How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

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How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by nicspenceryork »

Can anyone share a link about how to mask the solar disc in a prom animation?
Yours hopefully,
Nic


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by rsfoto »

Hi,

The only way I can imagine to do it is to black out each single frame one by one before creating the animation.

In Photoshop fro example one can choose the white area and fill it up with any desired color > Paint Bucket


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by EGRAY_OBSERVATORY »

Hi Nic,
I agree with Rainer and depending on your processing-program as say PaintShopPro or PS etc., the Paint Brush/Erasor tool etc., with your desired colour can be painted-out with a circle-application - enlarged to size to fit just within the disk.

Works well for single frames, but would be tiresome for multiple frames...

Best wishes
Terry


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by Montana »

I've never done it before as it sounds like too much hassle. However, I would imagine you would need to do all the alignment and cropping first and processing. Then as a final stage, save an action which would be to draw a black circle to cover the Sun. Then use the same action on every single frame. This would ensure the black disc is in the same place on every frame. Otherwise the black obscuring disc would move around in the animation and would be a horrible distraction ;)

Good luck
Alexandra


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by rsfoto »

Hi Terry and Alexandra,

In Photoshop there is a feture called > Colour Select, the same one I use for the Tilt Shift feature I overlay on my discs from time to time and this is less of a hassle then drawing a circle fitted to the Sun diameter.

You can choose different parameters of how much of the chosen colour it takes.

OK, that is for Photoshop ...


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by torsinadoc »

Montana wrote: Fri Mar 11, 2022 8:26 am I've never done it before as it sounds like too much hassle. However, I would imagine you would need to do all the alignment and cropping first and processing. Then as a final stage, save an action which would be to draw a black circle to cover the Sun. Then use the same action on every single frame. This would ensure the black disc is in the same place on every frame. Otherwise the black obscuring disc would move around in the animation and would be a horrible distraction ;)

Good luck
Alexandra
I align in IMPPG then import a single image in PS and draw a black circle to cover the sun. Once I find the correct dimensions of the black disk, I delete and redo it and save it as an action. I run batch processing on the rest of the images. If they were aligned properly the disk remains occluded correctly


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by torsinadoc »

Here is a real quick tutorial from a old animation. The files were already aligned in ImPPG. I rotated and occluded the disk. I removed the part of the video when it ran the batch because there was a lot of flashing light from the disk rotation/occlusion and I didn't want to cause seizures in people at risk.



Image12-5-2020 by Torsinadoc, on Flickr


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by EGRAY_OBSERVATORY »

Thanks Rainer for the PS advice, but I don't need or use PS, rather I use PSP.

But clearly Alan does know and hopefull that is sufficient for Nic to try...

Terry


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by rigel123 »

Another method you might consider for blacking out the disk in animations is utilizing ImPPG. A quick way to blacken the disk if you have blown it out entirely is to simply use the curves in ImPPG to blacken the disk as shown in the image below. Do your stretch on the curves and place an anchor point at some midpoint and then drag down the anchor on the far right of the histogram and pull it back to sufficiently blacken the disk area. The only drawback to this method is very bright white areas of proms may start to become black as well so for instance if a surprise flare goes off during your animation it could pull up some of the black as well. When you process all of your frames in Batch mode in ImPPG it will automatically apply the same curve to all images and it can help with alignment of the frames in ImPPG as well having a black disk.
ImPPG-for-black-disk.jpg
ImPPG-for-black-disk.jpg (332.03 KiB) Viewed 3044 times


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by rsfoto »

EGRAY_OBSERVATORY wrote: Fri Mar 11, 2022 3:45 pm Thanks Rainer for the PS advice, but I don't need or use PS, rather I use PSP.

But clearly Alan does know and hopefull that is sufficient for Nic to try...

Terry
No problem, the only software I have is PS, Sorry :lol:


regards Rainer

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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by MichaelTeoh »

I would align the individual frames in Photoshop, and add the black disk on top of the stack.

I have made a tutorial on making prom animation, which includes this step.

You can check it out here: https://youtu.be/fvsDrDUKnfw?t=819


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by nicspenceryork »

Thanks everyone, I will try all suggestions. I've used a black mask with single images before. I have also animated proms. I've just had a 'mental block' about how to mask multiple images to create an animation. I'll give it a go with my next animation and show you all how it goes. I work with GIMP but I'll be able to google the PS equivalent steps and also try the suggested IMPGG tip.
Much appreciated,
Nic


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by Merlin66 »

Have you looked at Sylvain's Corono?
This does the black disk etc.
http://sweiller.free.fr/Softwares/Corono/corono.html


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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by Martin_S »

nicspenceryork wrote: Sun Mar 13, 2022 4:39 pm Thanks everyone, I will try all suggestions. I've used a black mask with single images before. I have also animated proms. I've just had a 'mental block' about how to mask multiple images to create an animation. I'll give it a go with my next animation and show you all how it goes. I work with GIMP but I'll be able to google the PS equivalent steps and also try the suggested IMPGG tip.
Much appreciated,
Nic
Nic, I'm a bit late to this discussion, here is my process for masking. In photoshop I create an action using the Magic wand ,Paint Bucket tool and save command. I can automate a batch process of around say 100 images in about 10 seconds. Creating actions is quite easy once you have had a few goes at it.

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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by rsfoto »

Martin_S wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 12:56 am
nicspenceryork wrote: Sun Mar 13, 2022 4:39 pm Thanks everyone, I will try all suggestions. I've used a black mask with single images before. I have also animated proms. I've just had a 'mental block' about how to mask multiple images to create an animation. I'll give it a go with my next animation and show you all how it goes. I work with GIMP but I'll be able to google the PS equivalent steps and also try the suggested IMPGG tip.
Much appreciated,
Nic
Nic, I'm a bit late to this discussion, here is my process for masking. In photoshop I create an action using the Magic wand ,Paint Bucket tool and save command. I can automate a batch process of around say 100 images in about 10 seconds. Creating actions is quite easy once you have had a few goes at it.

Martin
Hi Martin,
Creating actions is quite easy once you have had a few goes at it.
There is only one thing that is confusing at the beginning and those are the opening, saving and closing commands which make it a bit troublesome.

These are the so called >Overide Action "Open" Commands< as well as the >Override Action "Save As" Commands "< ...


regards Rainer

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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by Martin_S »

Good point Rainer, Photoshop has a fairly steep learning curve. I have found that if you write down each process and what buttons to tick as you use it you'll eventually get good results every time.

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Re: How to mask out the solar disc in prom animation?

Post by Ivan »

Recently faced with such a need. My method is very simple:
1. In Photoshop, when all the frames are aligned, we create a new layer on top of all the others;
2. Draw a black circle on it using the ellipse tool, or simply by selecting the diameter of the brush, or using curves, or in any other way;
3. Fix this layer by clicking on the lock icon;
4. Create animation, thanks to the top pinned layer, it will be displayed on all the others automatically;
5. After the animation is created, you need to delete the frame with the mask that we drew on the animation panel at the bottom. If this is not done, the animation will show this extra frame.

Ivan


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