What is Morphing?

If you ever watched the Michael Jackson’s Black or White video in which faces changed to
one another, you must have wondered how it was possible. It is done through morphing
which has come of ages since then. It is possible to start with your face and end up with the
face of a terrorist or some celebrity. This special effect of face changing is so smooth that
one is left blinking his eyes how he turned into someone else. The technique involves
marking the important features or the contours of the face which has to be changed and the
same facial features such as the place of nose and mouth are marked on the face into which
the first face has to evolve. Computer software then distorts the first face to take the shape
of the 2nd face while fading both the faces. Morphing has totally taken over the earlier
cross fading technique that was used earlier for transition between two scenes in TV shows.

What is Tweening?

As described above, tweening is the technique of producing intermediate frames so that one
image transforms gradually into another. These frames are slightly different from one
another shifting gradually in shape and appearance to the final image that the producer
wants to show. This technique is the basis of all kinds of animations as it makes possible
motion of animated characters. This is how circles are turned into squares, letters turn into
stars and a rabbit turns into a leopard. Both shape tweening and motion tweening is
achieved with the help of flash which is an important tool in making animations. The major
difference between shape tweening and motion tweening is that motion tweening operates
on groups whereas shape tweening works for objects that can be edited. Tweening allows
the graphic designer to not only effect changes in the shape of the object but also introduce
changes of color and location. Thus shape tweening has become very important in
designing flash web site designing.

In brief:

• Morphing and tweening are two techniques of effecting changes in an object and its
motion.
• Morphing refers to the procedure where one face changes into totally different face in a
smooth manner
• Tweening enables graphic designer to allow for changes in animated character and also its
size, color and location.
• Tweening has become an integral part of animation using flash as the tool.

What is Masking?

Masking is a common technique in computer graphics used to hide or reveal parts of an

image. Masking can be used to create special effects, to improve the quality of an image, or
make an image more realistic. Image editing: Masking is often used in image editing
applications to select part of an image for editing.

Image masking is a process of graphics software like Photoshop to hide some portions of an
image and to reveal some portions. It is a non-destructive process of image editing. Most of
the time it enables you to adjust and tweak the mask later if necessary. Very often, it is an
efficient and more creative way of image manipulation services.