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Organizational practices with Ps files questions
Hi all,
I’m in the process of laying in a lot of groundwork for use in After Effects animations. Character images done in Photoshop with multiple layers, some to be pre composed, nested and time remapped such as in Aahron’s lip sync tutorial here. These files will get a lot of use so it’s really doing my homework to get them all ready.
I want to avoid confusing Ae with layer names, so before I do a bunch of final images that all use layer names such as “mouth_001”, I wanted to see if it’s better to name each layer with something unique, never using the same exact string twice. To put it another way, each individual character is it’s own file, but they all might have a “mouth_001” and so on as part of their mouth layers. With more than one character in a scene at a time, could there be issues if each one has layers named alike? I know Ps doesn’t care if you name multiple layers the same thing, but I want to set these up well now to avoid hassles later.
While I’m at it, I might as well ask if the image sizes I’m setting up are good for what I’m doing. 1920 X 1080 HD to start with, and I tested some images to make sure they could be close up without showing pixels. The average image size in Ps is 2600 X 2400 pixels (4 X 4.5, 600 dpi). A head that nearly fills this frame seems to stand up well to tight close ups in a 1920X1080 comp.
Does any of this sound like I’m setting myself up to learn hard lessons? Any tips would be welcome.
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3 Replies
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Too simple a topic? If this is very basic issue for Ae, does anyone know where it’s covered? I always look in the documentation first, and check online topics, but some things are hard to find unless you know just the right search terms.
I’m also curious if there’s any significant difference between an image with a high dpi or one at 72 at a larger scale. I know Ae ignores dpi and that all video is 72, but an image at 600 dpi behaves more like one at 72 that’s several times larger in dimension.
Is it better to stick with 72 and scale them large enough for the intended use, or is mixing different sizes and matching irrelevant, and the only thing that needs to be addressed is that the image is large enough to work at the scale desired without pixelating? -
Thanks, Dave. I figured as much. I think dpi matters more when scanning, which I do a lot of, that may be why I tend to have these 600 dpi images.
With the layer names I’m trying balance between being organized and keeping things concise. In Flash I’ve had problems with length limits on names (not sure if that still happens in CS4), I wouldn’t be able to preview a scene if it’s name was too long, and too long seemed to be around 10 characters. So I wanted to avoid crowding those fields. Maybe After Effects is designed to handle more text.
Perhaps a better question about image sizes is what is a good practical maximum? This would be for a background image intended to panned across or otherwise used in a way that you only see a part of it at a time. I don’t want to design large, scrolling backgrounds and then find out they’re choking After Effects, but I’d like them to have detail that will stand up.
Not to say everyone’s so careful. Some of the shows Radical Axis does for Adult Swim do reveal their Photoshop nature in close ups. They had a shot that zoomed into a character’s eye, and the last several frames were quite chunky.
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Thanks again.
Good to know I was already pretty well on track, I just didn’t want to work up a few dozen image files only to find out I have to redo them all at a higher resolution.
Isn’t all the help in the Adobe apps only online and not actually in the software? It presents a small problem currently with my Pro. I’ve been having difficulty maintaining an Airport connection with it. I’ve got an iMac that almost never loses the feed, but the Pro spends more time telling me my password is invalid or there was a “connection timeout” than it does online. At the end of my long workdays (just a job,I do all my creative work on my dime), I have to choose between getting a little work done or spending a bunch of time on the phone with Apple care. Of course I can’t summon up help on the iMac because the Apps aren’t in it. I’ll eventually get the Airport sorted out when I get a little time. It is nice not getting distracted by incoming emails and updates while working, though.
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