Working with Other Adobe Products and Exporting Your Videos

Taking a Tour of Photoshop Elements

There's a lot to like about Photoshop Elements. It has most of its more-robust sibling's power and features at a fraction of the price: $99 versus $600. It's an able replacement to Photoshop LE (Limited Edition), which had a hard time striking a balance between user friendliness and power.

Moving Up to Photoshop

Making the move to Photoshop means joining forces with just about every image-editing professional on the planet. It's that ubiquitous.

Using Photoshop in Video Production—Expert Tips

To find experts in various Adobe Digital Media products I contacted Adobe. Two corporate evangelists concurred that Glen Stephens fit the bill. He enthusiastically agreed to provide tips for first-time users of Photoshop and Illustrator.

Filling a Narrow Video Production Niche with Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is the standard bearer in the world of drawing programs. Illustrator's vector-based graphic-creation tools lend themselves to print and Web media. Mathematical formulas are used to describe vector graphics. Whether scaling an image way up to poster size or down to an icon, vector graphics retain their clarity and definition.

Expert Tips for First-time Illustrator Users

Glen Stephens, who provided the Photoshop tips earlier in this hour, offers the following advice for first-time Illustrator users.

Illustrator is a very valuable tool when preparing graphics for Premiere. You can directly import Illustrator vector-based graphics into Premiere, which promptly rasterizes them—converts them to bitmap graphics—for further editing.

However, I take a less direct but more commonly used approach. I create vector artwork in Illustrator and then pass that on for further editing, primarily in Photoshop but in After Effects as well. Only then do I use that artwork in Premiere.

No matter which route you take, I think the following tips will help ensure your Illustrator graphics look their best:

• Use a resolution for your Illustrator graphics that will guarantee the proper video output aspect ratio. When starting a new document in Illustrator, set the color mode to RGB.
  

• Make Premiere think your graphic fills the entire frame. The artboard in Illustrator does not set the size for your overall image, as does the canvas in Photoshop. If you place a small square inside the Illustrator artboard, that square will not expand to fill the screen in Premiere. You need to trick Premiere into thinking that the entire 720x540 artboard is being used. Do that by making and then releasing crop marks to define the outside edges of your image. Here's how:

  1. Create a blank layer in your new file.

  2. Select Object, Crop Marks, Make. Illustrator automatically will place the crop marks on the edges of the artboard. This box is on the active layer in your image, so be sure not to delete this layer later.

  3. Select Object, Crop Marks, Release.