How do I make a B&W Mask with transparency

[ecbritz]

I am not an expert user of Paint.net (yet) and would very much appreciate step-by-step instructions on how to make a black and white mask with transparency, to be used in movie editing. I really need "novice" level advice on this. I use the program MoviePlus. However, a 32 bit .PNG black and white Mask file with transparency should work equally well in different movie editing programs. Thanks in advance for any advice received!

[SAND33P]

Im not sure what you mean by mask? I know its some Photoshop thing?

[mountnman]

am i understanding you right, you want this "mask" to create an effect in this movie editing program? something that you could apply to the animation of the movie you are editing and get the effects of it on every frame automaticly?

[ecbritz]

I was hoping someone would understand what I meant by a "Mask" for movie editing, because its difficult to explain what such a mask is unless you know something about movie editing software.

When you look at for instance CNN images on your TV screen, you are in fact seeing different video tracks stacked on top of each other. A written strip of news or commentary running at the bottom of the screen, is actually a video track stacked on top of the track showing you the newsreader and visual footage of the news. A still picture or extra video material shown in a little window at the top left corner of the screen would be yet another video track running on top of the other video tracks.

To compile the total picture you see on your TV screen, "Masks" are needed. A Mask is basically a picture with some parts transparent and other parts covering up sections of the underlying video tracks. The different tracks stacked on top of each other are shown through different parts of the Mask.

A Basic, simple Mask would have a white area (or areas), and an area (or areas) filled with transparent pixels.

The only way I can think of making such a Mask with Paint.net, is to delete (erase) the black parts in a Black-and-White design. Deleting replaces color pixels with transparent pixels in Paint.net. The Transparent-and-White design should then be saved as a 32 Bit PNG file, to create the simple Mask.

I believe programs like PhotoShop can save a picture "with transparency". I suppose that would mean the picture is saved as a PNG file with certain selected color pixels (or a specific color like black) transformed to transparent pixels.

Perhaps Paint.net has a special way of making "Masks" of the kind described above? Deleting / erasing certain parts of a picture with the Eraser Tool never gives you a 100% "clean" Mask; it usually looks a bit home-made. Any advice on this?

[Sarkut]

To make transparent areas with vertical/horizontal edges use:

Rectangle Select > Delete

[mountnman]

sarkuts right, once you have an area selected, wether its with rectangle select or elipse, or the magic wand hitting delete, or finding the "cut" command will totally erase that part of the image-'cut' can be found under the Edit tab- we just recently covered transparency issues on a different thread - some of the other, more knowledgable people on this forum chimed in here-> http://forums.getpai...t-transparency/

making images with transparent parts is nothing new to PDN, but while im sure there are some people here who do movie editing, Paint.net isnt a movie editing software, so youll have to shift thru the rest of us to find them, or explain what you need realy well, cheers

Edited January 14, 2011 by mountnman