Changing Button Colors in DVD Studio Pro
You can customize your button colors in DVD Studio Pro to make your menu buttons your own. By default when drawing your own buttons, the button color is white, and usually defaults to something simple when using templates as well, like white, black, yellow, or red. Boring. Get creative, and change those colors! You can do this very easily in the Button Inspector in DVD Studio Pro.Button states are defined as Normal, Selected, and Activated. When someone is viewing your DVD, and chooses a button with their remote control, the button becomes selected, and it displays the highlight color you have chosen for the selected state. The activated state shows up for a split second when the user presses the Play button on the remote control.
Assuming you have already drawn and named your buttons, in the Button Inspector, make sure you have the Include Text in Highlight checkbox selected located at the bottom of the inspector in the Style Tab.
Now click on the Colors Tab. Note how my example is defaulted to
black, white, and yellow for the Normal, Selected, and Activated
states, and how the opacity is at 0 for the Normal State; which means,
when the menu buttons are just sitting static the color you have your
text set at, will show through.
You can click on the color square to see your choices of colors to change your button colors to. Once you have changed your button colors to something a little more exciting, in the Menu Editor, navigate to the button state icons at the bottom of the window and click the Selected State icon in the middle. When you click the button, you should see the button color you have chosen.
You can also right-click in your menu to Simulate Menu, to hover over buttons, or click on them to activate and see how the colors you've chosen will look.
Ok, so the color palette in the Inspector's Colors Tab provides access to only 16 colors. Maybe we want to really broaden our horizons and change our button colors to something more appropriate for our menu designs. At the bottom of the Colors Tab, click on the Edit Palette button. Now the Color Palette opens at the top of the Button Inspector. Click on any of the color swatches, and it opens the Colors Panel. From the Colors Panel, in the color wheel, choose a color. Close the Colors Panel, and the palette updates with the new color.
You can also use the magnifying glass in the Colors window to sample colors from anywhere on your screen. This is really great when you are trying to match a color from something in your menu, video, or even from your stills to make a unique button color. Check out my example here; I wanted to grab a color that is already in my menu to use as a highlight button color. Of course that color doesn't exist in the palette, and would be pretty hard to match using the color wheel; I just take my magnifying glass, drag it over the area I'm trying to match and click; now you can see where that "newly created color" shows up in the color wheel.
And don't forget to play with the opacity differences and use the slider bar on the color wheel to change the shade of your colors too. The possibilites are endless!
Check out these articles that also relate to DVD Studio Pro Buttons:
You can click on the color square to see your choices of colors to change your button colors to. Once you have changed your button colors to something a little more exciting, in the Menu Editor, navigate to the button state icons at the bottom of the window and click the Selected State icon in the middle. When you click the button, you should see the button color you have chosen.
You can also right-click in your menu to Simulate Menu, to hover over buttons, or click on them to activate and see how the colors you've chosen will look.
Ok, so the color palette in the Inspector's Colors Tab provides access to only 16 colors. Maybe we want to really broaden our horizons and change our button colors to something more appropriate for our menu designs. At the bottom of the Colors Tab, click on the Edit Palette button. Now the Color Palette opens at the top of the Button Inspector. Click on any of the color swatches, and it opens the Colors Panel. From the Colors Panel, in the color wheel, choose a color. Close the Colors Panel, and the palette updates with the new color.
You can also use the magnifying glass in the Colors window to sample colors from anywhere on your screen. This is really great when you are trying to match a color from something in your menu, video, or even from your stills to make a unique button color. Check out my example here; I wanted to grab a color that is already in my menu to use as a highlight button color. Of course that color doesn't exist in the palette, and would be pretty hard to match using the color wheel; I just take my magnifying glass, drag it over the area I'm trying to match and click; now you can see where that "newly created color" shows up in the color wheel.
And don't forget to play with the opacity differences and use the slider bar on the color wheel to change the shade of your colors too. The possibilites are endless!
Check out these articles that also relate to DVD Studio Pro Buttons:
- Individual Button Highlight Color
- Universal Mac Color Palette
- and Using a graphic to indicate highlighted buttons.
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