Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Step Three:
Once they're loaded, choose the Yellow,
Green, Blue gradient (seen here), and
then change the Angle to 0°, so the gra-
dient is applied sideways (rather than top
to bottom). Once it looks like the one you
see here, press
Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E)
to merge the Gradient adjustment layer
with the black bar layer to make it just one
gradient bar layer. Now, we can't just save
the file at this point, because we have a
solid white Background layer, and that's
exactly how this file would appear on our
timeline—as a big white box with a gradi-
ent bar on it. So, what you need to do is
simply drag your Background layer onto
the Trash icon at the bottom of the panel.
Now, you just have that gradient bar all
by itself with a transparent background
(as seen in the Layers panel at bottom
right), which is exactly what we want in our
video (so just the bar sits over our video).
Step Four:
Arrange the two windows (your gradient
bar and video clip windows) so you can
see them both onscreen at the same
time (try going under the Window menu,
under Arrange, and choosing
Tile All
Vertically
), get the Move tool
(V)
, click
on the gradient bar layer, and then just
drag-and-drop it right onto your video.
Now, you'll see the gradient bar with a
transparent background in your Layers
panel (which is exactly what we want),
but it's not in the place where we want
it. By default, it adds it at the end of the
video clip, like it was another clip or still
(it appears in purple though, because it's
a still). We need it to appear “over” the
video clip.
(Continued)
