Preparing Photoshop Images for Digital Video

There are a variety of tools for working with files from video, and Adobe has placed a couple of these tools in the Filter menu. They are the De- Interlace and NTSC Colors filters located under Filter ’ Video.

Using the De-Interlace Filter

When working with video, it is important to prepare your files so that they are compatible with the environment that they are going in. Let s say that you really liked a particular frame from previous video footage and you would like to use it for the background of your current project. Photoshop can prepare a still image from interlaced frames to look as if it were originally a noninterlaced image, to give the background a much cleaner look. Let s start with a digital video image exported to a single JPEG file as shown in Figure 27.6. Notice that you can see the horizontal fields used to create this image; however, your goal is to fill in the empty lines so that the image looks as if it were noninterlaced.

Figure 27.6: The image before De-interlacing

To do this, choose Filter ’ Video ’ De-Interlace. A dialog box appears with options to duplicate or interpolate the fields, as shown in Figure 27.7. It also gives you the choice to work with the even or odd fields. Selecting either one simply will shift the image up or down by a negligible percentage.

Figure 27.7: The Filter ’ Video ’ De-Interlace dialog box

Click the Interpolation radio button to have Photoshop add more pixels around each pixel until the missing gaps are filled in, or click Duplication to have Photoshop duplicate existing information to fill in the gaps. The interpolated version gives smoother results, as shown in Figure 27.8.

Figure 27.8: The image after De-interlacing

Using the NTSC Colors Filter

After you have improved the look of your background image, you should consider altering its colors to be more compatible with video. Colors that can be seen in NTSC formats are more limited than those that your computer screen has the capability to display. Just as there are gamut differences between monitors and print devices, so there are differences between what your monitor and what the television can display. To facilitate this process, Photoshop has a filter called NTSC Colors. You can access it by choosing Filter ’ Video ’ NTSC Colors (see Figure 27.9).

Figure 27.9: Choosing the NTSC Colors filter

Once applied, the colors in your image are changed to be more compatible with the way that video and television will display color. If you pay close attention to the highlight areas of the image, you will see a slight color shift. On the computer monitor this might be a slight disappointment; however, the loss of color and detail will not be perceptible on a television screen.

Note  

To some extent, the NTSC Colors filter is a legacy tool. With the Convert To Profile command, you can choose NTSC (1953), PAL/SECAM, or SMPTE-C ICC profiles for the conversion.