File options

What is your advice? When saving a still in FCP5 after exporting and going into Options, which is the best format to save to send the image into Photoshop, Photoshop or .psd or .Tiff?

Are .psd and Photoshop the same? (Actually, you don't get the .psd option unless you go into Preview where it is an additional choice to Photoshop.)

PSD is Photoshop's internal file format. It internally carries all the oddball stuff you did to the picture; layers, overlays, texts, alpha, etc. etc, and someone will correct me, it's in Lab format, not conventional RGB or Yuv. It's uncompressed--or compressed in a way that contributes no damage.

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a cross-platform standard uncompressed file format. We use that all the time. You can use LZW (Lempel Ziv Welch) compression with TIFF because LZW does not damage the picture--at all.

This is a close race. Ifyou have an application that speaks Photoshop, use PSD. If not, use TIFF.

TGA (Targa) is another uncompressed format that is widely accepted.

I think the story behind LZW is a scream. Lempel and Ziv developed a lot of compression technologies that didn't particularly work well together. Welch was the one who served coffee and told them that unless they got along, well and correctly, he was going to break all their fingers one at a time.

Koz

Thanks. Just to clarify: When I go to Export and go into the required "Quicktime Conversion" I am compressing am I not? So there is really no way to avoid some compression of a still from FCP. Also, I can't see much change when I use the de-interlace filter-on my computer monitor. Would I see more if I had an NTSC monitor? I try to use timeline images where there is not much motion to avoid interlacing as much as possible. That also may be why I am not seeing much difference between the before and after de-interlace?

<<<I am compressing am I not?>>>

You're converting.

White in video is 235, white in a still is 255. Black data is different. Video uses color difference signals, stills use straight colors, etc. etc. Lots of differences. If you pick one of the good still file formats, the converstion damage is all that happens. If you pick a compressed format, like JPEG, then there is compression damage on top of everything else--even with the Quality sliders all the way up.

Oh, and then there's the Mac gamma thing on top of all that.

Pick a format that doesn't have Quality sliders in the export dialog (again, LZW doesn't count).

Oh, one more. Circles in video (720x480) aren't really round. Video players just make them look that way. Circles in stills (640x480) really are round on a computer monitor, so that's one more conversion.

Koz