trace bitmap basic question

[rinser]

Hello. This is a novice question so please be patient (i already checked the tutes on this site)

i am trying to do a trace on a photo, i want to empty the color of a person in the photo and fill the white space with color using a tween, like kind of "filling up" the persons shape. then i would like to replace the colored space with the original persons image.

i have been told to do a trace. which i did, but that took ages. my real problem was, once i have emptied the image of color, how do i return the overall photo to a bitmap ?

im simply trying to master what is done on this site
http://www.nanand78.com

i have had people tell me today in such superior tones how "easy" this effect is, but they havent bothered to explain it.

if anyone has any tips for this i would really appreciate it thanks a lot.

[RUSHVision]

From your explanation it looks like there are two separate requests. The first being what it sounds like you want to do and the second is your expression of your desire to recreate the button effect on the site that you linked to. I think the first has been mucked up by other people confusing you with misinformation so I'm going to go with the second and you can let me know if you need more info.

So first of all, from what I can see there is no tracing involved whatsoever. It looks to me that those are two raster images. It's the same picture, it has just had different things done to it. I'm guessing that the first has been either just desaturated and then had the alpha reduced in Flash or it's been desaturated and slightly colorized to match the background then had the alpha reduced.

The second image basically hasn't had anything done to it. It's been reduced in size from the original, but it's just a full-color version of the 'off' thumbnail. So start by creating this one then copy it to a new layer or document and apply whatever effects you want to it to create the other one.

In this particular example there is no tween involved, either. It's just one image in the equivalent of the 'Up' frame and the other in the 'Over' frame. If you want do some kind of tween to make more of a transition, then perhaps you could explain more fully and explicitly how you want that to take place.

[rinser]

thanks for the reply, im about to get down to work on it now