Where does it tell me how to copy and paste a picture into PS? It doesn't....as I said in my earlier post, the menu that I'm working on now is not the same kind of menu that you made me..I'm not going to be using the same background that you made for me, and I'm not going to be erasing any background stuff from the picture, this is a completely different project, it is one single big pic...all I need to do is get the picture from my desktop where it is saved, and get it into the 720x540 white box in ps...how do I do that, I can't copy and paste it, it's not letting me, so...what do I do have to do to get it into the white box?

I'm not going to be importing the psd template that you made me for this project, I think that is where we are having a misunderstanding about this...as I said, this is another different project. I went and found a pic online, saved it to my desktop, and and I now need to bring it inside of that white box in PS...that's what I need to know how to do..

You still have to do the same things. Maybe not EXACTLY THE SAME, but still close enough....

Make new image, 720x540

Open the web image too.

Two images now open in Photoshop.

Get the marquee "dotted line box" tool,
click on the web image. CTRL+A to select all or EDIT > SELECT ALL,
copy it with CTRL+C or EDIT > COPY,
and then go to your new blank menu image and paste it, CTRL+V or EDIT > PASTE.

To make a quality menu, you need several elements:

That worked, I got it into the small white box, however the bottom half of the pic is cut off...

The pic size is 609x800..how do I get the entire pic in the white box?

This is a basic geometry issue. It's not much different than putting a round peg in a square hole. The only way to do it is to cut the round peg into a square shape.

You don't want to stretch it, messing up the aspect ratio. That's look ghastly, may as well not have a menu.

Again, this was addressed in the first post. Use the FREE TRANSFORM tool to change the size of the layer with the round peg. Photoshop is three dimensional. You have length, width AND DEPTH! Depth is done by layering.

Free transform worked, thanks. Check your email, I sent you what it looks like now in Workshop, and a little bit more help is needed to finish it.

You ask a question that has no answer. How can a square image be turned into a rectangle one? It can't, not without stretching it.

Ya, I decided that I'll just go with it how it is. Please check your email, I sent you what it looks like now.

You've stretched a square image into a rectangle TV screen shape, as your background. I'm sorry, but that looks terrible. You need to get a better image. Or just live with the fact that you'll have to cut part of it off.

Running text into the overscan area is not allowed either. You won't be able to read it on a TV screen, it will be cut off.

I suggest not doing thumbnails of the videos -- it doesn't look very good anyway. Your thumbnails aren't "screen shaped", they're too box-shaped for that. They are rather large, and then you can see the overscan noise on them as well. It just doesn't look good.

This is one of those menus where you should probably just stick to a plain black background and some text to navigate. Not everybody is a graphic designer. It would be better than something that is hard to read, with text going off screen, full of distorted images.

Should I maybe use a different setting for the white box in PS? I'm working on another menu now, and once I did all the stuff in PS, I brought it into Workshop, and that is also too big for the safe zone...should I change the settings for the white box, or use a different size for the pics maybe? A smaller size or something?

Stay with something easy. That's what I usually do, especially for personal projects, hobby projects, and most standard business projects.

For example, this is BASIC LEVEL authoring:

Attachment 341

A photo goes on the left half. You'll have to cut the part of the image that best fits the space. You don't make the space fit the photo -- not for DVD menus!!! (It's the other way around for a lot of print pubs, full-page and covers aside.)

A simple text listing of entries on the right, be it episodes, chapters, etc. Use a basic serif or sans serif font -- something non-styled and easy to read, as if it were a book or newspaper.

And then a simple slightly-styled (but still easy to read!) font for the title of the disc.

That's it! That's really all you need for a nice basic menu.

For MEDIUM LEVEL work, if you want to get adventurous, you can add texture to the black background, layer effects to the title font, use icons or small thumbs as selectors for the entries, stylize or "patternize" the photo. This is where most of my work fits, actually. I do the basic menu, plus the tweaks, as I'm a "raster" graphic designer (vector graphics are honestly outside my current skill set).

For ADVANCE LEVEL work, I only do "more" if the project is really special to me, or if I'm getting paid good $$$ for advanced levels of authoring work. Those projects can take not just hours, but many hours spread out over many weeks, intensive editing and authoring work. What is often a 5-minute session is DVDWS or DVDSP can take 30-60 minutes or more with advanced work -- and that's not even including the creation of alpha-layered graphics in Photoshop, UFO files in DVDWS, or IVTC/progressive conversion of sources, followed by editing in Premiere.