Ink options

Table of Contents | Appendices

Ink options

Electrifier Pro gives you the power to customize the ink attributes of an actor. Ink attributes include transparency, tint, reversibility, hue, saturation, lightness, and mask. Together, these attributes can shine many differents kinds of "light" into and through an actor, giving the actor depth, texture, and complexity.

Different inks are applied to actors using the pull-down menu on the Inspector palette.

The Modifier palette also gives you control over an actor's ink attributes. The Effects tab contains the Fade, Color fade, and Ink effects, which instruct an actor's ink to change, either abruptly at a designated time (Ink), or gradually over a specified period (Fade and Color Fade).

A given actor can only have one ink at a given time: if multiple inks are applied to a single actor, the last ink will be the one that appears. For example, if you assign Reverse ink in the Inspector palette and then add a 0-100% Fade ink effect, the fade will be between 0 and 100% opaque rather than between 0 and 100% reversed.

The one situation where inks can combine is if you have a non-opaque actor within a non-opaque sprite track. In this situation, the ink for the actor will be the combination of its own ink and its track's ink. Combining inks in this way can produce extremely powerful color mixing effects, but ink interactions can be quite complex, so we suggest that you familiarize yourself thoroughly with the use of inks with individual actors before attempting to combine them.

Although inks can be applied to any actor, the result of non-opaque inks such as Translucent, Add Wrapped, or Tinted Glass may be upredictable when applied to actors which are not contained within a sprite track. Ink effects (and particularly animated ink effects) should only be applied to actors within sprite tracks.

Ink	Result	Uses
Opaque	the actor (and its background, if any) fully obscures the movie behind it	all actors
Translucent	the actor partially obscures the movie behind it like a scrim	all actors
Masked	the actor fully obscures the movie behind it, but its background is invisible, as if the actor were shot against a blue screen	actors with alpha channels, such as fire, clouds, and some PNG or Photoshop files
Masked Translucent	the actor partially obscures the movie behind it, but its background is invisible, as if the actor were shot against a blue screen	actors with alpha channels, such as fire, clouds, and some PNG or Photoshop files
Tinted Glass	the actor tints the movie behind it like a stained-glass window: the new color will be the darker of those in the actor and in the background	all actors
Tinted Light	the actor tints the movie behind it like a colored spotlight: the new color will be the brighter of those in the actor and in the background	all actors
Reverse	the actor's colors are reversed like a photographic negative	all actors
Transparent	one color within the actor is completely transparent (like a transparent GIF)	all actors
Add	the actor brightens the movie behind it: the new color will be the sum of that in the actor and that in the background, up to the maximum (white)	all actors
Subtract	the actor darkens the movie behind it: the new color will be the difference of that in the background and that in the actor, down to the minimum (black)	doesn't work in QuickTime 3.0
Masked White Background	the actor fully obscures the movie behind it, but its background is invisible, as if the actor were shot against a blue screen	actors with automatically masked white backgrounds such as Photoshop files
Masked Black Background	the actor fully obscures the movie behind it, but its background is invisible, as if the actor were shot against a blue screen	actors with automatically masked black backgrounds such as some 3D modeling files
Composite	the actor fully obscures the movie behind it, but its background is invisible, as if the actor were shot against a blue screen	actors with no backgrounds, such as vector graphics or transparent GIFs
Add Wrapped	the actor brightens the movie behind it: the new color will be the sum of that in the actor and that in the background, with colors brighter than the maximum (white) wrapping around the color wheel	all actors
Subtract Wrapped	the actor darkens the movie behind it: the new color will be the difference of that in the background and that in the actor, with colors darker than the minimum (black) wrapping around the color wheel	all actors

For more information

For detailed information about changing an actor's ink over time, see the Modifier palette section of the Window and Palette Reference.