[Keith Carmichael]

Yeah, that’s annoying.

You know FCP has a whole host of widescreen mattes in the video filters category, right?

Effects>Video Filters>Matte>Widescreen. You can select different dimensions once you apply the filters.

But if you need an odd size or something, here are steps:

-Create a new photoshop document that’s the SIZE OF YOUR FCP SEQUENCE
——photoshop has presets for most frame sizes under Preset>Film and Video
——choose background contents “transparent”
-Edit>Fill the background with black
-View>clear guides to clear the title safe guides that are there
-View>New Guide to make two horizontal guidelines for the boundaries of your letterbox
-Make sure View>Snap is checked
-Use the marquee tool (top tool, or press M) to select the area between the guidelines and go to edit>clear.

The picture area should now be gray checkerboard, indicating transparency. If the picture area is white, it just means you chose a white background when you created your document. You have to go to Layer>New>Layer from Background and try the operation again.

Then save as PNG and throw it into FCP. You could make a black and white image and use it as a matte but… why bother. This way’s fine.

[Keith Carmichael]

Did you ever get an answer to this question? I’m trying to do the same thing.

[Keith Carmichael]

Do you have anti-aliasing set to “none” in the lower right-hand corner of the character window?

[Keith Carmichael]

I just tried this to see if *I* was missing anything….

The “refine edge” button opens a window that allows you to control different aspects of your selection. When you alter the sliders, your selection should look different. (Though it might be hard to tell on the canvass, since the dotted line doesn’t communicate much about fuzziness.) You should be able to open and close the “refine edge” dialogue as many times as you want, and find the sliders exactly where you left them.

Does that make sense? It’s not like a filter you apply “once” or “twice.” It’s a set of variables you have access to for as long as the area is selected. If it’s working differently on your computer (like you only get one chance to refine the edge) then you have a problem.

[Keith Carmichael]

You can use literally any selection tool to define the shape of your vignette.
The lasso tool allows you to select freehand and the polygonal lasso lets you make polygons. You can also use any color-selective method to select an area that’s the same shape as something else in the frame… you get the idea.

Since you plan to feather the selection, drawing it freehand with the lasso tool is probably fine, but if you want more precise curves you should use the pen tool and then convert your path to a selection.

[Keith Carmichael]

Hi thanks so much! So that took care of the small image problem. The whole thing takes a while to load, but hopefully she can get her file sizes down….

Can I ask you something, though? How would you do this, if you were me? Because it’s really nice to have the liquid width, but on the other hand, the tall photos are really annoying when they extend way past the window. Also–liquid width doesn’t seem to be working so well. But you know what I mean? It looks kinda funny when you resize the window.

Thaaanks!

[Keith Carmichael]

Well, that doesn’t work–usually samples represent an arbitrary area, an not a single “unit” of the repeated pattern–even if you can suss out the pattern, the lighting on the edges rarely matches. You need the freedom of different layers to blend them seamlessly. This is especially true if the texture represents anything organic–sand, leaves, whatever.

The more I experiment, I think there’s no way I can bend auto-align to my diabolical purposes, and I am left to use hand alignment as before.

Thanks,
Emily

[Keith Carmichael]

Russell, the simple answer is this:

Go to Image Size.

Look where it says “Width:” under “Pixel Dimensions” (the very first number field in the dialogue box.) This shows how many pixels wide your image is. Remember this number.

Make sure “constrain proportions” is selected.

Where it says “Resolution: 300 [pixels/inch]” erase the 300 and type 72.

You will notice the top of the dialogue box says something like “Pixel dimensions: 38 KB (was 1.4 MB).” This is because Photoshop is planning to throw away extra pixel information to match the smaller print resolution, which is not what you want.

You will also notice that that under Pixel Dimensions the Width and Height have changed.

Just erase the new Width, and type the very first Width you saw in the box.

Now the top should say “Pixel Dimensions: 1.4 MB” –the exact same file size it was when you opened it. It does not matter if “resample image” is checked or not, as the image is not being resized.
_____

So you haven’t changed the file at all, just the metadata that says what size to print the image. Some applications do read this metadata so it can be important, (for example when importing PNGs into Flash–for some crazy reason) but most do not.