30 Day Challenge: Day 10 DVD Menu

There is so much out there in Adobe world, and I only know the slightest hint of what all the programs can do. I'm working on a few new programs for the next few days: Encore and After Effects. Both of these programs are for creating video effects and DVDs. I'm sure they do much more than that, but that's all I plan on using them for.

For today, I am working with Photoshop for Encore. Sounds weird, but yes it's true. I'm going to be using Encore to create a DVD menu, but first I have to start off in Photoshop. The cool thing is that I can create the menu file in Photoshop and transfer it over to Encore to create it. In photoshop, I created a background and an image like I would normally do. Then, I created groups for each DVD menu item. Within that group, I created the text for the button and the spot for a video preview. The cool thing about using both programs together is I can use special text to name each layer. When I upload it to Encore, Encore will read the text and know what each layer is. For example, when I put (+) in front of the name of a group, it tells Encore that everything in the group is part of a menu item.

I pretty much set everything up in photoshop and tomorrow, I will use Encore to create the actual menu and link the buttons to videos.