Halloween video is all the rage on YouTube this week. From gory re-enactments to cute photos there are a million ways to invite people to your bash or create a memento of the holiday. Without getting into the gore, we’ll look at some ways to edit your photos for maximum impact. We’ll walk through cutting out your photo, adding a background, and adding music.
Cut out the junk
You can easily cut your subject out of the background in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or other editing software. There’s two ways to look at this – quick and dirty or detailed and polished.
For the quick and dirty, use your marquee tool to cut out the unnecessary background materials. Here’s a photo of Darth Maul and Padme. It looks a little cluttered.
Darth Maul is being crowded out by his busy background
So I used the elliptical marquee tool to do a quick and dirty elimination of the background.
Padme Amidala is ready for her meeting with the Senate
It’s not perfect, but it took just a few seconds. The extreme feathering allows the photo to better blend with whatever background you place it upon.
Another, more refined option, is to use the quick selection tool. Zoom in close and start the selection process. This is easiest when your subject and background have high contrast. Make sure you feather the tool by at least a couple of pixels so it looks more natural.
Here’s the Joker, looking a little tipsy at the bar.
The Joker looks a bit tipsy and unintimidating
To make him a bit more imposing, let’s darken the shot. To get a really polished selection, make sure to use the refine edge command.
Now the Joker looks imposing
Now that we have our photos cut out of their background, we can begin to play.
Add a background
You can find plenty of royalty-free still backgrounds on sites like iStockPhoto.com.
Animated backgrounds are awesome, just make sure you have enough RAM on your computer to create your movie over an animated background. You can download animations individually from animationfactory.com or get a whole disc of more professional looking backgrounds from digitaljuice.com.
Here’s the quick movie produced using the elliptical marquee.
Pretty cool.
Now here’s the one using the quick selection tool.
With a little practice in Photoshop and video editing software, you can get these results rather quickly.
You need editing software which allows at least three tracks of video. One for the photos, one for the background, and one for the titles. You want the titles on top, next the photos, and at the bottom of the pile goes the background.
In the future, we’ll go through how to effectively add filters and wipes.
Keep your invitation short if you want people to watch the whole thing. We live in a 140 character universe now, who has time for a five minute video?
Add music
Now, if you’ve ever read this blog before, you know I’m going to tell you to use licensed music. The reasons are threefold. So you don’t get sued. So you don’t rip someone off. And so that your viewers actually pay attention to your movie. Popular music will bring them back to their own memories of the song. YouTube also limits your use of music on their site.
Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox. So where do you get licensed music that enhances your video rather than detracting from it? Well, Digital Juice is again a good start. They have StackTraxx CDs available for purchase.
Another more exciting option is create your own music in Garageband. That is beyond the scope of this post though.
Upload
Last step is to upload your video. I recommend leaving the address out of your invitation if you’re putting it on YouTube. Do you really want 10 million people partaking of your free drinks and chips? You can use the privacy viewing settings on YouTube if you’re only inviting 25 people.
The three keys to a successful Halloween photo slideshow are: declutter your photos, add a background, and spice it up with some music.
Comments on this entry are closed.