Resolution of still photo

What size files are best to import still photos into Imovie from Iphoto. I work from raw in Photoshop, import to Iphoto and then Imovie. When I go to play the still photos the images look like ****, as opposed to the images in Iphoto. These photos come from a large file size so why do they look like a pixel puzzle when they are fine in Iphoto slide show?

Welcome to the forum, Stanley.
There are lots of factors that can affect image quality. Including the possibility is that the quality is fine but iMovie doesn't let you see it.
You might find some ideas here:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?128@@.68abff87
Karl

Similar Messages

Acceptable File Size and Resolution for Still Photos in Keyframe Motion

Hello Hello
I know that FCE HD (as other Video Editors), will automatically fit a still photo's size to it's default capability of 720 x 480 Correct?
Well, in regard to making the best possible ZOOMS, and Pans from Still Photos, is it neccessary to re-size all your photos (from an external editor like photoshop), to a specfic size?
According to an older book for FCE, it sez that actually photos re-sized to 720x534 with a resolution of 72 are best. *The proper proportion for NTSC.
And I noticed that when I inserted larger JPG still sizes (like about a meg), on the FCE timline, and when applying Panning, or Zooms, some of the rendered images with motion didn't pan or zoom smoothly.
Is that because those file sizes were TOO large?
Well I have soooo many stills that need to be imported into this particular project that it would be a lot easier for me to just generally reduce these stills (by percentage).
And is the magic resolution amount supposed to be 72?
Because if that's the case I can re-size all my photos to 72, and try to keep the file sizes down to say 300 KB's or so.
Sound like a plan?

Thank you guys
"basically, you should try to make your images large enough so they never have to be scaled beyond 100% in the motion tab in fcp."
Actually as I mentioned some of these file sizes are very large. About 800-900 KB's - and what as a result, what I've noticed is that I actually had to DECREASE the viewing area in both the Browser Window, and the Canvas Winbow just to be able to see the whole image.
Ok - so the 72 DPI is not as important as the dimensions of the photo. But as I said I have soooooo many of these that it would take me forever to manually re-size them all not to mention the fact that re-sizing some of them (odd shapes),would throw the images out of balance.
So again I ask - if there is NO motion applied to the photo, file sizes of about 200 to 350 KB's appear just beautifully ....
BUT
If I need to PAN or ZOOM, is it ok to laod a 1 MEG sized JPG onto the timeline and start working with Keyframe?????
In fact in some cases I'm actually using these larger file JPS's (1 meg or more), so that they TOTALLLY fit the canvas window (cropping them by enlargment)
*With some clipping of the original image of course ...
Why do I do this?
So that you don't see the usual border with horizontal images, or vertical images - know what I mean?
Thanx

Resolution for Still Photos for film

Greetings,
I have a full length Digital Video film and want to add still photos to it. I have been using Photo to Movie software to add a Ken Burns effect to the photo, then exporting it under the movie format- DV(NTSC) 720x480, then importing that to the final cut time line. My question is what is the best resolution in the first place for the still photo before I do this process or is it okay to use the final render size from the Photo to Movie export? Or do you have a better idea.

I would suggest you to check your export preferences but it is my understanding that if you render the movie file, and then export, it you should be able to set the QT option for NTSC DV.

What resolution do still photos have to be to be imported into FCP X

I am using stills in a video. What resolution and what dimensions do they have to be before importing them into FCP X?

SSpatial conform sets how the media is sized when placed in a project. The help files and manual will the explain the details.
Sill till images are not video. They need to be rendered for true video playback. Set playback to best quality rather than better performance.

Acceptable and Quality Still Photo Resolution for HDV Documentary

I've scanned through several pages of posts on photo resolution here, but I haven't actually found a simple answer to a beginner's question. Two, actually:
1. If someone is supplying you with still photo prints for scanning and use in a documentary (shot in HDV, edited on FCP5), is there a particular size print that you should ask for? Does the broadcast venue (theatrical, TV, etc.) have any relevance?
2. If someone is scanning photos and sending you a CD with them, what are the specs (size, resolution, etc.) you should ask for? And are there "minimum acceptable" specs and "preferred, high quality" specs?
Thanks.
Paul S.
Power Mac G5 [email protected]; 4GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.4) FCP 5 (FC Studio), Logic Express, Presonus Firebox

Having worked on several long-form historical docos with hundreds of source photo scans, I'd highly recommend getting the originals in as high a resolution as you can (at least 300 DPI), and getting the entire photo scanned. You just never know when you need to apply pans or zooms or crop into a particular area to improve the edit, and there are many simple ways to prep the selected photos for import.
The simplest is just to do the scaling & cropping in FCP. It will do a fine job of this, but if it turns out most of the photos will be static, you can waste computer resources by importing unnecessarily-large images. As mooblie pointed out, you strictly only need enough resolution to prevent scaling up past 100%, as this will create pixelated lower quality output.
The most common way to prep scans is in Photoshop, where you can scale the image to a desired pixel size very easily. I'd still leave the image at its natural frame size (as scanned), so you have the most creative choice when you are framing it in the timeline using FCPs cropping & motion tabs tools.
If you've got lots of photos and lots of pans & zooms, consider using one of the third-party tools that will help with this, such as Photo to Movie from LQ Graphics, Moving Picture from StageTools, or even the plugin for FCP I wrote to help with the docos I mentioned above. It's called Pan Zoom Pro and you can see about it and download a demo here: http://www.lyric.com/fcp-plugins/index.htm#pzp .
Cheers,
John
Lyric Media

Premier Elements. Rcommendation for still photo resolution/size

I have a Panasonic composite camera. It shoots HVCHD lite. It also takes 16:9 (3968*2232 9Meg) still photos. I wish to produce a composite DVD in Pal format suitable for a wide screen TV. What resolution and size is recommended for the still shots? I am using Windows XP with Powertoy image resizer. Or is it more convenient to use the Oraganizer in Elements to resize the photos? Tony

For my thoughts on still images, you might want to see this THREAD. In your case, you'd substitute my 720x480 PAR 0.9 for your HD Project's framesize. If you need to do any panning on images that will be fully zoomed out, I'd not go any larger than you will need to accomplish this. Some Projects require that I use several different Actions in Photoshop, if I will do much panning on the zoomed out images. Since I do not do any automatic pan/zoom Effects, but create each by hand, as each image is unique, I can tailor the resizing to exactly what I will need. If you let your program do these Effects automatically, then just give a bit more wiggle room and your good to go. Having overly large stills in your Project costs you, both in processing power and also quality - PS's resizing algorithms are better than Premiere's and doing this outside of the NLE is much more efficient.
Good luck,
Hunt

Still Photo Resolution

The resolution of my still photos looks terrible, even though I imported large jpeg files and scaled them down, not up. I'm doing a project that is only stills and audio, no video and the orginals were quite large. They looked horrible in the program panel, but I figured they would look fine on export, but no. I tried exporting my project about six different ways, maximum render, etc.

There was a post on this site a couple of years ago by Jeff Belune (as I recall) that provided a work flow for this. I fiound it to be effective. Most of the people who post here recommend that you do the scaling in Photoshop and then import the *.PSD file. The pixel dimensions W x H must match the scenario preset pixel dimensions (the DPI and/or image dimensions in inches, have no meaning). If your scenario is 1920 x 1080, then that's what the image size needs to be.
I only remember some of the steps Jeff laid out, but, it was to open the image in Photoshop, set the GENERAL preference to best for reduction, Change the image to 16 bit. Make color, exposure changes as desired, use unsharp mask set to 198, 0.6, 2, set the crop tool to your desired pixel dimensions, and crop the image to the desired size, if desired change the mode back to 8 bit, and save the file under a new name (never mess with your original. I created a photoshop action to speed the process.

Does still photo resolution determine maximum movie quality?

I am making a movie combining relatively low quality jpegs and dv footage.
It seems that I read somewhere that if you are going to combine still photos and dv footage that you have to import the video first or else the resolution of the photos will set the maximum resolution of the whole movie. Is this true?
Thanks,
Artlover13060

Artlover,
Never heard that one before, but what do I know? The following may be totally wrong, but I feel like taking a stab at this, so if I'm wrong, I'm sure I will be quickly pounced on. I believe that iMovie sets a maximum resolution on imported photos, your low quality ones will be used as is, I imagine. They have to be converted to a video format anyway. The video clips will be used as is, but sized as 720X480 to fit your TV screen. Am I right folks?
Forest

Resolution of Imported Photos

I've just finished importing a whole ton of old photos from my old PC to my mac, they're sitting on my desktop. When I open them with Preview, they appear at their full resolution, problem free. As soon as I import them into iPhoto, the resolution suddenly drops to about 240x320.
How do I change the settings so that the resolution of these photos will remain as high as they were when taken?

First off, I should correct my error. The resolution is 270x360. Now when I import photos for some reason, they appear to be working at the regular resolution, but I still have a problem: here's what happened.
I ended up playing around with iPhoto (when I first tried to use it) deleting and re-importing photos multiple times to try to learn how to organize them properly. Once I thought I had them organized properly, I deleted the folders containing the files off my PC thinking that I was fine and dandy. iPhoto then refused to open any pictures because it couldn't locate them.
I realized that under preferences ("advanced" pane) the program was not set to copy files into the iPhoto library when they were imported. Even so, I could find all the photos in the library, it's just now they are at reduced resolution. I assume I just retrived the thumbnails from iPhoto and that my photos are gone? Is there a way to retreive them?

Why are still photos blurry when I play movie?

I am making a video slideshow using Adobe Premiere Elements 9. Most of the video is made up still photos. When I playback the video the still photos are blurry. What should I do to prevent this? Thanks!

I read your article Bill, and that just seems like a massive amount of work for the average individual who wants to put together a movie. Is all of that really necessary?
With PS, or PSE, and Scaling Actions, one can do batch processing of entire folders of images in moments. That linked article gives setup tips for doing batch scaling very easily, and the Action, plus Automate to Batch, will work on entire folders. My workstation will automatically process ~ 500 4000x3000 pixel images to 720x480 in about 2 mins.
There are two benefits when Scaling stills in an image processing program, prior to Import into an NLE (Non Linear Editor) program:
The processing overhead is greatly reduced
The quality is greatly improved, as the Scaling algorithms in an image processing program, are much better *
If one wants to let the NLE program do the processing, and one has many large images (especially at still camera resolutions), then they WILL need a very powerful computer.
Good luck,
Hunt
* PrPro, as of CS5, has improved the quality of Scaling, but the overhead issue still exists.

Sequence finished - PAL iDVD - Still Photos Pixelated

I have finished a sequence which contains video and stills taken be digital cameras.
I use iPhotos to sort the photos.
When I look at the output either in FCE canvas or after I burned an iDVD (and watched it thru my PowerBook) the still photos look very pixelated; much worse than the video. So what I am saying is this is not an iDVD issue altho the iDVD slideshow of the same images looked great.
I don't think the choice of PAL on the iDVD was material as the image was pixelated in the FCE canvas. But, in past projects I have ignored pixelation when viewing in FCE Canvas as the image seems to improve once one views the DVD.
I used three methods to import these photos into FCE, drag and drop directly from iPhoto into the FCE Browser pane, create a still image through Still Life and create a still image through iMovie. In both the Still Life and iMovie I did not creat any movement and 'shared' both as dv.
I would be grateful for another solution. Surely people use still images successfully in FCE.
As I am in the US I do not have access to a PAL DVD. I am making this movie up for friends in Australia.

Taking NTSC material to PAL (or vice versa) within Final Cut always looks pretty bad to me in my opinion. You really need a good software standards converter like Graeme Nattress' standards converter to do this correctly.
As far a the still images go, you still haven't said if you're looking at the output on a video monitor. The material is being rendered into an interlaced video format for that type of monitor.
How large are the images? A high resolution image that has to be scaled significantly to fit video resolution and have the pixel aspect altered may have too much detail to be modified and then compressed well in a highly compressed format like DV. You're taking your 1.2MB frame and compressing it down to the equivalent of a 120KB frame. If you start with a frame that fits the right resolution and is the correct pixel aspect Final Cut will have to do less to the image, and you're more likely to get a better result.

Poor quality "still" photo

I'm using Premiere Elements 12. When I'm choose "Tools", "Movie Menu", Then choose from a "Menu Theme", I am given the option of inserting a still photo. However, the quality of the photo in my final product is reproduced with VERY POOR resolution. Is there a solution to this problem? Does Premiere Elements 13 correct this problem?
Joe Nunes
Turlock,CA

britt142012
Thanks for the follow up.
Have we ruled out whether or not the issue exists with and without the antivirus and firewall(s) disabled?
Back to the now....
When did you get the Error 16 - after naming just the SLStore Folder to SLStoreOLD? Or did you do the renaming of both the SLCache as well as SLStore Folders to get the Error 16? You should be able to convert back to the original by deleting the newly created SLStore or SLCache Folders and removing OLD from the renamed ones. Is Error 16 gone then?
After that, try just the renaming of the SLStore Folder again.
Before we give up on renaming SLStore and SLCache Folders, check the permissions for each so that they are set for write/read for Everyone.
Then the classical generic ways....
1. Delete the Adobe Premiere Elements Prefs file and, if that does not work, delete the whole 12.0 Folder in which the Adobe Premiere Elements Prefs file exists.
Local Disk C
Users
Owner
AppData
Roaming
Adobe
Premiere Elements
12.0
and in the 12.0 Folder is the Adobe Premiere Elements Prefs file that you delete. If that does not work, then you delete the whole 12.0 Folder in which the Adobe Premiere Elements Prefs file exists. Be sure to be working with Folder Option Show Hidden Files, Folders, and Drives active so that you can see the complete path cited.
2. If that does not work....
a. uninstall the usual Control Panel way
b. do a free ccleaner run through (regular clearner and registry cleaner parts) to get rid of any leftovers from incomplete uninstalls reinstalls
CCleaner - PC Optimization and Cleaning - Free Download
c. reinstall with antivirus and firewall(s) disabled.
We will be watching for the new developments.
Thank you.
ATR

What resolution should my photos be in Premiere Elements?

Photos make great source files for a Premiere Elements project, but you’ll find the highest quality results and the best performance from the program if the sizes of your photos are properly optimized before you bring them into your project. We urge you to make sure that any photo you use (especially if you use several in a slideshow) has been resized to no larger than 1000x750 pixels before you bring it into your Premiere Elements project to ensure the best quality and optimal program performance. (Photos taken directly from digital cameras can be 20 to 25 times that size!)
At first this may seem to go contrary to common wisdom. Traditionally, the higher the resolution of your photo, the better the quality of the output. But remember that Premiere Elements is a video editing program, and video is a relatively low resolution medium (essentially the equivalent of 640x480 pixels). And, to a point, reducing the resolution of a photo or graphic to be used in a video actually improves the quality of the video output. (1000x750 pixels seems to be that point)
The reason for this has to do with a process called downsampling, the system a video program uses to bring high-resolution photos down to video size. Premiere Elements does a fair job of this – but, as any pro knows, nothing that happens automatically will be as clean or as efficient as what you do manually. “Down-rezzing” is definitely one of these things.
There’s also a more pressing reason for downsampling your photos yourself. The process of “down-rezzing”, like the process of assimilating non-DV-AVI files into a video project, is a very intensive process. So intensive, in fact, that it’s the single biggest reason Premiere Elements fails, particularly during the disc burning process.
It takes a lot longer for the program to down-rez a 4000x3000 pixel photo than it does a 1000x750 pixel photo. Many, many times longer. And would you rather wait an hour or two for the program to transcode your DVD or 10 hours for a process that might end up with the program choking and dying anyway?
Photoshop Elements, by the way, has a very nice batch resizing feature that can resize a whole folder full of photos in just a few clicks. You’ll find it under the program’s File drop-menu, listed as Process Multiple Files.
For high-definition video, you can increase the size of the photos to 2000x1500 -- although you should be aware that this will require much more processing time and computer power than standard definition video.

Rene,
For the ultimate viewing on an HD TV, one is best to do a BD Project and then burn to a BD (Blu-ray Disc). Going to any SD format, like DVD-Video will result in having the material up-rezed to fit. This will work to varying degrees of success, and will depend very heavily on the set-top player's uprezing capabilities, plus on the settings on the TV, as well. There WILL be quality compromises, when viewing and SD Project on an HD player and TV.
Even with HD Projects, one is best to size the still images as closely, as is possible, to the Frame Sizes in that Project's Preset, say to only a bit more than 1920 x 1080, if that is the Preset chosen for the HD (BD) Project. Here's a LINK to the accepted HD formats.
This ARTICLE will give tips on resizing of stills before Import. Now, the sizes listed are SD, but it's easy to "do the math" to get to a BD Project Preset size.
Good luck, and hope that this helps,
Hunt

Is there a way I can control the resolution of the photos I transfer to the iPad?

Is there a way I can control the resolution of the photos I transfer to the New iPad? I just received the new iPad and would like to reduce the size of the resolution of the pictures I am transferring.
I have storage capacity issue and I am only able to transfer about half the number of pictures I had on original Ipad with the same storage capacity. I upgraded to the New Ipad and I am transferring all the pictures I had in the original Ipad. I do not know why they are not all transfering since the New Ipad got full before all the pictutres where transfered. I used Itunes to transfer the pictures I have in Iphoto . I assume this is because the New Ipad has a higher resolution screen and is allowing the pictures to be transfered automatically to the New Ipad at a higher resolution than the original Ipad?
Any thoughts?
Ed

edgodoy wrote:
However, is there a way I can increase the number of pictures I can transfer to the New Ipad using Itunes?
I have a Canon 7D and the picture are large.
Step my step instructions, would be great if it is at all possible.
What you as is difficult without knowing your exact circumstances, i.e. what format pictures are you sending, do you shoot in .jpg or shoot in RAW and convert to .jpg, etc. However, I don't see a way to quickly reduce the size of your image files without reprocessing your files in some manner.
You could export all of the images to be loaded onto your iPad in JPEG format using Lightroom or Aperture and greatly lower the quality setting in the .jpg export. If you do this make sure you export to a new folder. Lowering the quality can have a huge impact on the size of the image files. If this worked it would give you the advantage of still having the largest amount of pixels allowable on the iPad 3. I found that on my iPad 2 I could 'get away' with setting the quality to around 50 without seeing any obvious changes. A higher quality setting may or may not be required on the iPad 3, time will tell and as my iPad 3 is going back I've not taken the time to put more than a few sample (800 or so) images on it. They were exported at a quality setting of 60 and look as well as can be expected considering my defective iPad 3 display.
If you images are already exported at a lower quality setting and are still too large the next step would be to reduce the dimensions of the image. Lightroom has this capability. I don't know about Aperture, but I assume it does.
My normal workflow with my 7D:
Take picture in RAW.
Transfer to Lightroom 4 converting the Canon RAW files to Adobe's DNG format.
Process images in Lightroom. If any need further processing then export to Photoshop and/or Nik plug-ins.
Export processed images that I wish to have on my iPad to my Pictures folder in .jpg format using a quality setting of 60. I do not reduce the dimension of the image as I want the maximum sized images my iPad will allow. As I only transfer a couple of thousand size is not an issue.
Use iTunes to Sync photos to iPad.
As was mentioned by a previous poster you could use Photoshop to bulk process the photos but that requires both Photoshop and a knowledge of creating a bulk action. Not hard, but very confusing if you haven't used both Photoshop and the bulk process before.
There may be other methods that could work for you but I am not aware of them. With the breadth of experience of the members of this forum perhaps someone else could chime in with suggestions.

Still Photo Size

Just transitioning to FCPX from FCP Express.
I am getting ready to put together a "slide show" consisting of only still photos in FCPX. It will be projected on a 10' screen with a Sanyo PLC-XU110 projector, NTSC SD, interlaced. I am planning on preparing all of the photos in Photoshop.
I'm assuming I should use 640x480 as the size for the "slides", or does it matter as long as I use 4:3 aspect ratio? Does FCPX scale them?
Also, does ppi matter when it comes to FCPX? Does it have to be standard screen resolution of 72ppi? If so, what happens when you zoom-in or use Ken Burns? Does it pixellate? I'm kind of freaked about projecting this from a DVD player onto a 10' screen. Any help from a person experienced in this will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

I'm assuming you mean irrelevant?
If that's the case, no response necessary.
Thank you.

Resolution of still photo

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