[Anders Larsen]

The size in pixels depends on where your final product goes.
8.5×11 are the proportions, so you simply have to make sure that your:
“width in pixels”/8.5*11=”height in pixels”
..or the other way around.

If, for instance, you end end delivery goes on a vertically mounted 1080p screen then Stephens suggestion would be too small (no offence, Stephen) then you would need 1080/8.5*11=1398 to fill as much of the screen as possible.

If you have Photoshop, you can use the “Image size” dialog to do the math, just make a new 8.5×11 document, go to image size and make sure Constrain Proportions and Resample Image are checked and then change the number in one of the two top boxes.

[Anders Larsen]

An important concept to know here is the order of operations.
I’m sure you can find lots of good explanations online, but in short here is what might have happened in your case.

The text you are using is from Photoshop has been rasterized in order to bring it in to motion. This means it no longer resolution-independent vector, but a bitmap like nay other image.

When you import a large image, Motions default behavior is to scale that image to fit the canvas. So when you dolly in on this scaled down image you are essentially moving your camera closer to an image, that is the size of you canvas, causing it to look pixelated.

Say for instance you have a 1000x1000px image that you bring into a 100x100px canvas. The image will then be scaled down to 10% thereby throwing away 9 out of 10 pixels. If you dolly in on that to the point where it would have been at 100% resolution, you now see 10x10px squares.

The way around it is to set the scale of your images to 100% and then move the camera back to where the framing is right, and then you can dolly in on it from there.

I hope that made sense, otherwise I’m sure it contains enough keywords for you to find a more eloquent explanation elsewhere.

[Anders Larsen]

Since it’s only 70 images it should be fairly easy to go back and crop them in Aperture.

[Anders Larsen]

If you are using all vector graphics, you can get quite a large image out of motion. Should be plenty big for most print purposes. If there are bitmap images in your design, their size will be the limiting factor.

What you should do is make you canvas size as large as Motion will (depends on you graphics card), then scale up your logo to fill the canvas.
Now select share>save current frame.
In the dialog that comes up choose tiff or psd, and remember to export color+alpha.

You should now have a nice, high resolution image.

Pro tip: if you want to do more elaborate adjustments to the image in Photoshop, you can export the different groups in your motion composition as individual images (simply by turning groups on and of and exporting) and then bring them into Photoshop as layers.

[Anders Larsen]

Wow! I’m quoted on Mark Spencer’s blog.
I feel like a minor celebrity now 🙂

[Anders Larsen]

Awww man! A Danish keyboard doesn’t have [bracket]-keys.

So for the hordes of Danish Motion users out there who use kerning all the time, here is a work-around:
– System Preferences -> Languages & Text -> Input Sources
– Make sure U.S. Extended is checked
– Click the Keyboard Shortcuts button and select Keyboard & Text Input
– Assign a shortcut to “Select next source in input menu” (at the bottom of the list)

You can now toggle between DK and US keyboard layouts and use the bracket key shortcuts for kerning. The Bracket keys are “å” and “^” (between “p” and the return key)

Probably quite similar for the other Scandinavian countries.

[Anders Larsen]

Noooooo!
Why would they do such a thing?!

Thanks for the quick reply, though.

[Anders Larsen]

Hi Steve

I might be able to help.
Feel free to drop me a line at
skrivtil@nderslarsen.dk

Cheers,
Anders

[Anders Larsen]

Try to open and re-save the images.
If had weird things happen with images (mostly .png) delivered to me before. Opening them in Photoshop and saving them again has almost always fixed it.

[Anders Larsen]

“Send to Compressor” never really worked for me before Motion 5.
In my experience as soon as you had a little bit of complexity in you motion project, something would go wrong when sending to Compressor without exporting first.
That has all changed with Motion 5. Now I can send my project to Compressor, and then keep working in Motion while it renders. Well worth the $50 if you ask me.