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bobbyq83478546
bobbyq83478546
Participant
April 2, 2020
Question

Cropping Video in Photoshop

  • April 2, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 1986 views

Hi,

 

I'm trying to crop a video so it has rounded corners.  I'm still researching it, but apparently it's not possible in Premiere Pro, so I brought it into Photoshop to try it here.

 

To my understanding cropping goes like this:

 

Use the rectangular marquee tool to select the area you want. To round corners: Select > Modify > Smooth. 

 

It works great and rounds the corners, until I select "crop".  Nothing happens.  It won't crop out the rounded edges. It keeps the corners sharp.  I assume the reason has something to do with it being video, not a photo? 

 

Hoping someone has some knowledge or experience in this area.

 

Thanks

 

Using Photoshop 2020 on 2019 Macbook Pro.

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 2, 2020

JJMack is correct. Cropping is always only rectangular. Any time you want a non-rectangular “crop” of a video, you are really selecting all of the areas that you want to be outside the video, and making sure they get exported in an alpha channel, a separate channel in addition to the red, green, and blue channels.

 

The problem is that the video export controls in Photoshop do not seem to have any way to export an alpha channel. To export your video with rounded-corner edges using an alpha channel, you would probably have to use a good video editing program. If you have a full Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, you could do it in Adobe Premiere Pro or Adobe After Effects.

 

For example:

https://blogs.adobe.com/kevinmonahan/2014/02/13/exporting-media-with-an-alpha-channel-in-premiere-pro/

https://www.schoolofmotion.com/blog/how-to-export-transparent-background-after-effects

 

You said it was not possible for you in Premiere Pro, but that might be if you were still thinking in terms of “cropping.” If you think in terms of tthe video standard terms of masks and alpha channels, it is completely doable in Premiere Pro, a very standard practice.

    bobbyq83478546
    bobbyq83478546Author
    Participant
    April 3, 2020

    Okay, thank you very much.  Makes sense.  I will start looking for a mask/alpha channel workaround. 

    JJMack
    Community Expert
    JJMackCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 2, 2020

    Document Canvases are rectangular.  While Photoshop support masking  will enable image to have rounded corners only some image file formats support transparency.  So you can have images  on the web with rounded corners using image file saved with transparency like PNG file format.  Video encoding  does not seen to support transparency.  Transparent areas seem to be encoded Black. Photoshop uses a subset of Adobe media encoder embedded in Photoshop to encode video. Premier Pro most like uses the full version of Adobe media encoder so Premiere would have more options than Photoshop.

    JJMack
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