Drop Shadow Effect Crops Image Instead of Creating a Drop Shadow

[Ermo_311]

Hello All,

I'm new to Adobe Premiere Pro and I've decided to create a slideshow of some pictures. I was following this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adDcMhIN090

I have 15 images, and have done all the effects taught in the tutorial, except the white border and 3D effects as I don't need them, but I would really like the drop shadow effect. I follow the steps at around 04:39. However, when I apply the Drop Shadow effect, my images are cropped instead of them having a drop shadow. It worked ONCE. My first image has the effect as desired. So I copied the effect and pasted them to the rest of the images, which are now cropped.

I manually deleted the effect from the cropped images and tried to apply the Drop Shadow effect manually and the problem remains. I've tried restarting Premiere and my computer, problem remains. Tried a new project with same images, problem remains. Tried starting Premiere with Shift-Alt and deleting the media file cache according to https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2152942​, the problem remains. I've tried en/disabling GPU acceleration, same problem.

Hopefully it's something I've overlooked as a noob. I'm using Adobe Premiere Pro 11.1.2 (22) according to the About dialog.

Maybe because my images are huge? They are 9412x11953 (scans). But then why did it work once and then never again?

Any help or scolding is appreciated, thanks in advance.

[Ermo_311]

I guess it was a noob mistake. I resized my images but now I have a problem similar to the person in this thread: Can't scale images w/drop shadow

It seems to be working ok except for that resizing issue. In that thread, the user josh9826460​says to use transform first to scale but there is no scale under the Transform effet folder.

Hmm. Anyone else have another work around?

Thanks again.

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

That's not in the effects, right-click a clip/image, and choose "Set to Frame Size" or "Scale to Frame size"

"Set ... " displays the image to fit inside the current frame-size, so can leave letter boxing on sides or top bottom. You can then manually resize the image in the ECP ... effects control panel ... without issue.

"Scale" reduces the image within PrPro's project to the pixel-size of the sequence. At that point, if you try to enlarge, it will pixelate of course, as you're taking a small image and enlarging it mathematically.

Very different, those two.

And of course, you can resize any clip/image in the Effects Control Panel, the top section of "Motion" which includes Position and Scale.

Neil

[Ermo_311]

Hey Neil,

I was confused because he said "I could apply the shadow after the transform effect." But your answer lead to a solution. So I right-clicked on an image in the timeline and choose "Scale To Frame Size" and now the motion is smooth. I don't notice any pixelation yet but when I am done with the slideshow (I have to re-do it), I will post back.

Thanks.

[R Neil Haugen]

Just remember, on that sequence, PrPro sees that image as the sequence size. Any re-scaling you may do will be done from that size.

So ... say you have a 3000x5000 pixel still, drop in on a 1920x1080 sequence with "Scale to framesize" ... PrPro re-scales the image to 1920x1080 before displaying it. Now, you decide, you've got a LOT of image to work with, and you'd like to zoom in a bit. So, you hit "Size" and take it up a bit so you can see something a bit larger ... and you've got garbage.

What the?

PrPro is taking the original image to 1920x1080. Then when you scale up to zoom in, it takes those 1920x1080 pixels and mathematically makes a larger image. Pixelation & artifacts run amok.

"Set to ... " simply plops the image on the sequence at the sequence size, similar to if you'd use the Size/Postion parameters to scale it down. For anything you do it still works with the original pixels.

Neil

[Ermo_311]

Ok, sorry for the late reply, but I was not able to work on this slideshow until recently. I think a combination of reasonably sized photos and having to scale things to frame is what works.

As a side note, I think what josh9826460 meant was the Transform effects found under Distort effects folder. It has position, scale and opacity as well; not sure what the difference between that and what the Motion FX does, other than having a wonky coordinate system and not working well with adjustment layers sometimes (the Distort > Transformation that is).

Anyways, I will mark your answer as the correct one as it led to everything working.

Thanks again.

[R Neil Haugen]

Some like the Transform, but ... Motion/Opacity are right there, and I rarely have any difficulty with them. Transform can interact with other things at times, it seems a more complicated version.

Neil