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Can't Achieve This Effect


G

ginger

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Hi,

I'm pretty new to Photoshop (just bought CS5 a few months ago) and I'm trying to achieve the effect shown in the url referenced below. (I'm referring to the semi-transparent vertical bars that move back and forth over the photos.) I can't seem to get the "frosted/blurred look". I've tried blurring a semi-transparent rectangle as well as using Filter | Distort | Glass | Frosted ..., but I can't seem to get the same effect.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks for any suggestions I could try.

ginger

p.s. I just found I can't post a url since I'm new, so if anyone wants to take the time to look, it's the designsforliving dot com home page.
 
Designs for Living - Home

I assume you just want the effect and not the flash animated part

Load up your image create a new layer using the square marquee tool draw out a rectangle over the image and fill with white.
Go to filter>Blur> Gaussian blur and blur it out and set to soft light in the layer blending mode and lower the opacity of the layer
select any selection tool and right click in the box and select stroke and apply a white stroke to the ouside of the box.
now hold down the control key and click that layer to bring up the selection box again
select the image layer
Go to filter> Blur > Gaussian blur and blur it slightly

and you will get something like this
box.jpg
 
Hey, thanks Hoogle. That looks like just what I want, but a couple of problems:

1. I do actually want to animate it, so I need the bar to be a separate .png (or gif I guess).
2. Aside from that ... I followed your instructions, but didn't quite come up with the same thing. When I set the layer mode to soft light, it loses almost all opacity (without even adjusting opacity slider).
3. Do I need to go back to the background layer to select the stroke?

I seem to be doing something wrong.

Any thoughts? Also, how much radius on Gaussian Blur did you apply to the first selection?

Thanks!

ginger
 
I put the blur up way high obviously it all varys per picture if your using a bright picture to begin with then you will not want the blending mode to soft light maybe just normal and lower the opacity. The stroke is around the white panel you created.

However animating this in photoshop is not really easy unless you want a gif version the 1 in your sample is animated flash.
ok animating the white pane will be easy enough as a gif but if you want the blur in the background image you are going to have to do several layers with blur lining up with your animated white panel Could be time consuming.

I do not know enough about flash to instruct you on this but it could be done in after effects as a video quite easily I assume it depends what you want the final outcome of the animation to be for.
 
I actually copied your photo and tried it with yours and can't figure out why the soft light mode makes it lose all opacity. Also, the stroke only shows up if I don't change the blending mode.

Aside from that, I know how to animate using Swishmax, but it sounds like I won't be able to maintain the blur unless it's attached to the photo, which won't work. It needs to be separate so that it can move across independent of the background.

Is this correct?

Thanks again!

ginger
 
Oh and your probably adding to much gaussian blur to the white layer if it is transparant in the sample in my last post i had no blur on it hence it is a bit brighter
 
Hmmm, can't get it to look like your first image. As for the animation I can get smooth animation with Swishmax (creates .swf files like Flash). I'll keep working on it.

Thanks again!

ginger
 
Hi Paul,

I need a more subtle, smooth animation, but it's good to know that CS5 has some animation capabilities.

ginger
 
ginger said:
I need a more subtle, smooth animation
Click to expand...
You do this by increasing the number of frames. But in all honesty; GIFs are only suited for small images that are not too complicated. You're much better of with dedicated software, after all the main focus of Photoshop is image editing. It doesn't even have to be a dedicated flash editor, you can even do this in any descent video or 3D editor. You just need to be able to export the resulting animation to Flash, that is of course if you want to use Flash.
 
Hi Novo,

Yes, I know that the animation needs to be done in a Flash authoring program. My question was really how to get the blurred effect of the bars with the semi-transparent border.

I've given it some thought and I think I might be able to achieve it by blurring the photo in Photoshop, then using a semi-transparent mask (the bars) in Swishmax (Flash authoring software) and moving them over the unblurred photo. Apparently Swishmax also has a blur filter, that I wasn't previously aware of.

I think the key is in using a mask.

When I have some time after the holidays, I'll play with it more and see what I can come up with.

Thanks for your suggestions,

ginger
 
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