to process large tiffs through photoshop first, or not to process?

Hi there Compadres-

About to start a stills-heavy job today. I had them scan their images at 300dpi, and save as tiffs. The images are color photographs, and also articles from magazines and newspapers. The articles almost all include text and images, but a few are text-heavy.

I will be on FCP Universal (not there yet so not certain the version number - poss 5.1.2?) on a zippy intel mac.

In the past, on older systems, before importing them into FCP, I have run stills through photoshop to crop and to resize them, ( and occasionally to put a little gaussian blur on the text images...).

With FCP as muscular as it is in Universal on an Intel, do I still need to do that? Or can I just import the large tiffs in and deal with them right in Motion without negative rerpercussions?

My concerns are speed, and also appearance...and of course anything else that I am not aware of but that applies to this particular sitch...

Any of your bits of experience, comments, or amusing anecdotes are always welcome,

Thanks,

Marla-in-NY

Speed is always affected by larger image sizes. The larger sizes give you more options as to motion before the images begin to fall apart. It's a tradeoff.

Try a couple and see if it's something you can live with.

bob rice
frameworx media

Yeah, thanks. I did bring them in large and this fast machine is handling them OK, but I haven't put my effects on them yet... They are going to get pretty effectsy...

Plus which the text heavy ones could use a little gaussian blurring, but maybe the blur in FCP will have the same effect (taking the vibration off the text) as the one in Photo Shop... I'll do a couple more tests.

Thanks for your feedback Bob,

Marla

Marla, try the Deflickerator action in Photoshop. It's available from several places free, just Google it. It does some interesting things to a still image (text) to make it flicker less when applying motion or scaling in FCP.

Scott

Interesting! Will do. been using gaussian blurs for that, but there's a fine line between not flickering and too blurry!

So the Deflickerator is a separate plug in that goes with PS?

Marla

Yes it's a plugin. I would recommend prepping your tiffs before they come into FCP though - make them a more suitable size and avoid the possible problems later. Up to two times the size of your FCP canvas is a pretty safe bet. Also, make sure they are RGB. CMYK and greyscale make FCP unhappy.

It's an "action" that carries several steps to accomplish this, not a plug-in in the strict sense. It has extension ".atn", and you just double click it and it automatically installs into PS as an action. Find it in your Action menu, and just "play" it on the image file that is currently open.

I think I got mine from Adobe Evangelists but I can't find it on the site right now. If you can't find it anywhere, I can email it to you.

Scott

Oh that'd be great, I have been scanning every entry on my google search and it's all commentary, no downloads. is it a large file?

If you have trouble emailing it to my yahoo, try my gmail (mitchnickpictures@gmail.com),

Thanks!

Marla

No, it's tiny. It's on its way to Yahoo as we speak.

Yeah, I saw the same thing with Google, and many of those commentaries were mine!

Scott

T'anks again!

Marla-about to stumble home...

[I had them scan their images at 300dpi, and save as tiffs. The images are color photographs, and also articles from magazines and newspapers. The articles almost all include text and images, but a few are text-heavy.]

What everyone else has said (that PS action sounds interesting) but just to note, because your photos are varied size, your creative range will be varied. Scanning 300 dpi on a 4" wide photo allows you to magnify about 2X; 300dpi on an 8" wide text section gives you more than 4X before softening.

If available, use the scanner's Descreen function to save time when scanning halftones form newspapers and magazines. Canon's driver does this pretty well.

Remember, you need enough data to fill the video frame (a virtual 10-inch wide space) and then enough to enlarge the image (zooming in)! Blanket scanning doesn't always fill the bill.

Intelligent photo scanning:
www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_scanpro.html

- Loren
Today's FCP 4 / 5 keytip:
Do a virtual Audio Mixdown to lighten playback load with Command-Option-R!

The FCP KeyGuide?: your power placemat.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

So Loren, are you implying that on small photos it's better to scan at a higher dpi? And what IS the Descreen funcction? What does it do?


Thanks,

Marla

Jude-

When you wrote "Up to two times the size of your FCP canvas," did you mean my pixel size (ie 720 X 486?" The video that I have in this piece is that size, 8-bit uncompressed, though there is not very much of it and it all came from icky sources (ie VHS and various types of MPG files on DVD)...

Marla

Marla

You should read Loren's excellent article here. Save you lots of headaches
Everyone should read this. And then get the Scan Guide.

[www.lafcpug.org]

Michael Horton
-------------------

Hi again Scott-

OK, I have loaded it into PS, but there are many possible things to check off beneath the Deflickerator_4 folder. They are all defaulted to the checked position, on the first row of boxes (toggle item on/off) but the second row (toggle dialog box on/off) is all un-checked.

Also, the play selection, and the other buttons (stop play/recording, begin recording, etc) are all giving me "Just Say No" signs.

I am pretty new to PS, and inexperienced w/ actions, so any clear how-to instructions you may have are very welcome.

Also, on the RGB vs. CYM front, the color window above the actions window says RGB, but in the navigator window up top, in info, there are color scales of both types. How do I know that I am in RGB?

Thanks!

Marla

Hi Mike-

Thanks, I will read it pronto. Where is it? In tutorials?

Marla

You need coffee Marla. The link was in my last post.

Here it is again:

[www.lafcpug.org]

Michael Horton
-------------------

Maybe that's my problem! I don't drink the stuff. Actually I went to the home page, looked in features, tutorials, and training, and even did a search under her name, but somehow it eluded me. Perhaps I was rushing...

Seeing that I am caffeine-compromised, perhaps you could point me to the correct part of the site for Loren's article...

On the other hand, if you need a break from this thread, I understand.

Marla

The link is in Mikes post only it looks truncated but it does go directly to Lorens article.

but just click here

http://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_scanpro.html

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

And Loren's a guy. We got to get Marla some drugs fellows. The good ones.

Any blue link you see in the posts is clickable. Links do get truncated in this forum, meaning all you see is the www.somenamehere.com part of it, but if you click on it, it takes you where you need to go. The link also appears in the email reply. If you are not getting email replies then yo need to go to My Control Center and set up your account for that option. Keeps you from having to come back here and look for your thread to see if anyone replied or not.

I suspect you are not getting email replies.

Go to My Control Center >Forum settings

next to "Enable email-notification as default:" change the button to YES. Click Submit.

Michael Horton
-------------------

If Marla doesn't do coffee I can only reccomend something like this.

Link1
or
Link2
or
Link 3

If that don't work for you, you're broken.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Oops, Doh, Doy-eee-oh, etc. I clicked not, but foolishly pasted into a new window... Hmm. Drugs...

Sorry Loren (about my gender assumption)...

Just read the article, GREAT STUFF!!! Too bad I didn't read it before though - on this project the scans were all done by an office person, and I had to give them a basic overall setting... foolish. Clearly, doing them myself and dealing with each typeof source image on a case by case would be far preferable... with that handy dandy scan guide of course. I sure wish I had at least told them about that anti-fuzzies setting! Too late for regrets, I have to just make the best of it.

They scanned them all at 300dpi, and most of the files are in the 3300 pixel range, and under 25MB in size. I have some huge blow ups, but for others, smaller file sizes will be fine. I just can't seem to get that Deflickerator to work, and the old Gaussian Blur is not doing the trick. Slight improvement, but not enough.

Do you think it's truly necessary to downsize most of them to 1440 or therabouts? I am on an intel mac w/ v 5.1.2...

Anyway, time to get back to the slog, appreciate all your help. BTW, the teasing is good for me Mike - I was raised an only child and I ordinarily have a rough time with teasing, but I have been trying to get better at being on the recieving end of it in general - and I am always so grateful for the help that comes through this grapevine that a little teasing just makes me laugh at myself... not such a bad activity, really,

Marla

Andrew-

those links are torturous!

M

You put a whole bunch of those really large files into FCP, chances are it will choke it. Stills suck the life out of the processor for some reason I don't understand. Might work out but you sure don't need files this big.

As for teasing, look for the little smiley thingy in posts and never take what I say seriously. Or Koz for that matter too.



Michael Horton
-------------------

Yes, smiley thingy was duly noted, it's sort of a lightness button.

I'm just going to reduce them all to 1440, put a small Gaussian blur on them, and deal with the Deflickerator later if I can figure out how to work it...


Thanks again,

Marla

Quote
Marla, in the throes of coffee famine, said:
OK, I have loaded it into PS, but there are many possible things to check off beneath the Deflickerator_4 folder. They are all defaulted to the checked position, on the first row of boxes (toggle item on/off) but the second row (toggle dialog box on/off) is all un-checked.

Also, the play selection, and the other buttons (stop play/recording, begin recording, etc) are all giving me "Just Say No" signs.

I don't remember what the second row of check boxes is for, but it's OK for them to be blank (but all of the first row should be "on". Go down one level in Defilckerator 4 (twirl the triangle), and you'll see another Deflickerator 4, with all the specific actions below it. Click on that second Deflickerator 4 and you'll find that the play button works now.

It doesn't do much that is visible as it works, but it does make some nice subtle adjustments to the image to reduce the tendency fo fine detail to flicker. You can step through the action to see exactly what it is doing. Not anything I would have ever figured out .

Scott

Hi Scott-

Thank you so much for getting back on this. Just got some help from a more knowledgable PS person, about the basics of the action function.

Apparently that second row gives you dialog boxes as it's applying, to make choices from (if you so desire).

Sadly, the deflickerator did not appear to change my image at all. Perhaps subtle is truly the operative word! I probably need to check it on various images, though this one had text as well as a photo, it was scanned from a magazine...

And yes, I did check it inside FCP, not just in PS!

Coffee or no coffee, there are at least a couple brain cells left in there. Oh well, I am going to stop fussing and get cutting,

Thanks everyone,

Marla

...Now that I have been playing multiple shots w/ it, I can see the difference. it is an improvement, for sure,

best,

Marla