Outlines around objects?

[stebbinsd]

When I'm typing text, I can very easily put an outline over the letters. By "outline," I mean that it conforms to the same shape as the letters, as the color around the outline is homogeneous.

For example, suppose I'm trying to create a youtube thumbnail using the "snapshot" function. Suppose I want to have a character, person, or object be against a background. My options for making that object have a high color contrast against that background are very limited.

For objects that aren't letters, however, the closest I currently know how to get to having an outline on them is using drop shadow. I can have the drop-shadow have 1.00 opacity to make it nice and bold, but it only provides an outline to one side of the object I'm trying to make an outline for. Then I have to do that for all four sides.

Is there an easier way to do this?

 

[borate]

It's not clear whether the intent is to outline the inserted object -- freehand - or to simply outline the box that contains the object.

If the latter, try the SHADOW effect, which can be positioned and colored to form a blurred frame.  Transparency, applied to the background, may also be of use.

How are you creating a drop shadow around an object?

[Nationalsolo]

Hi

Is this the sort of effect you are after........? Not sure what you mean by "Drop Shadow"

The above effect is a scaled image on Track3. A  larger scaled grey blank image on Track2 with some blur (any colour is possible for this) and a background (in this case a blue blank image) on the main track. The "shadow" can be positioned to be left/right/up/down using the Position effect. This is rectangular but more complex shapes would have to be created using a mask.

Text in VP 6.21 now has a "Shadow" option but this has very limited properties....basically just on/off and colour. The position is also fixed at lower right of the letter. Text surround might also be an option but it seems you have tried this.

Nat

[stebbinsd]

On 9/8/2018 at 9:42 AM, borate said:

It's not clear whether the intent is to outline the inserted object -- freehand - or to simply outline the box that contains the object.

If the latter, try the SHADOW effect, which can be positioned and colored to form a blurred frame.  Transparency, applied to the background, may also be of use.

How are you creating a drop shadow around an object?

No, I mean ... like Section 4 of this webpage:

https://www.tubefilter.com/2014/06/19/youtube-thumbnails-definitive-guide/

Notice how the thumbnails they're using for examples...

... have outlines (usually purple outlines) around the people's bodies.

Video pad currently has a "shadow" effect, but it's extremely blurry. Notice that the thumbnails in these examples have clear, definite outlines around them.

[stebbinsd]

On 9/8/2018 at 2:06 PM, Nationalsolo said:

Not sure what you mean by "Drop Shadow"

I'm talking about this:

The "shadow" effect will conform to the shape of the object, but it looks extremely blurry.

The "Border" effect has a solid color, but it's always the shape of a 16:9 rectangle, even for images with transparent backgrounds.

 

[stebbinsd]

Here, maybe this can help clear up the confusion:

Let's say that I'm starting out with an image of the Jagged Crown from Skyrim, with a transparent background.

At the beginning, the image should look like this:

Now, if I added a “border” to it, it would suddenly look like this:

However, I want the outline to conform to the shape of the image, not simply to be a solid 16:9 rectangle.

The “Shadow” effect (which I called “drop shadow” in the OP) will conform to the shape of a transparent image. Applying some blue shadow to this image causes it to look like this:

However, that is blurry. I want my outline to be solid, not blurry.

I could turn the blurriness down to zero (the default value is 10.000). But if I do that, the shadow appears to disappear completely.

I can assign a “distance” of 0.01, but then it looks like this:

The shadow only appears on one side.

I can then add a second shadow, with an angle of 180 degrees so that it shows up on the other side. But then it looks like this:

Ok, that just looks like complete ass.

What I ideally want is something like this:

Notice how the blue outline is a solid color. It conforms to the shape of the letters, rather being a rectangle, and it isn't blurry. It's as thick or as thin as I want it to be, and it's applies uniformly on all sides.

When I'm typing text using Ctrl+T, I can get this outline around my letters quickly and painlessly by using this feature:

However, I would like to also have that feature for objects that have transparent backgrounds as well.

[Nationalsolo]

Hi

Using a transparent png of a rose......

Set Opacity to 1 and Blurriness to 0. The border will then be hard edged. (left image below). The problem is that as a "Shadow" it can't be placed all around the object only at an angle to it

Introducing blur softens it.(right) This can't make a centralized shadow, i.e. one behind the object at Distance 0 and Angle 0 significantly larger than the object, even with blurriness set to 100.

The way around this is to have a copy image of the object png scaled larger than the original and then add a Two-Tone effect to this, setting the object colour black. and the back colour something contrasting. The downside using this effect is the png background becomes opaque, as Unfortunately the option to make either of these two colours transparent is not available. (Perhaps that might be included as a future enhancement.) Now add a Blur effect of suitable degree. (But see below.) Place the main image on the overlay track and the the scaled up two-tone copy on the main track...

Obviously if you want a hard outline don't use the Blur effect.

If you now use the Green screen effect and select the background colour of the two tone .png from the preview using the pipette tool you can make the background transparent again. Placing the clips on the upper overlay tracks you can have the shadowed png on a a normal clip (or image) placed on Video track1........

 

It's about the best you will get at the moment.

Nat

 

[Nationalsolo]

Hi stebbinsd

The nature of your Crown of Thorns image makes getting a good outline with the tools available to VP and the method I suggested above quite difficult as using Scale etc on the shadow image doesn't doesn't "fatten" a thin segment of the image like the horns. All the expansion is outwards so although you can get an outline to the right and left of this complex shape, the inner edges also move outwards so that the outline is not obtained. Judicious use of vertical and horizontal scale values can alleviate the problem somewhat but the result is not very good.

In fact your final result IMHO was better.

Perhaps NCH could implement an outline effect that does what you want for objects on transparent backgrounds. Why not file it as a suggestion?

Nat

[c_major]

I've filed it as a suggestion.