The Question Was ...
How do I "batch prepare" digital pictures to be imported into Adobe
Premiere?
I paraphrased a bit, but these posts are pretty much word-for-word.
Stephen Gerard posted this gem on the Adobe
Premiere forum. It was in a response to a question by
Jim Short.
Photoshop (6.0 or higher? Not the LE that comes with Premiere) has an
Actions tab right next to the History tab in the same window.
The Actions function tab lets you apply a series of recorded actions to a
file with one mouse click. Use the Actions function to Record the actions you
apply to an image in Photoshop. Then you can either open each file and click the
action button you created, or use the File>Automate>Batch to to your apply
action to the entire folder of files.
Jim Short then
responded to that message with this:
...I can add the following details for how I used Photoshop to batch
process photos for use in Premiere 6 projects:
Note that the Actions Pallet and Droplet features in Photoshop can do a lot.
However, what I’m sharing here is a process – NOT a full tutorial on how these
functions work in Photoshop!
First, prepare the following Actions Palet “macros”:
A. Prepare Landscape images:
1. Set background color in Photoshop to solid black
2. Set canvas size to
5 percent larger than image size – this helps to reduce NTSC overscan cropping
of images when the final project is displayed on a TV (1600x1200 to 1680x1260
for my camera)
3. Set image size to 720x534 (or some 1.333 [4:3] ratio
combination)
4. Save the file to a new directory (I use e:\out) as a .BMP
file with Windows format and 24 bit color).
B. Prepare Portrait images:
1. Set background color in Photoshop to solid black
2. Rotate image 90
degrees (so it looks upright)
3. Set canvas size to 5 percent larger than
image size and add width for proper portrait to landscape conversion (1200x1600
to 2240x1680 for my camera)
4. Set image size to 720x534 (or some 1.333 [4:3]
ratio combination)
5. Save the file to a new directory (I use e:\out) as a
.BMP file with Windows format and 24 bit color).
C. Create Droplets
(little executable files that can be dropped on your desktop) for the two
actions “macros” created in above steps. I named mine LANDSCAPE and PORTRAIT.
Then, you can use the following steps to automatically prepare entire folders
of files into Premiere compliant files:
1. Separate landscape and portrait oriented images into separate folders
2. Drag the landscape folder onto the LANDSCAPE droplet.
3. Drag the
portrait folder onto the PORTRAIT droplet.
You’re done!
The resulting .BMP files can now be imported into Premiere. I like to use the
Storyboard feature to finalize the order (and delete unwanted photos) and then
the Automate to Timeline feature to load the timeline using a default transition
(such as cross-fade).
I hope you get some use out of this. I know I will. Let me know if
it helps you. - Steven |