Making logos for i movie 09

Creating logosfor iMovie 09

This isn’t an official iMovie function, but it does helpleverage existing Photoshop skills in learners for use in video.

www.digitalroadtrip.org

Saturday, 19 June 2010

http://www.digitalroadtrip.org


Both Photoshop CS and Elements have a video template under the menu file>new option. But to ensure you have the exact pixel dimensions of your iMovie Project, you can “right click” on a clip to create a freeze frame as a template.





You can reveal the freeze frame in the finder by ctrl/click or right clicking on the still image. (You can delete the image from the project later).





Again right click on the freeze frame in the finder to force it to open in your image editor of choice.





Just out of interest by going to Photoshop’s Image menu you can check the pixel dimensions of the freeze frame taken from iMovie - in this case it is 960x540.





Select the image by the Cmd/A short cut. Then use File>New>from clipboard Ensure that “background contents” is set for “transparent.” This will create a new empty document for our logo design.





Create your design in Photoshop - have fun with layers.Any text layers need to be simplified (elements) rasterised in Photoshop CS. I’ve been restrained here !





Merge your layers- it is crucial that your background remains transparent.





Merge down layers (as opposed to flatten) so that you are left with one layer but with the transparency intact.





Save as PNG.





Drag and drop your logo from the finder to the project.Make sure you have the “advanced settings” on in the iMovie preferences. A drop down menu will appear. Choose Cutaway.





You can fade the cutaway in. In this example, I’ve reduced the the size of logo in Photoshop and placed it bottom left of the template before saving as a PNG.





Jagged edges can occur with complex image outlines. A small amount of blur can be helpful in terms of smoothing the outline.





A note about Final Cut Pro/Express

this kind of work can be extended in FCE/Pro

whole .PSD files with layers can be imported

the file appears as a nested track with each layer intact

each video track can then be animated and effects applied offering a whole new way of working with time based Photoshop layers.


julian coultas

digitalroadtrip.org

+44 7970323255


Making logos for i movie 09

Education

freeze frame

imovie project

text layers

photoshops image menu

photoshop cs

time basedphotoshop

complex image outlines

image editor of choice