Colin Smith - Video in Photoshop for Photographers and Designers

This reminds me of a photographer with a sparkling new HDSLR camera that is capable of shooting stunning HD video. You can see the proud new owner thinking: I have a great new camera. I have shot the video. Now what? What do I do with it? How can I fix up that video and share it with the world?

Plenty of information is available on capturing video and shooting in this HDSLR revolution. But very little has been said about editing the footage. Usually, you just hear people suggesting that budding filmmakers use Adobe Premiere Pro or Apple Final Cut Prowithout regard for the fact that many photographers and designers are unwilling or unable to invest all the time needed to learn and use a professional editing suite. On the other hand, designers and photographers already know and love Photoshop, which can now produce professional quality video-editing results.

Thats where this book steps in. The book begins with some basics about shooting video and tips for you to get the best possible footage onto your sensor in the first place. After that, you will learn how to get that footage onto your computer in an organized fashion so that you can find it when you need it. You will learn how to use Adobe Bridge and Adobe Lightroom for these tasks.

The main section of the book walks you through various techniques of editing and cutting your video together in Adobe Photoshop. Youll learn how to edit projects that include working with video, slideshows, interviews, and stacked video with smooth transitions.

The video projects will sound great, too, because you will learn about getting the most out of the audio and even adding backing music tracks. You will even get to dabble in motion graphics and create lower thirds and title screens, and animate video and motion graphics. You wont be left hanging at the end either, where you will learn how to output and render the video so that it can be viewed on mobile devices, laptops, and the Web. Best of all, its easy and you dont have to have a deep knowledge of video.

If you are a photographer, designer, or Photoshop enthusiast who captures digital video or has to work with digital video, this book is for you. You may be working with an HDSLR camera, a point-and-shoot camera, or even an iPhones camera, and thats great. The lessons dont discriminate between the different types of video as the workflows are the same. You dont need prior knowledge of video editing or motion graphics to use this book. Complete beginners and users with a little experience will not be left behind. Meanwhile, experienced Photoshop users will get a lot out of the video and motion graphics workflows presented in these pages.

If you are serious video pro and use applications such as Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects on a daily basis, you may pick up a few tipsbut you arent really the intended audience for this book or the video features in Adobe Photoshop.