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MillimeterPhotoshop for Video Editors
Mar 26, 2004 12:00 PM, By Stephen Porter
Richard Harrington |
Expand your ability to take full advantage of this ubiquitous but underused tool
Although almost every video editor owns a copy of Adobe Photoshop, many are not as efficient with the program as they could be.
To some extent, that's because Photoshop is a deep program that takes a long time to learn, explains Richard Harrington, Program Manager for the NAB Post|Production World Conference. Beyond that, however, is the fact that Photoshop's video capabilities simply aren't well documented. "If you open up a Photoshop manual and look up the word video, it appears only three times, and only one of those is actually in reference to video," says Harrington. "There's nothing in the Photoshop manual about using the software with Premiere or After Effects."
Despite that oversight, Photoshop remains an important tool for video professionals, and to help video pros further develop their Photoshop skills, Harrington is serving as Technical Chair for a conference track entitled "Photoshop for Nonlinear Editors." The track includes nine Photoshop-related sessions that will run over the course of three days, starting Sunday, April 18.
 Richard Harrington |
Harrington says attendees might find the Photoshop sessions particularly useful this year, given all the new video-related features Adobe included in the latest version of the program, Photoshop CS, which began shipping in November. For instance, the new version supports non-square pixels, enabling video editors to create images using preset, video-standard sizes, including automatic action-safe and title-safe guides, and to view those images as they would appear on their destination devices.
"It's really a whole new Photoshop," says Harrington.
One session Harrington feels will be especially important to users is "500%: the Power to Automate Using Actions, Automation, and Scripts." Scheduled for 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 18, the session will focus on Photoshop's tools for speeding up workflow.
"Video editing is very repetitive," says Harrington. "Little tasks can take up your time. For example, oftentimes you'll have a bunch of pictures that you need to resize for a video, or you'll have to do a common color correction on an entire roll of pictures. In this session, we'll be looking at some of the new efficiency features that let you do things like take entire folders of images and set them up to be processed."
Another session that's one of Harrington's favorites is "Photoshop for Documentaries," scheduled for 3:00 p.m. on Monday, April 19. A key part of this session, says Harrington, will be a discussion on how to take static photos and add motion to them.
"It's a great way to turn out an exciting video, even when your client hasn't given you much to work with," says Harrington. "You can take what essentially would be a slide show and add movement and life to it."
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