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cell phone photos resizing

Specific to Premiere Elements Version 11.

cell phone photos resizing

Postby iop » Sun Oct 30, 2016 5:13 pm

What is the best way to resize the typical tall and skinny cell phone photo for slide shows. An additional question is how to edit a cell phone video that is too dark?
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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby Steve Grisetti » Sun Oct 30, 2016 5:25 pm

The best advice: Turn your phone sideways when you shoot video and pictures and you'll get a perfect 16:9 image!

But, since people insist on shooting in portrait 9:16 mode, you have four options. Which use is up to you.
1) Use the photo as is, in which case you have a tall, narrow picture with black bars on the sides.
2) Crop the photo, removing much of the top and/or bottom of the picture so that your picture is, at minimum, reduced to 4:3 -- which means throwing away about 55% of your picture.
3) Use a video editor like CyberLink PowerDirector 15, which includes a 9:16 project setting for making portrait video project.
or
4) Be smart and turn your phone sideways when you take pictures so that they'll be 16:9 rather than 9:16.

Which option do you prefer?
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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby iop » Sun Oct 30, 2016 6:42 pm

Since the photos are a done deal I have limited choices, so may just use as is. I guess the same applies to videos that have been shot with phone vertical - but is there anyway I can lighten the video ?
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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby Steve Grisetti » Mon Oct 31, 2016 7:08 am

Yes. You can lighten the photos either by using one of the Enhance functions in Photoshop Elements or one of the Adjustments in Premiere Elements.
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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby Chuck Engels » Mon Oct 31, 2016 9:57 am

There isn't a lot you will be able to do with most cell phone video that was shot in low light. Most cell phone cameras do not handle light well to begin with, so adding adjustments can sometimes make them even worse. However, some light adjustments may help.

Steve, do you have a section in your Premiere Elements 11 book that covers Premiere Elements lighting adjustments?
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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby Steve Grisetti » Mon Oct 31, 2016 10:13 am

Yes. The chapter entitled Make Adjustments to Your Video and Audio. ;)
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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby sidd finch » Mon Oct 31, 2016 10:22 am

Yes. The chapter entitled Make Adjustments to Your Video and Audio.


Steve I am impressed with your chapter titles. I think you should consider becoming an author.... :yh:

Would it be fair to say that for each book you write you start with "Chapter 1".... this is brilliant. :tup:

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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby Bob » Mon Oct 31, 2016 10:52 am

There are various reasons a cell phone video can be dark. Some examples: backlighting, low light, a bright light in the frame that affects exposure. You can lighten your clips in several ways depending on what needs correcting, but keep in mind that lightening the image will increase noise and you won't be able to add back detail that was lost due to under exposure. You'll get the best results if the amount of correction needed is small.

The most useful adjustment effects are Brightness and Contrast (these two are pre applied to all clips and can be adjusted in the Applied Effects Panel in the Image Control effect), the Gamma Correction effect, and the Shadow/Highlight effect.

The Brightness effect adjusts the brightness of the pixels in the image without regard to the tonal range. It's most useful if the amount of lightening needed is uniform over the entire image. One of the drawbacks is that pixels may become washed out in the highlights and detail can be lost.

If the highlights and shadows are exposed well and just the midtones need to be lightened, you can try the Gamma Correction effect. This effect works similar to the middle slider in the levels adjustment in Photoshop Elements.

If the midtones are OK, you can try the Shadows/Highlights effect. This effect allows you to adjust the Shadows or Highlights independently. It has an auto option, but that is biased towards a backlighting situation. I generally find that I get best results unselecting the auto function and manually adjust the shadow and highlight settings as needed. You can also adjust the width of the tonal ranges affected. It's easy to overdo the adjustment. Be careful.

I'd avoid using the auto levels effect. You may get away with it on still images, but it generally doesn't work that well on video.
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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby sidd finch » Tue Nov 01, 2016 10:28 am

One trick I have seen on the local news when they have portrait video or pictures is to add the a second layer of the same video ond or still image. They enlarge the background image and put a blur on the image so you do not end up seeing the black bars.

Bet Steve's advice is golden.

Turn your phone sideways when you shoot video and pictures and you'll get a perfect 16:9 image!


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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby iop » Tue Nov 01, 2016 7:00 pm

Thanks for the info.

My biggest problems are on the resizing of photos not only from Facebook postings but on other sized photos from cameras or phones that are not set to the 16: 9 setting for widescreen. I don't have much success with w10 Photo Gallery using the quick Crop feature as it does not list any actual photo sizes when using. I have tried a few other freebies plus paint etc. I understand resizing to 1000 x 750 but its hard to find settings that match this ideal setting for PRE11 projects including Photoshop Elements. If there is an easy way to achieve that setting please let me know. When I do resize an oddball size photo, I try to resize the vertical to be a max of 750, and taking whatever the constraint gives me on horizontal size. However the 750 vertical is too tall with resultant top of resized photo cut off. Is there a magic vertical setting that will fill the frames in widescreen dv projects that I can use for the vertical resize setting such as maybe 710, 720, or ? that will fill the screen vertically.

I am beginning to feel that I really don't understand the resizing that's necessary and nothing I try after several hours of resizing and then adding to a test project seems to work. Is there PRE updated programs that work with no resizing needed? I like all the features of PRE11 but struggle to just complete simple slide shows with video without a lot of bells and whistles added.

Again I value the forum and the help given by all.
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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby Steve Grisetti » Tue Nov 01, 2016 7:42 pm

If you'd prefer not to resize your photos, you might want to look into a program like CyberLink PowerDirector, which uses a different workflow. It has a very nice slideshow creator also. Download the free trial and see what you think of it.
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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby Bob » Wed Nov 02, 2016 1:46 am

Is there a magic vertical setting that will fill the frames in widescreen dv projects that I can use for the vertical resize setting such as maybe 710, 720, or ? that will fill the screen vertically.


The vertical frame dimension will differ depending on the video standard in use where you are and whether you are using standard definition or high definition. Widescreen dv is standard definition. If you are in the UK and use the PAL standard the vertical frame dimension will be 576 pixels. But, if you are in the U.S., which uses NTSC, the vertical frame dimension will be 480 pixels.

So, assuming you are in the U.S., resize your photos to 480 pixels high and your photos will fill the vertical dimension of your widescreen dv video frame exactly. Photoshop Elements has a Process Multiple Files command under Edit (in Expert Mode) that can batch resize them for you. Don't over-write your original photos, place the resized ones in a different directory.

If your photo aspect ratio isn't 16:9, batch resizing this way will fill the vertical dimension, but the horizontal dimension won't match the frame. You can either crop as necessary or adjust the horizontal position of the photo in Premiere Elements to show the portion you want to see.

Wide screen video has a frame aspect ratio of 16:9 which, for 480 pixels high, corresponds to 853 pixels wide. So, a photo cropped to 853Wx480H pixels will fill the video frame exactly. FYI, you can specify 853 PX and 480 PX in the width and height fields in the Photoshop Elements Crop Tool Option Bar. Then, you can click and drag the crop area to cover what you want to show and that area will be resized to those dimensions when you release the mouse button.

That's fine if you are not going to pan or zoom the image. But, if you are going to pan or zoom, you will need to resize them to a larger size. This is because you don't want to scale the image larger than 100%. If you intend to pan or zoom, resize the images that you will be panning or zooming to a larger size such as 1000 x 750 and then key frame the scale and position as desired.

If your photos aren't super large, you may not need to resize them if you are running Windows 64-bit. Older 32-bit versions of Premiere Elements had issues with running out of memory with lots of large photos in the project. The newer versions are native 64-bit which gives the program access to more memory and the way the program handles the photos is more efficient. But, you may want to resize them anyway as the scaling methods in Photoshop Elements give better results than scaling in Premiere Elements.
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Re: cell phone photos resizing

Postby iop » Wed Nov 02, 2016 11:20 am

Thanks Bob for the info. I really appreciate the detail and what is happening in the program. My issue is not necessarily resizing but to do things once, not trial and error which is large drain on time. Its hard to resize to an exact 1000 x 750 size as most of the programs wont let you use those dimensions depending on what size the photos are to start with (with constraint selected).

A further question is in PRE11 ( the program I am using), when do you see how photos will look like after burning? Do they look that way after entering in the project, after running PREVIEW or are they changed when burning the project to fill the screen? Maybe I am worrying over what I am seeing when putting together a project and not waiting to see the final result ?

I will try and see what I get from your info provided. Again I appreciate your time helping others. Although Steve suggests it, I just don't like the thoughts of learning another program at my age because my memory, just like the computers, is mostly temporary, and lost if not used all the time.
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