editing program to make pics 3-d

[SAwood]

I've seen a couple specials on History/Discovery, etc. where they have taken still pics, and inside the editing program, have "dollied" in on them, and doing so, they are able seperate the background and foreground to give it a 3-d effect, and it's frigging awsome!

I don't know if I'm explaining it all that well, but if you've seen the effect, you know what I'm talking about.

Any idea what program is capable of this?

[Baltimore Shooter]

You mean the same kind of thing they do on "Access Hollywood" too?

Warren

[newsdude477]

I'm sure it can be done in Photoshop and layered in post. Don't qoute me on that....just a thought.

[bluffton]

There may be a program for it, but I've done it through Photoshop. Just cut out the parts you want to bring forth and blur the background at the same speed. It's the magic of keyframes. I don't do it in photoshop though, I merely import the jpg into FCP and manipulate the parts there for television magic.

Mess around with it and you'll see results soon enough. My stuff doesn't look as good as the networks but I don't mess around with photoshop too much.

[SAwood]

yeah, thanks bluffton. That sounds like it could work.

[Alaska cameradude]

I bet you are talking about after effects. If you'd like I can post an example of what can be done pretty quickly in after effects.

[Corporate Management]

I, for one, would appreciate a detailed explanation of how to accomplish this for those of us not blessed with the more effect-laden editors, like Avid Newscutter.

[SAwood]

Well, I've had some luck with photoshop and afftereffects. It's a bit time consuming but here's the short of it:
put the pic into photoshop. You might want to take a picture OF the picture, so it's easier to get into photoshop. Once in photoshop, select the area you want, create a new layer, repeat as necessary. Take the mulit-layer image into affter effects, and there is a virtual camera there along with a 3-d option that's pretty cool to work with. I just tried it out tonight, so I'm working out the bugs, but I'll get it.

[Alaska cameradude]

Ya you really need a program like after effects or combustion to do this right. You can check an option to turn the layers into a 3D layer and add a virtual camera to your "comp". Then you can dolly or truck your camera about however you want. You can even add virtual lights. Trish and Chris Meyer's "Creating Motion Graphics" books have some tutorials on how to do this effect.

[SAwood]

"You can check an option to turn the layers into a 3D layer and add a virtual camera to your "comp". Then you can dolly or truck your camera"

That's exactly what we did. Some kinks to be worked out though.

[Douglas]

There's a tutorial on this topic in this month's Event DV magazine.

Here's the online version:
http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?CategoryID=65&ArticleID=12230

It's too bad they don't have a clip of the final effect, but you can see other examples here to give you ideas: http://www.boulevardvideo.com/
Click on the SERVICES link.

Doug

[SAwood]

We were doing everything the tutorial said, EXCEPT the background cloning, which was the problem we ran into. Problem solved. Kick ass, thanks for the link!