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Layered Photoshop files in FCPX 10.0.3
Well, various tests tell me that they don’t really work very well at all, though the results are so unpredictable that it’s hard to pin down all the details iof what’s going wrong when and where.
One thing’s for certain: don’t ever reduce a multi-layer PSD to a single layer (either by merging or deleting layers) otherwise FCPX won’t relink to it. Once a PSD has become more than one layer FCPX expects it to stay that way and you’ll get the following message:
A modified original file was found in “New Event 25-11-2011” Event, but it could not be relinked.
Relinked files must have the same media type, same frame rate, and similar audio channels as the original files, and must be long enough to cover all the clips that reference the files.
(There are other issues relating to adding or deleting layers but it’s proving hard to pin them down – and frankly I’m running out of patience!)
A second thing that seems to be reasonably certain is that transforms performed in Photoshop whether scale or position will frequently (more so than not, in my experience) come through incorrectly.
Thirdly, changing layer order results in unexpected behavior of various kinds. Again changing a layer’s order can also “randomly” change its position.
Apple’s overview of best practices for use of PSDs in FCPX doesn’t appear to be fully aware of the extent to which the feature simply doesn’t work:
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT5152?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
4 Replies
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I just sent this to Apple:
I made a simple PSD file with three layers of plain black text. I turned off all layers expect the first layer of text. That imported and looked like it should. I went back into Photoshop, scaled that layer down to 65% and saved it. The file in FCP X updated and all was well. Then I went back into Photoshop and changed the position of the text. No matter what I did this change would not show up in FCP X. I then deleted the file from the event and tried to re-import it. Nothing happened. I also tried to re-link it and nothing happened. I then made a copy of the file in the finder (opt drag) and was able to import the copy. The changes I had made showed up. I went back to the original file still open in Photoshop, made another change and saved it with a different name. I was able to import this file into FCP X and the changes showed up properly. It looks like FCP X is not recognizing changes to PSD files like it should.
NT
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Hi Nick
Thanks for confirming that I’m not hallucinating!
The frustrating part is trying to pin down exactly what does and doesn’t happen correctly.
But that point in time I think it’s fair to say that it’s all way too random to be reliable.
The sensible route for now is surely to just to flatten all your layers and pretend that the “new feature” doesn’t exist. Yet.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
From Apple – Best Practices for Photoshop files
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT5152
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Thanks for the link – that’s actually the one I referenced in my original post. Doesn’t seem that they are aware of the particular (anbd very significant) issues that I raised however.
Unless they are rather coyly admitting that you can’t make transform changes within Photoshop that will show up correctly in FCPX.
Frankly, if your requirements for Photoshop are a basic as Apple are seeming to imply then you’re probably better off compositing your graphics in FCPX anyway.
The ability to handle transforms is hardly high end stuff!!!!!!!
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com
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