Ralph Johns

iChat In Pictures >> Your are in Folder 4_iChat WIndows >> Page: Video Effects Pallet

	15[15]	15 Video Effect Pallet	19-10-2008

In iChat 4 you get Video Effects and on Intel Macs, Backdrops.

Effects are changes to the way the picture is displayed to you in the Picture-in-Picture and what your Buddy sees. As default there are two pages of these as indicated in this picture from my G4 as it can not do the backdrops. The other page are things like Pinch and Bulge and Mirror.

The criteria for backdrops is actually the graphics card but Apple have iChat looking at the Processor as the Cut-off point as not everyone will have updated their G5 or G4 Graphics card, leaving only Intel Macs capable of doing Backdrops.

Backdrops are those Green screen things you an do where you "Step out of the Frame" and iChat checks the background and stores it and then you can place another one in it's place.

This is one of the Standard backgrounds that iChat and Photo Booth can use. A larger view is here

The highlights were to point out that in some the lighting and colours you are wearing can make a difference to what parts of the Backdrop "bleeds" through.

For instance if your chair is black and can be seen when you are out of shot it is considered background. If you are then wearing a black or suitably dark top that part will become "invisible" as iChat will consider it to be Background as well such as my dark pipe has here. You can also see the left side of my face has more shadow and this gets deeper as it goes to my shoulders where a similar thing happens as my top becomes too dark to distinguish from the Background.

As you can see from the second example, the actual background I have is also dark which is where the problem lies. The first Pic was taken with daylight coming from the left of the pic hence the shadow lower right. The second was taken later with overhead lighting.

As you can see in the second pic my background is quite complicated as well and this does not help either. Single flat colours are best that are different from your clothes.

Anyway, back to the main Picture. Navigate through the "pages" by mousing over the arrow on the left or right and clicking to advance 1 page at a time.

Created with JAlbum 4.0.6

©  2008 Ralph Johns: Created October 2008

Information Block

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About This Page

This is about the Effects and Backdrop pallet.

Has simple navigation arrows in the bottom corners to click to advance.

Compatibility

Confirmed to work with Win/IE 5.5 and later (should work in 5.0, but not confirmed), Firefox 2, Safari 3, Opera 9, iCab 3.02 and later, Mac/IE 5, Netscape 6 and later

Old browsers (IE version 4 or earlier, Netscape 4 or earlier) should only see a text-based page which, while not the prettiest option, is still entirely usable.