Print a still image from FCP, tomorrow – Please Help

[Seth Hancock]

If you already know how to do a Freeze Frame/Make Frame from footage then why don’t you just save it out as a .tiff, .png, etc. and open the new file in Photoshop? Then you can crop the image or reduce its overall size and print it straight from there.

Seth

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas A. Edison

[Beau Brotherton]

Don’t have photoshop. There is some way to do it with FCP and the standard programs from apple, but I can’t figure out how. It didn’t feel good when he said that it is a very simple process and I can’t figure it out.

The main thing that I need is to find out how to reduce the size of each still and be able to put them on the same piece of paper. Actually tonight, all I need to do is a Print Preview.

Beau

[Seth Hancock]

Beau,

I have never printed anything from FCP so I can’t tell you how to do it since I just do things like that in PS. However, you can open the .tiff, .png, etc. file in “Preview” and print preview or print from there. Preview ships with your Mac and is a perfect solution. I also believe you can resize/scale/make fit there too.

If you really have to then take your new still from your quicktime conversion and scale it down in FCP and then save it and open it in Preview. I hope that helps.

Seth

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas A. Edison

[Beau Brotherton]

Seth,

Thank you for your response again. I have been trying to print a “layout” or “capture card” whatever you call it when you have multiple pictures on one page. But for some reason I can’t get it to work. All Preview lets me do is view one picture.

I was able to get each image to size that I wanted, put I can’t get all of the pictures onto one page.

Thanks again,

Beau

[Seth Hancock]

Beau,

I have been working in FCP everyday for the last 2.5 years and I have never heard of or experienced something where FCP allows you to put together a “comp card” or act like storyboarding software.

My advice is to go here https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop and download the trial version of PS. Take all your images, arrange them how you like on the sheet of paper and then print. If FCP can act as storyboarding software too then please let me know too because that may come in handy for an upcoming music video I producing in two weeks.

Good Luck.

Seth

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas A. Edison

[Steve Covello]

Export frames, arrange them in MS Word via drag/drop. Works with .png files and pdf and probably others. you can scale the images too.

also works in text Edit and Stickies, though you cannot scale the images. you would have to print down to scale.

If you don’t at least have Ms Word, you got hard times.

steve covello

[Chuck Reti]

[beb850] “aid to select each Frame by using the short cut CTRL-CMND-4.

I could not get this to do anything, nor did I know where it would be headed.”

Shift-CMD-4 (not CTL-CMD-4) will allow you to drag-select whatever is on screen and upon release of the mouse, “snaps” a picture of that and puts it on your desktop. You’d still have to get it into another program to arrange and print.

Since you don’t have Photoshop available, but you do have iPhoto, try this..

Select and export your still frames in FCP. Open iPhoto. Either drag your FCP-made stills into iPhoto’s window, or use CMD-O (letter O not zero) or File>Add to Library to import these stills into iPhoto.
Since client insists on B+W you have to edit individually by using the “adjust” function and zero out Saturation slider for each. PITA but that’s what he wants (If your printer can easily be set for non-color printing do that instead when you get to printing step below).

From the iPhoto window, multi-select a few images, six or eight to try out. Go to File>Print.
From the “Style” pulldown, select “Contact Sheet” and use the slider to select however many images you want on a single 8×10 sheet. Print page, or Preview, to see if that’s what you’re after. You can select a large number of images and iPhoto will print however many pages you need to fill the request. Client should be able to slice and dice to his content.

[Steve Covello]

Good idea.

Don’t forget that you can make a pdf file of a page in the Print dialog of any document – lower left corner of Print window, select first item Save as PDF. Be sure to deselect the Hide Extension box in the Save dialog.

Save all your pdf’s, then get Combine PDF freeware from:

https://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/

make a single multi-page pdf by drag drop, then email it.

steve covello

[Bret Williams]

Thank you! I was going to write that if someone else didn’t. All these pros here and all we can do is suggest photoshop layouts and ms word docs when everyone most likely has iphoto on their machine. BTW the new iPhoto lets you copy and paste filters and settings, so you’d only have to desaturate once and apply that effect to all the photos.

Or, for that matter, when you print, just choose b and w.

Other methods would be to open all the clips in their own preview window (the actual preview app) and shrink them and arrange them on the screen, do a screen shot, and print that.

[Adam Smith]

I’m still too noob at FCP to know if there’s a Print Bin type feature like the Avid, but if you can arrange the clips in a bin with large enough thumbnail images, you could then print that bin to PDF or directly to paper, right?

Or (trial and error required here to get the size right) do something similar with large thumbnails and use Grab or the mac printscreen feature to capture an image of the bin. Certainly not the highest quality means to print, but might get the job done.

-Adam

—
Video Photographer / Avid Editor
Maximus Media Inc.