Utensilman

Q: Great looking hi-res images in photoshop look terribly pixelated when scaled down in Motion 5...how can I prevent this?

I'm working on a project with a client logo and title...both are downloaded from the internet at a high resolution and look crisp and wonderful in Photoshop. However, when I drop them into my 1,080x1,080 Motion 5 project and scale them down to the size they need to be in the animation, all of that crispness becomes terribly pixelated.

 

It looks like an aliasing issue to me...the Motion-generated text in my document looks great, so I imagine it's not just too low-res a project (1,080x1,080 seems pretty hi-res to me!). I'm fairly new to Motion, so I feel like there's just something obvious I'm overlooking...any help is appreciated!

Motion 5, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Mar 3, 2016 8:54 AM

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Q: Great looking hi-res images in photoshop look terribly pixelated when scaled down in Motion 5...how can I prevent this?

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  • by fox_m,

    fox_m fox_m Mar 3, 2016 3:05 PM in response to Utensilman
    Level 5 (5,552 points)
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    Mar 3, 2016 3:05 PM in response to Utensilman

    If the logos are available on the internet, please post a link to at least one of them so we can see what the issue might be. The only way (usually) pixelation occurs in images is if the scaling become larger than 100%. That can happen even if you're scaling down but using a camera view or the Z-position to make the image appear closer.

     

    Are there any other particulars about the project that involve zooming, positioning, and/or scaling?

  • by Utensilman,

    Utensilman Utensilman Mar 3, 2016 3:59 PM in response to fox_m
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 3, 2016 3:59 PM in response to fox_m

    Unfortunately, it's a confidential project, and what you've described (scaling up = pixelization) is what I'd expect, so I'm bummed to be running into effectively the opposite situation (image looks great at 100%, but when scaled down, diagonal lines get crazy aliased).

     

    I suspected that it was just a matter of 1080x1080 being too low-res a project size, so when things got small, they'd get pixelated. However, there were other elements that were both small and perfectly well defined, so that was confusing to me.

     

    I found a workaround finally in starting a brand new project at 2160x2160 and remaking everything. The resolution looked great, I had to rethink a few things, but I find it strange that I'd have to double the canvas size to make something look okay when scaled down.

  • by fox_m,

    fox_m fox_m Mar 3, 2016 11:32 PM in response to Utensilman
    Level 5 (5,552 points)
    Video
    Mar 3, 2016 11:32 PM in response to Utensilman

    Ok - that's weird. You're right, it shouldn't make any difference.  I can't seem to reproduce the problem with any (large) PSDs I have available.

  • by BenB,Solvedanswer

    BenB BenB Mar 10, 2016 10:18 AM in response to fox_m
    Level 6 (10,026 points)
    Audio
    Mar 10, 2016 10:18 AM in response to fox_m

    If you downscale or upscale a JPEG enough, yes, it will pixelate.  Start your logos in your image editing app by sizing them to the same frame size as your Motion project.  Then there's no scaling, no artifacts.

     

    Also, depending on your hardware setup, and the duration and complexity of your Motion project, having Resolution and Quality set to anything besides Full and Normal, with Dynamic turned off, may result in Motion purposefully degrading the "appearance" of the image, for better playback.