Preparing photos for FCP

[Richard Harrington]

I would suggest you watch the Cow’s Photoshop for Video podcast and book up the book of the same name,

Richard M. Harrington, PMP

Author: From Still to Motion, Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and Motion Graphics with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Studio Techniques

[Zeke Meginsky]

Thanks. Which one of your videos goes into that?

[Zeke Meginsky]

Okay, I might just buy your book even though it’s a little pricey..

[Scott Roberts]

In Photoshop, I’d keep my images larger than your project size in FCP so you can zoom in / out without running out of image. For instance, if your project in FCP is 720p, make your Photoshop images 1400px x 788px (size depends on how much you’re going to move these images). You might even go larger just so you know you have enough image to slide around with. If you’re going to broadcast with this, use the NTSC Safe filter in Photoshop (Filter, Video, NTSC Colors). And, I would save them as a 24 bit Targa out of Photoshop.

LittleBlackBird.net

GraphicsDump.com

[Richard Harrington]

First, I make about $3 when you buy a book. Between retailers cut, shipping, paper, etc.

Second, it should be priced less than 1 hour of your time. You will get that back in spades.

If you can invest thousands into software, you should be willing to spend a few hundred dollars a year on training. The book is on its fourth edition for a reasons….. it is practical information that helps people

I didn’t write it to get rich… I write it to get the information out to the public in a coherent and structured form that helped people. You’ll get a lot more out of the COW once you have a strong base to build on.

Good luck

Richard M. Harrington, PMP

Author: From Still to Motion, Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and Motion Graphics with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Studio Techniques

[Zeke Meginsky]

I can’t invest thousands of dollars into software, haha. I use a public editing studio.

But I bought it, got it in the mail yesterday.

[Zeke Meginsky]

Why do you suggest the size 1400 x 788? Where do you get that number?

Shouldn’t the aspect ratio be a multiple of 720 x 480, if I’m trying to do zooming and keep it looking proportionate for NTSC DV?

[Zeke Meginsky]

Hi, Richard. Your book has been helpful so far. I read the whole section you have about resizing images.

My goal here is to make the image NTSC DV-friendly, but still fully retain the detail of the image. So I’m most concerned with keeping the dimensions as big as possible. Is the best option to do this is creating a new document with the film/video preset, and then “File, Placing” the image onto the canvas and clicking commit? If this is the best way, before I do commit, is there any way to automatically size the image so you fully see it on the canvas? I don’t want to lose any part of it..

[Richard Harrington]

Photos have different aspect ratio. You have to scale image. Alt shift drag. No way to see all and fill frame. It’s one or other. Otherwise distortion

Richard M. Harrington, PMP

Author: From Still to Motion, Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and Motion Graphics with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Studio Techniques

[Zeke Meginsky]

But the point is to have Photoshop “distort” it a little so it looks normal in Final Cut Pro. Still do not understand how to make that happen while still retaining as much as the high quality image.

For example, I wouldn’t want to make the image 720 x 480 because then I’d lose a lot of detail in case I wanted to do some zooming in. So would I resize it to a multiple of those numbers?