An overlay is a type of mask that you create in PhotoShop and import into DVDSP like any other menu. Each shape is a guide that tells the DVD player where to put color highlights. It only acts as a guide to create highlights. The actual image is never displayed. Instead, you define your Overlay Image and then use the Highlight Set to generate the colors for the Selected and Activated highlights. The overlay -- or subpicture layer -- lies on top of the background. This layer is a 2-bit graphic that can't be anti-aliased. This means it will not have smooth edges so it's good to avoid using text as your selected and activated states if you're using overlay menus.

Simple Overlays
Simple overlays use one color (black) to define the selected or activated state. You create all the shapes on the same layer and then define the buttons and set the color. Since you only have one color, black, in your overlay, you will be able to map this black to only one color in DVDSP.

Complex Overlays

If you want your button to be more than one color during a particular state, you need to use a complex overlay. All complex overlay images use greyscale mapping to defined the colors in the buttons. The greyscale values used are 100 black, 66 percent black, 33 percent black and 0 percent black. Basically, your Photoshop document needs to be a grayscale file that represents the shapes of your buttons, each value of grey can then be mapped to a different color value in DVDSP. In the Photoshop doc, you need to use the following RGB definitions for the four states of black:

In DVDSP, each of the overlay’s four shades of gray are translated into a distinct color from the highlight set.

To create a simple overlay menu

1. Create your overlay in Photoshop, making sure that your shapes match up with the background image. If you're trying to match a scene from a movie, you can export a still frame from Final Cut Pro and then import it into PhotoShop and work with this as your background.

2. Once you have your shapes in the correct place, you need to define the shapes with the RGB greyscale equivalent. Once you get into DVDSP you will be able to map a different color to each grey that you've defined here.

3. Once you have defined your overlay with the correct RGB values, you are ready to import the menu files into DVDSP.

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