Any better than scenarist designer ps for menu palette creation ?

21st July 2010, 21:55

Hi,

I have a basic menu like this :

The problem is because of the chapters pages that have a lot of colors,
when exporting the menu with the default options, each page has an optimized color palette,
because of this the bottom buttons look differently depending on the page and the associated palette :/

Or I can choose to export using a palette that is optimized for all the pages I want (meaning all the pages share the same palette), so the bottom buttons will look the same accross all the pages,
but this will make my chapters pictures get a lot less colors and look terrible :/

So could someone tell if there's some better way to manage / create palettes when generating a menu with scenarist designer ps (or another tool) ?

Thanks

mp3dom · 22nd July 2010, 02:14

It's not a problem of Designer, it's a limitation of the HDMV standard. In HDMV you are limited to 256 colors. If you want to use all colors, you need to switch to BD-J (Java). Java menus are not limited to 256 colors and can use full 32bit graphics (16.7M colors)

crl2007 · 22nd July 2010, 11:32

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152952 I explained there how to do it.

22nd July 2010, 22:05

Hi guys,

Quote:

Originally Posted by mp3dom

It's not a problem of Designer, it's a limitation of the HDMV standard. In HDMV you are limited to 256 colors. If you want to use all colors, you need to switch to BD-J (Java). Java menus are not limited to 256 colors and can use full 32bit graphics (16.7M colors)

I know it's a format limitation,
I just want to get the best looking menu with this limitation,
you just have to choose the 256 colors that match the better the whole menu and it's not possible with scenarist ps to do it

Quote:

Originally Posted by crl2007

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152952 I explained there how to do it.

Thanks but I don't see what could help me in your tutorial ^^,
I know how to use scenarist ps already :/

rik1138 · 23rd July 2010, 01:46

Well, looking at your posted images, you have the following (rough descriptions):
Options with a gray background (with a faint gradient)
Main Menu bar unselected- Kind of a brownish color with gradient
Main Menu bar selected- Bright orange with a gradient

These colors are in your audio selection page. These exact same buttons/options are in your scene selection page as well. So if you get your scene selection page to look nice, you can use that palette in your other pages. But your Scene selection pages have many full-color images from the film, with very different sets of colors, so they will look very pixelated (not much you can do about that).

A couple of things I can suggest:
Remove the gradients on the buttons, make them solid gray, brown and orange. Reduce the aliasing around the text as much as possible. You could be easily using up a third of your color palette right there...

For scene selections, try to pick images with similar overall color if possible. Another option would be to make them black-and-white if that doesn't bother you (or reduce the color-space of the images a little before going to Designer, that would give better results).

Other than that, your only other option would be to play with the dithering options in Designer. Some ways will work better than others for different designs. If I remember correctly, there's 3 different dithering options, and each one has a slider to control how it's implemented...

Since the elements of your non scene selection pages are also present on the SS pages, you are pretty much limited to a 256 color palette across your entire IG. You can assign a different palette to each Page of course, but getting the common graphics (the main menu bar on the bottom) to look exactly the same from Page to Page would be difficult.

Also, make sure you have the latest Designer... I think they make some improvements to the palette creation in each version...

rik1138 · 23rd July 2010, 02:27

Well, I get this just using the images you posted:

Which doesn't look too bad, but it is with only 3 of your thumbnails... But that's about the best you can expect from HDMV menus when using a lot of color images...

Notice the slight banding in the buttons themselves, if you remove the gradients there, and maybe outline the text with black across all the buttons (instead of trying to match it to the background color), that might save up some palette entries to make the color images look better...

crl2007 · 24th July 2010, 10:14

If you know how to use scenarist ps you should try to read the whole guide. I explain there how to replace only the button and how to keep the original palette, including transparency. For transparency to be kept, you have to first open the original buttons with fireworks cs5 and save them as photoshop format. This will keep the whole transparency when you re-export them with scenarist ps.

This is if I understood right and you want to modify a menu, not create one from scratch.

18th August 2010, 12:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by crl2007

If you know how to use scenarist ps you should try to read the whole guide. I explain there how to replace only the button and how to keep the original palette, including transparency. For transparency to be kept, you have to first open the original buttons with fireworks cs5 and save them as photoshop format. This will keep the whole transparency when you re-export them with scenarist ps.

This is if I understood right and you want to modify a menu, not create one from scratch.

Hi,

sorry for the long delay and thanks for your help,
I've been working on this thing for a loooooong time to get it as I wanted,
So yeah I actually build the whole menu from scratch and used the latest Designer version,
now I understand I should not have used gradients on my buttons as they use a lot of colors :/, but I've been using the same buttons on other projects and I prefer to keep 'em as is now,

Here is what I concluded with my (something like) hundred tests ^^,
As good as Designer is, it will "randomly" dispatch colors on some or other parts of the image,
I tried various tricks but could not really understand or find a way to make it add colors where I wanted them to be,
I finished by getting a palette that was near good and modified it manually, removing unwanted colors by some others that I needed, here's the result :

It's a unique palette for the whole project with a 4x4 ordered scheme, so it's not as good as a palette per page but the whole thing is ok

21st July 2010, 21:55	#1 \| Link
radius Guest Posts: n/a	Any better than scenarist designer ps for menu palette creation ? Hi, I have a basic menu like this : The problem is because of the chapters pages that have a lot of colors, when exporting the menu with the default options, each page has an optimized color palette, because of this the bottom buttons look differently depending on the page and the associated palette :/ Or I can choose to export using a palette that is optimized for all the pages I want (meaning all the pages share the same palette), so the bottom buttons will look the same accross all the pages, but this will make my chapters pictures get a lot less colors and look terrible :/ So could someone tell if there's some better way to manage / create palettes when generating a menu with scenarist designer ps (or another tool) ? Thanks

23rd July 2010, 02:27	#6 \| Link
rik1138 Registered User Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: LA Posts: 620	Well, I get this just using the images you posted: Which doesn't look too bad, but it is with only 3 of your thumbnails... But that's about the best you can expect from HDMV menus when using a lot of color images... Notice the slight banding in the buttons themselves, if you remove the gradients there, and maybe outline the text with black across all the buttons (instead of trying to match it to the background color), that might save up some palette entries to make the color images look better... Attached Images

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version Email this Page	Search this Thread: Advanced Search
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

22nd July 2010, 02:14	#2 \| Link
mp3dom Registered User Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Italy Posts: 1,135	It's not a problem of Designer, it's a limitation of the HDMV standard. In HDMV you are limited to 256 colors. If you want to use all colors, you need to switch to BD-J (Java). Java menus are not limited to 256 colors and can use full 32bit graphics (16.7M colors)

22nd July 2010, 11:32	#3 \| Link
crl2007 Registered User Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 650	http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152952 I explained there how to do it.

23rd July 2010, 01:46	#5 \| Link
rik1138 Registered User Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: LA Posts: 620	Well, looking at your posted images, you have the following (rough descriptions): Options with a gray background (with a faint gradient) Main Menu bar unselected- Kind of a brownish color with gradient Main Menu bar selected- Bright orange with a gradient These colors are in your audio selection page. These exact same buttons/options are in your scene selection page as well. So if you get your scene selection page to look nice, you can use that palette in your other pages. But your Scene selection pages have many full-color images from the film, with very different sets of colors, so they will look very pixelated (not much you can do about that). A couple of things I can suggest: Remove the gradients on the buttons, make them solid gray, brown and orange. Reduce the aliasing around the text as much as possible. You could be easily using up a third of your color palette right there... For scene selections, try to pick images with similar overall color if possible. Another option would be to make them black-and-white if that doesn't bother you (or reduce the color-space of the images a little before going to Designer, that would give better results). Other than that, your only other option would be to play with the dithering options in Designer. Some ways will work better than others for different designs. If I remember correctly, there's 3 different dithering options, and each one has a slider to control how it's implemented... Since the elements of your non scene selection pages are also present on the SS pages, you are pretty much limited to a 256 color palette across your entire IG. You can assign a different palette to each Page of course, but getting the common graphics (the main menu bar on the bottom) to look exactly the same from Page to Page would be difficult. Also, make sure you have the latest Designer... I think they make some improvements to the palette creation in each version...

24th July 2010, 10:14	#7 \| Link
crl2007 Registered User Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 650	If you know how to use scenarist ps you should try to read the whole guide. I explain there how to replace only the button and how to keep the original palette, including transparency. For transparency to be kept, you have to first open the original buttons with fireworks cs5 and save them as photoshop format. This will keep the whole transparency when you re-export them with scenarist ps. This is if I understood right and you want to modify a menu, not create one from scratch.