotation transform tracking the end.
additional edit: Also also, since the end-cap semicircle will be moving along the gradient, you’ll need it to change color, interpolating from the start color to the end color as the fill amount goes from 0% to 100%. Best way to do that is with a shape layer with a semicircular path, since you can set the fillColor of that without having to redraw image contents.
We did this for an iOS app.. but quickly stopped as it gets bogged down quickly.
I think Apple is using images.. as they do in the Lister example

Coloring a CCSprite without only using its prime colors

I have a CCSprite that was created from a png with transparent background.
I want to be able to apply colors to this sprite in a way that I`m free to define which color it is, without the actual color of the sprite affecting the amount of each color I have to add.
I`ve tried this:
mySprite.color = ccc3(200,200,255);
In an attempt to add a little blue-ish feel to my sprite, but as it works by setting the amount of tint that's gonna be displayed based on existant color of the sprite, and my sprite has virtually no blue in any of it (most of it is yellow) the resulting effect is pretty sketchy, everything gets really dark, and there is one slight blue-ish coloring, but not as I wanted.
The ideal effect for me on this case would be to ADD a light blue mask to it with very low alpha.
Is there an easy way to do that without composing sprites?
I've tried using CCTexture2D, but had no luck, as there is no built in method for working with colors, and most tutorials only teach you how to build textures out of image files.
This is deceptively hard to do in code with the original sprite. Another option would be:
create a new sprite, which is just a white outline version of your original sprite
the color property of this white sprite will now respond exactly to the RGB values you pass in
so pass in your light blue value to the white sprite and set the opacity correctly
then overlay it on your original sprite
Any good?
The only way you can achieve this is by overlaying (masking) the sprite with the proper OpenGL blend functions. When you say "add a light blue mask" then that's what you need to do. You may find this visual blendfunc tool helpful, if only to understand how blending with mask sprites works and what you can achieve with it. There's no built-in support for this by Cocos2D however, so you'll have to revert to pure OpenGL inside a cocos2d node's -(void) draw {} method.
Tinting (changing the color property) will only modify the RGB channels of the entire image by changing the vertex colors of all 4 vertices.

App graphic making (transparent and no extra spaces)

I am a coder but not a graphic maker. I can decently produce graphics that meet the quality standards visually although I cannot produce graphics that will technically "work." This is what I mean:
I am using CGRectIntersectsRect for colliding images. My image has SOME extra space which I have made completely transparent using Adobe PhotoShop but even if this extra transparent space is not visible, when the two images collide, it will look like you will be hitting nothing as this extra invisible transparent space is PART of the image and when CGRectIntersectsRect is called it detects touch between two images. So if the other image touches the transparent space, CGRectIntersectsRect is called and my code is executed. I only want my code to be executed if it hits the actual COLOR space of the image. Here is two things that could help me through that, they follow through with questions.
Learn how to make NO EXTRA SPACE on an image in photoshop. How could I do this, tutorials?
CGRectIntersectsRect only called when touching a color part of an image. A way to do this?
Thank you guys!
Regarding your question #1, it depends. All images are rectangular, all. So, if your sprite is rectangular, you can crop it in Photoshop to just the rectangular area. But if you want to handle, say, a circle ball, then you can't do such thing as "remove extra space". Your circle ball will always be stored in a rectangular image, with transparent space on the corners.
Learn how to make NO EXTRA SPACE on an image in photoshop. How could I do this, tutorials?
You can manually select an area using the Rectangular Marquee Tool and Image > Crop or automatically trim the image based on an edge pixel color using Image > Trim.
CGRectIntersectsRect only called when touching a color part of an image. A way to do this?
You can use pixel-perfect collisions or create better bounding shapes for your game objects. For example, instead of using pixel-perfect collision for a spaceship like this one, you could use a triangle for the wings, a rectangle for the body, and a triangle for the head.
Pixel-perfect collision
One way you could implement it would be to
Have an blank image in memory.
Draw visible pixels from one image in blue (#0000ff).
Draw visible pixels from the other image in red (#ff0000).
If there's any purple pixels in the image (#ff00ff), then there's an intersection.
Alternative collision detection solution
If your game is physics-based, then you can use a physics engine like Box2D. You can use circles, rectangles, and polygons to represent all of your game objects and it'll give you accurate results without unnecessary overhead.
For collision detection for non-rectangular shapes, you should look into one of the many game and/or physics libraries available for iOS. Cocos2d coupled with Box2d or chipmunk are popular choices.
If you want to do it yourself, you'll need to start with something like a custom CGPath tracing the actual shape of each object, then use a function like CGPathContainsPoint (that's from memory, it may be wrong). But it is not a simple job. Angry birds uses box2d, AFAIK.