Back to some FCP tips now on Drempt.

I’m working on a video where there are a ton of still photos I need to add. In my research, I found great sites with really helpful posts that break down the science of pixels, formats, and Adobe color vs. Apple color.

Larry Jordan, FCP Master, so eloquently describes

“that images on our computer are not the same as images we see in video. They differ in color space, color sampling, gray scale, bit depth, and, worst of all, the aspect ratio of their respective pixels.”

He provides images showing the dreaded stretched-out Phtoshop image in your FCP canvas and supplies a helpful chart for how to size our desired image, so you never get that stretched effect..

In this other Larry Jordan article, he helps us out by providing a chart of image sizes when your working with non-transparent images. He is covering all of our bases! And  if you want to read more about the sciences of Photoshop color vs. Apple color, check out this article and get schooled. It goes into detail about fixed resolution, interlacing, color, and video gamma.

FCP Daily had a post on the how’s and why’s of sizing your stills to save on render times. When working in Photoshop, you’ll want to save your files as JPG, PICT, PNG, or TIFF. And before you do that, you’ll want your image to be 8-bit channel and switch to RGB color!

While using Photoshop, this Genius DV article shares how to size and save your layers before opening the files in Final Cut. There’s a helpful picture tutorial walking you through the steps in Photoshop.

That really helped clear things up for me, hope it helps you too! If I missed some tips that you want to share, leave a comment!

~Arielle