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sliceaholic

I remember reading through Steve Wright's book and getting to the part about the slice tool and thinking, what is this crazy slice tool thing? What punkass comping software is this cat using? And then I wanted my punkass comping software to have one.

O-slice is a Fusion macro that lets you graph two slices through your image. You can move the graphs around and control how they look. You can scale the values of the graphs. You can even see how the alpha channel graphs against RGB.

If you don't know why you need this, Steve will tell you.

Download O-slice_v1.4 (5kb .rar file)

Props: I never would have figured out how to use Paint to create the slice lines if it weren't for Raf Schoenmaekers’ helpful post on the Fusion list.

Crop it Like it's Hot

For some reason I've created a new Fusion Macro. It's a tool to help match color levels across elements in a composite, and it goes by the catchy name of cropCompare.

cropCompare lets you define two zoomed-in windows on your image to enlarge, visually compare alongside one another, and even graph the values of. It's designed to assist in matching the black levels of two disparate elements in a comp, but it can be used for all kinds of image analyses.

Add the cropCompare node downstream of your comp and view it. You'll see four position controls and two little windows in the lower right of the image.

You have separate Show controls for Crops 1 and 2. For each Crop, you define its location and Sample Size and choose where on the image to overlay it and how big. Put them next to each other and maybe bump up the Gamma the Crops control to make sure your values are matching.

Or, to really make sure, turn on Do Graphs. You now have an RGB graph of the centerline of each Crop. Want to see those graphs unobstructed? Check Do Graphs and Only together.

For the graphs to look their best, please enable Fusion's HiQ mode.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think!

Download O-cropCompare_v2.2 (8kb .rar file)

Preorder, Like, Only the Best Book on Compositing Ever

Mark has created a truly practical guide to film effects compositing in the least-expensive and arguably most feature-packed compositing application available. Yours Truly contributed a chapter on training your eye.

There are books that will learn you After Effects, and there are books that claim to learn you film compositing. If you put them all in a blender and let the juices ferment under the heat of a thousand suns, you would have a snifter full of Adobe After Effects 6.5 Studio Techniques.

Preorder now before rabid fans tear my chapter out of all existing copies like the Britney Spears photo spread in Rolling Stone that one time.