Photo Montage in HD?

[Jeff Wallace]

I haven't done a photo montage in years and generally hate doing them, but recently a couple talked me into doing one to be shown at their reception, and they also want it included on the DVDs and Blu ray.

Um... so everything is in HD now... I shoot everything full 1920 x 1080. The scanned photos they gave me aren't large enough to put in a 1920 x 1080 timeline. If I attempt any zooming, the photos look blurry and pixelated. They do, however, look fine in an SD timeline.

Is there a solution for this? I'm thinking about creating an SD photo montage to be shown at the reception, and just give them a separate SD DVD, and not include it on the Blu ray disc.

Curious what everyone else is doing these days.

[Corey Graham]

Sometimes what I do is to put 2 or more smaller photos onto the same screen. It may take some creative cropping and arrangement, but it usually comes out pretty nice.

[Warren Kawamoto]

We do everything in HD as well, but if the couple provides a slideshow or photos that are SD quality, we go ahead and add it to their timeline anyway. In other words, their video goes into our video where it's supposed to go in the program, just so they don't have to switch dvds. Quality is going to be a little lower during their section, but the couple won't make a big deal since they provided the photos. Play back the SD version at their reception. Anyone sitting further back than 20 feet from the screen won't be able to tell the difference between HD and SD.

[Michael Bray]

If your client absolutely wants both Blu-ray and DVD, and the scanned photos they gave you aren't high enough resolution...meaning they look really bad or really soft on an HD timeline, you'll need to inform them of that fact and have them resupply you with rescanned photos at a higher resolution. Just like Warren mentioned, if the photos are only slightly soft, your clients will probably not even notice.

I don't typically enjoy creating photo montages anymore but I do charge a hefty price for them which justifies having me do the scanning so I know the photos are just the way I need them.

[Peter Riding]

The scanned photos they gave me aren't large enough to put in a 1920 x 1080 timeline

Just about any modern flatbed print scanner should be able to scan at a resolution high enough for the resulting file to be far larger than you would ever need for an HD video.

You could ask them to re-scan at a higher resolution. Or the problem may be that the original prints are of poor technical quality and are not going to look good no matter what scanning settings are used.

You could try bringing the files they have supplied into Photoshop (or a free program like The Gimp if you don't have Photoshop) and then resize and edit them for a better result than you would obtain in Vegas. Resize using Bicubic Softer as you'll be enlarging, tick the box to keep the resolution the same as the original, edit for contrast, saturation, etc, add a touch of sharpening, ensure the embedded profile is sRGB, and you will likely get usable results.

If you can get the images rescanned at a decent size you may even end up with files large enough to do decent panning and zooming effects.

There is a webinar on using still images coming up on the Sony official training site on 31st August, to be available to view on demand a couple of weeks after that.

Pete

EDIT: Not sure why I mentioned Vegas other than I'd just come off the Vegas forum :- )