MorphMan Helper
MorphMan Helper is the application designed to properly crop photos to facilitate creation of face-to-face morphing project for MorphMan 2.01 and MorphMan 2000. MorphMan is a powerful instrument to generate a seamless transition between pictures (and videos) and export it to a movie file or to the sequence of graphic files. One of the most frequent MorphMan tasks is face-to-face morphing, an almost textbook example of this sort of transformation is shown in the popular videoclip, Black Or White by Michael Jackson, where the faces of different people change one into another. The resulting quality of the effect depends not only on the precision of setting transition points and lines in MorphMan project, but also on proper cropping of initial photos (source and target). The top quality face-to-face morphing can only be achieved if photos of subjects are cropped so that faces are approximately of the same relative size and position in both source and target pictures.
MorphMan Helper allows you to easily crop a pair of photos so that faces are of the same relative size and position in both cropped images. MorphMan Helper will store the cropped photos and export the project file for MorphMan.
How To Prepare Face-To-Face Morphing Project With MorphMan Helper
1. Load initial images for source and target using menu File-Source and File- Target commands. The images can be imported from graphic files, movie files, and scanned. You can also load source and target images by clicking on hand buttons on Project window toolbar
2. Once the initial pictures are loaded, the Preview window will display their superposition. Slider on the Preview window toolbar allows you to change relative transparency of source and target images.
3. Set aspect ratio of cropping rectangle using menu Edit-Set Aspect. The Aspect Ratio dialog allows you to set arbitrary aspect ratio or choose one of the standard crops such as 3:2, 4:3, etc. The cropping rectangle of chosen aspect ratio is shown in green in Preview window
4.
Use buttons on Preview window toolbar to properly place and zoom
source and target images inside the cropping rectangle:
- S and D arrow buttons click to activate source or target
image respectively for editing
- Magnifying glass button click to resize active image with respect
to cropping rectangle. To zoom in click over active image and drag in
the direction opposite from image center. To zoom out click over active
image and drag towards image center. Make sure that both source and target
images are of the same size in the Preview window.
- Cross button click to drag active image inside cropping rectangle.
Make sure that both images are properly positioned one just over another.
- Rotate button use it to rotate active image if initial images
are not properly aligned
- Q button click to switch to Quick view mode for faster dragging/rotating
of images in Preview window
5. Once you have properly placed both initial images inside cropping rectangle, you are ready to export cropped images as source and target images for MorphMan using menu File-Save Source As and File-Save Target As commands. Note that images will be only cropped, and not resized.
6. After you have saved both Source and Target the File-Export Project command will become available. Use it to export project (.mpj file). Now when you open the project with MorphMan it will automatically load properly cropped Source and Target images
