Brilliant !!! ( no pun intended)..

Absolutely fantastic! THANK YOU...THANK YOU...


Not quite perfect.. so I'll tidy it up a bit.
Aah.. another job done..


I also discovered something else in vegas... the Warning that color selected was an illegal broadcast color..

A double bonus! am i glad i changed to vegas...

Thanks!

LG




.

You can also try the "Light Rays" fX. Start with the Ambient Bright Yellow Spotlight preset, and then increase the "Blend" setting to bring up the background, change the color to white, if you don't want color, and move the light source around. You can play around with the other settings and pretty soon you'll get the hang of it. Gives you lots of other little features to the effect, which you may like.

I don't have Photoimpact, but use Photoshop Elements. Here's a technique I like. I copy the photo to a new file and use the magic outline and delete everything in the copy except the the people you want to highlight. Make all the background stuff that was there into transparent. Save the picture - should be the same size as the original.

In Vegas., put the modified photo on say, timeline 1 and the original on timeline 2. They should line up exactly. Then on timeline 2 (or track 2 if you prefer) you can then do all sort s of things. Sometimes I will darken the entire image, fade dark and then light. The subjects will just jump out. Other times, I'l use a blur the second line, and then unblur when I'm finished.

You can even do "kid stays in the picture" by using pan / crop (or is it track motion?) to cause the subjects in the top line to expand.

No end to your creativity once you learn how to push all the buttons.

Guys you missed this one.....
Apply "Bump Map" to video track. For Light Type: select Spotlight
Use the circle and the red plus to position and point the beam.

That's what I do RCourtney - was gonna say something too but you did first.

Dave

Personally, I don't care for the look the bump map method gives, not to mention that it takes several parameter adjustments, and isn't identical from image to image, depending on the content of the frame.
Of course it works, but it can also blow out highlights, and requires considerably more effort IMO, for the type of overlay/highlight that LyricsGirl was asking about.
But like everything else in Vegas, there are a dozen ways to skin a cat.

Doug,
How do you "drop a cookie cutter" on an event? I'm not at my workstation but I want to try that. Are there stock shapes that act like masks? I was going to suggest a black generated media event and a mask... though one would have to draw the shape by hand.

How do you "drop a cookie cutter" on an event?

To actually drag and drop it, you select View and then "Video FX." Then, in the Video FX box that appears, you select Cookie Cutter and then drag one of the presets on top of the event you want to change and then drop it there. You can also click on the little preset icon on the event, and add the fX from that dialog.

I just tried all three methods: Cookie Cutter, Light Rays, and Bump Map. After I read the Bump Map post, I realized that I actually use that method more often than the Light Rays method I recommended.

In my testing just now, I think I like the Bump Map results the best because they look the closest to what you'd get with a real theater spotlight. However, Spot (no pun, honest) was right (as usual) that the settings on Bump are pretty touchy and you can end up with some blown out video unless you are really careful.

The Light Rays produces a much more stylized result, and is more evocative of what a spot might look like, but it doesn't really look like a spotlight.

The cookie cutter approach gives the best and easiest control, but with just the controls in the cookie cutter, even with feathering, the result looked more like those highlights the sports announcer uses during instant replay where they momentarily freeze the frame and put a circle around a player that is about to do something. The light doesn't really seem to be coming from anywhere, nor does it "spill over" to adjacent areas the way a spot does. Finally, to get a spot that is white instead of dark, I used white media, not black. When I used black media as the base, I got the inverse of a spot, namely a dark area.

This is a P.S. to the last post, but I want to do it as a separate post.

I kept playing around for a few minutes after I did the last post. I always figure that Spot knows more about this product than just about anyone, so I went back and played around some more. I didn't have any more success with the cookie cutter, so I went back and played around with the Bump Map.

However, suddenly I was getting really great results, without the problems that Spot described, and that I also experienced.

And then I realized what I had done, quite by accident. I was still playing around with the setup that Spot recommended, but I accidentally placed the bump map on the solid media on the track above. What I ended up with was a combination of almost all of the techniques discussed, including putting a duplicate of the image on the track above. So, what you can do is to put either a solid color or a duplicate of the same image on the track immediately above. Lower, the opacity of the event on the upper track to 50%, as a starting point. Drop the Bump Map on that track and then use the Spotlight preset as the starting point for the fX. Now, simply play around with the spotlight position and the spotlight aiming point, and use the opacity of the upper event to control the amount of the spotlight, and the overall dimming of the main picture. You can, of course, also change the intensity of the spot using the Intensity control.

The advantage of this method is that the opacity control gives you one extra degree of freedom, beyond just the Ambience control, that lets you avoid that harsh, blown-out look that Spot was not happy with.

Hadn't ever considered using the Bump on the Generated Media above the image, good call, John! I've done it with a duplicate of the media, and I still don't like it much, it's more a speed than quality issue for me...just takes a longer push but this is a nice look with it on Generated vs actual media. Gonna add that to my "cool tools" collection.

Thank you everyone..

Not only do I get (almost) - yeah I do - instant response to my problem/s.. there seems to be more than one way to resolve it. Which means I can play around in my own time and then apply whichever effect will work best for the job at the time.
not only that.. you get a few laughs along the way !

Try getting this sort of service via telephone..................... :>)

I've used the Spotlight from Bump Map for Colour Correction and improving the looks of stills. Use several and you can almost RESHOOT and can claw back what as an indifferent shot.

Bump Map's Spotlight is our friend!!

Grazie

( Douglas, remember my Ice Font? )

I regularly use the bumpmap for color correction, it's one of the techniques shown on the VASST Color Correction/compositing/chromakeying tour. But...for the look I understood LyricsGirl was looking for, it's not my fave by a long shot.
Yes, I remember your IceFont, but again....that's an effect, not a "repair" or process, which is how I generally view the BumpMap. T'would appear I need to spend time revisiting it outside of being a color correction repair tool, or FX only.

Bump for color correction? I don't remember that one.

I always use/tweak the setting in "bump map". You can use this to spotlight or just brighten media in some cases

Make duplicate of poorly lit/exposed frames, put bump on the upper track, blend upper with lower.