• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Photoshop Settings?

  Posted by Catherine R on January 13, 2006 at 3:35 pm

  Hi

  i know FCP pretty well, but haven’t used it much with Photoshop.

  I need to bring in an object(or several objects) on a transparent layer – but can’t seem to get it to work without losing colour or opacity. i need to be able to have several objects that i can move or animate in FCP.

  what are the simplest settings to export out of photoshop into FCP – so I can superimpose the layers over footage cleanly. when i select a transparent layer in photshop as my set up background – it comes out white (not transparent)in FCP…

  Help really appreciated…

  catherine
  x

  Gary Hughes replied 20 years, 4 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Lee Berger

  January 13, 2006 at 3:45 pm

  Try saving as a your Photoshop file as a PNG. This format retains image transparency.
• 

  Bryce Whiteside

  January 13, 2006 at 5:08 pm

  I always leave the background preference setting in Photoshop to transparent or the little grey and white checked background. That way I know what is transparent.

  You need select the negative area around your logo/graphic perhaps with Magic Wand. The default sensitivity of 32 is usually fine. You will probably need to invert it depending on your selection preferences and then put the selection–the marching ants–in the Alpha channel under the Channel tab. There will be a little circle icon of marching ants–your selection–at the bottom or the Channels tab and you click on that.

  Save your graphic as a .PCT (PICT) or .PNG file as a 32 bit image file meaning R 8-bit, G 8-bit, B 8-bit and Alpha (8-bit). Alpha is you hole cutter in FCP.

  You could also save mulitple layers in a .PSD file and import into FCP as a layered sequence. You could do a search of all posts recent and archives with my name as author–Bryce OR Bryce Whiteside–and Photoshop as a search term.

  LarryJordan.biz has articles and tutorials on preping graphics in Photoshop for FCP as well as Ken Stone’s “The Basics – Preparing Photoshop files for FCP”. The underlines mean they are links.

  HTH,
  Bryce Whiteside

  Don’t worry Mr. B. I have a cunning plan…

  PowerBook 1.67 Ghz ATI 9700 128 MB 2 GB
  Final Cut Pro HD
  DVD Studio Pro 3
  Motion
• 

  Catherine R

  January 13, 2006 at 6:19 pm

  thanks guys i’ll try that.

  catherine
  x
• 

  Gary Hughes

  January 13, 2006 at 8:30 pm

  Be sure you actually have transparency in your image in photoshop. (Be sure you can see the gray/white checkerboard.) Save it as a png or if you want to save it as a tiff or tga, be sure that you put a check by “save image transparency” in the save dialogue. I do it all the time. Works great.

  The magic wand can leave artifacts depending on what you’re working on. Don’t use it! Instead, if you wish to use Bryce’s method, command+click on the thumbnail on the layer itself. It’s a true selection without tolerance for antialias artifacts, unlike the magic wand. It will select all non-transparent pixels. It will even leave something that is 50% opaque, 50% opaque. If you have more than one layer, you can either merge them before selecting, or you can command+click on one, then shift+command+click on the others to add them all together for an overall selection.

  Thanks,
  Gary

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