Stills from FCPX are high contrast with crushed blacks?

Thank you Clint,

Cool. Makes perfect sense. Don't have Lightroom. I have Apple Photos, wonder if that might work? Or Affinity Photo ... which should work: I'll have to do some Googling.

I'll see what I can do with Apple, or Affinity ... and report back.

Fantabulous Ian. Good idea. I used to use Resolve (to colour grade), till I fell in love with FCPX.

The nice thing about working with the timeline is one can isolate the still one wants much quicker, slipping back and forth to find it. In Quicktime the scale is too big, so one actually has to play the movie to get close, then frame back and forth (clumsier).

Will try Resolve today. Thank you for that ...

Ben

Darn Tootn', I'll look it up and try it Tom. I've been using Topaz Photo AI, which does some pretty interesting things, the strong point being faces.

Going to check out Photo Zoom Pro 9. Will report back ...

B

Good point Clint. Though exporting them directly from Quicktime through Preview is a 3 click process. And exporting them from FCPX is about a 6-7 click process. And exporting them old-style from FCPX is still a 2-3 click process ... plus then bringing everything into Lightroom and batch exporting everything out ... at least 3 click process.

I'm adding up clicks here. Seems both processes are about equal. And the reality of filmmaking: lots of clicks regardless. I love shooting a film. Click, the camera is on, click, the camera is off: 2-click process. Editing, on the other hand ... a gazillion clicks no matter how one approaches it.

But. When I complain ... I immediately think of other jobs I could be doing ...

Dang!!! You're absolutely right. I hadn't thought of that. I'm so glad you mentioned it. I was blithely producing stills here ... at 72 dpi ... duh? ...

So I checked in Topaz. I can reset the default preference output resolution to 300 ppi. Zowie.

Note: done a few tests; it appears one has to 'Upscale' the image to get the 300 ppi. Just running it through, denoise, sharpen (4K to 4K) still only gives you the 72 ppi for some reason. The 'Upscaling' is what does the trick. Apparently.

You just saved me a huge bunch of work T! I very much appreciate that. Thank you most kindly. The ones I've already done I'll bring into Preview and change the dpi/ppi to 300. I think I've done that before, regularly, and it seems to work at the printer.

B.

Hey Luis,

That's what's happening. I'm making a coffee-table photo/text book from this film ... which will be running in a museum IMAX theatre, that has a gift store (the book). The subject matter of the film is relevant enough that it would be a great teaching tool in schools. Thus, making a book to go with the film itself.

I don't know if one can do this in a post ... but here is a temp website I've set up, prior to releasing the film.

dancingbear.info

And there are two versions of the film (long and shorter) and a trailer viewable on the 'Screening' page. The trailer gives an accurate idea of what the film is about. Someone showed up on my doorstep out of the blue one day (out in BC, Canada), with twenty minutes of raw video footage taken of a friend of his, wanting to know if a film could be made. And this is the film that got made.

Smart advice Clint.

I'm actually working a lot on the stills after-the-fact. Extra colour grading and up-rezzing and Topaz etc. to get them to look good in print. A lot of the film was shot in various forms of HD, so the 'stills' pulled need some serious attention. And I'm also formatting the book itself - so need to have a good idea of end-results before the thing goes to the printer.

If it was just a matter of pulling the stills to go straight to the printer I would take your advice for sure.