Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy FCP and Photoshop Alpha layer

  • FCP and Photoshop Alpha layer

    Posted by Espnetboy3 on October 11, 2005 at 1:58 am

    I have been having trouble bringing in single frames into FCP from photoshop. I was told if you use a transparent background and draw on top of that and export you will have ur alpha channel. When I bring it to fcp the backdrop is white and I have to sit there and key it out. Any suggestions? With after effects I make a title and render out animation with rgb+ alpha and it works great.

    John Calhoun replied 20 years, 7 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Andy Mees

    October 11, 2005 at 8:15 am

    when you saved it out of photoshop, what did you save it as? did you flatten it?

    check out these free guides for using photoshop images with fcp
    https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_ps.html
    https://www.geniusdv.com/photoshop%20final%20cut%20pro.php

    hope it helps
    Andy

  • Chris Poisson

    October 11, 2005 at 2:21 pm

    Hey there,

    I’m not sure what’s going on there, but since I have upgraded to Photoshop CS I have had similar failures with 32 bit Targa files.

    My workarond that is actually a bit more flexible than making all individual files is to just load Photoshop files as sequences, and then copy and paste the layers into my main sequence, and they allways have transparency. Saves time, plus I’ve got all the layers in one convenient place.

  • Espnetboy3

    October 11, 2005 at 6:06 pm

    I did flatten the layers. I had about 5 layers. I had created a shape and copied and pasted it 4 times then made it into 1 layer.

  • John Calhoun

    October 12, 2005 at 2:44 am

    heres my workflow which works for graphics with drop shadows and other PS effects.

    create graphic as usual complete with shadows, bevels, glows, etc.

    (this sequence can be made into an action)
    create a new layer, hit the little known combo shift+option+command+’E’. This creates a merged copy of all of your visible layers complete with glows and dropshadows to the layer.

    command+click on the layer (or thumbnail in CS2) to create a selection. Go to channels, click ‘save selection as channel’ at bottom of window which creates and alpha channel.

    go back to layers, option click the eyeball to isolate your new merged layer. (stop action if you started one)

    do a ‘save as’ select targa with an alpha channel and voila, there’s your graphic complete with glows and drop shadows.

    I use this flow because I use the same master PS files over and over and the targas stay in the project folder.

    pxlmvr

    John A. Calhoun
    Zone Communication Group
    Cincinnati, Ohio

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy