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How to Export Video From Adobe Photoshop

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LukeLewis

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When it comes to exporting and rendering video clips, there are some pretty cool options to be aware of. It’s not as simple as just hitting “save” and moving on with things. Adobe Photoshop offers an entire dialog box that’s filled with suggestions and possible settings that have the capability of making your life a lot easier when working with video. The way things are today is a huge step forward when compared to what was offered just a few years ago.

In today’s post, I’m going to walk through the process of exporting a demo video clip in Adobe Photoshop. During the process, I’ll do my best to explain what some of the more important areas can do. I’ll also point out some of the features that Photoshop offers that will let you work like a pro. Want to export just one section of your entire video for testing? Not a problem. It’s really all very doable.

Demo Video​

I’ve already gone ahead and launched the video into Photoshop, but haven’t done anything past that. Today’s video is of a car racing down a dirt road. Here’s a still shot from the clip.

race-car.jpg

I’m going to pretend that I’ve done tons of work to this video and that I’m ready to save it out. That will be my starting point.

Rendering the Video​

Since I’m all done editing, I’ll go ahead an begin the process of rendering the video. All this means is that Photoshop is going to take what’s been edited and combine the parts to make a whole file. If it needs compressing, Photoshop will do that too. In general, when you render a video, it takes a few seconds, so if you’re following along and get to that point, please be patient and don’t click around.

There are multiple methods for accessing the Render Video dialog box. In this section, I’ll show you three of them.

The very first method and probably the most popular is to head up to the File > Export > Render Video menu item and click. Since this access point stems from the File menu, many folks can find it easily.

file-export-render-video.jpg

The next method is even easier, but many people aren’t aware of its existence. If you head over to the right side of the Timeline panel and click the small menu icon, you’ll see an option to render from there.

timeline-panel-render-video.jpg

And finally, the most simple method for accessing the Render Video dialog box. If you head down to the bottom of the Timeline panel, near the controls, you’ll see a small arrow. Click the arrow and you’ll go straight to the dialog. Once you use this method, I can guarantee you’ll never use the two previous ones. This one is so damn straightforward.

arrow-render-video.jpg

The Render Video Dialog Box​

In this section, I’ll go through the different sections contained inside the Render Video dialog box. There are four sections in total, but I’m only going to talk about three of them. The fourth has to do with 3D video and that’s a whole other post.

Location​

I’ll start off with the Location section, which is contained inside the very top area.

render-video-location.jpg

Inside this section are a few options. If you look through them, you’ll see they’re easily understood and are quite intuitive.

First, I’ll need to name the saved file, so in the top Name field, I can type in whatever it is I’d like the final name to be. In this case, I’ll just leave it with whatever the clip was originally named, which is a number.

Next, I’ll need to save the file to a location. To do this, I’ll click the Select Folder button to browse my computer or external drive for a location to save the file to. If I find a location and would like Photoshop to create a new directory within the chosen directory to place the file in, I’ll check the Create New Subfolder box and type in whatever I want the name of the subfolder to be. See? I told you this one was easy.

Output Type​

I’ve named the next section Output Type because it doesn’t have a name. Right now, the lead options are Adobe Media Encoder and Photoshop Image Sequence. Since Photoshop Image Sequence will save the entire video as JPEG images as opposed to a functioning video, I’ll leave this option out of this post. Perhaps I’ll return to it another time.

As far as the Adobe Media Encoder option, there are lots of things to choose from. For Format, I’ll leave the default, which is H.264. The reason I’ll leave this is because it’s a very common format for video files. It compressed well and offers extremely high quality. Next, I’ll also leave the Preset drop-down set to High Quality, because that’s what I generally save my files as. I will, however, show you a screenshot of the options in the drop-down so you can see what’s available. If you’re using your video to upload to Youtube or Vimeo or a specific device, you would certainly want to take advantage of one of these other options. They’ll give your output a much more customized feel.

preset-output-options.jpg

The next field is called Size, because it will dictate what the physical size of your video will be when played back. If you leave the default set to Document Size like I did, the output video dimensions will match the pixel dimensions you set when you created the editable file. Photoshop does offer alternatives though, such as sizes that will fit many different devices and TVs.

output-size.jpg

The last area I’ll cover for this area is Frame Rate. If you’ve ever edited a video before, you know what this is and already have this set. If you’d like to keep what you already have set in the editable file, leave this alone. If you’d like to reduce the quality to meet some sort of specification, you can click the drop-down to select one of the presets.

While that section was cool, this next one is cooler.

Range​

Let’s say I am completely finished with editing this video and I would like to output it in its entirety. I can do that by leaving the default option of All Frames selected.

output-range.jpg

This isn’t a big deal and most of the time, if you’re a casual editor, you won’t ever need to change anything in this area. If you’re a power user though, you’ll definitely want to know about the next two options. They’ll let you export just part of your file so you can take a close look at a specific section of your masterpiece.

Say I have 237 frames in a video, which this sample video has. Now, let’s say that I only want to output the frames between 100 and 150 for close analysis. Well, if that was the case, I’d click to the left of Start Frame and then input 100 in the first field. In the End Frame field, I’d input 150 and I’d be all set. The entire video wouldn’t be outputted. Only the section between those two frames would be.

I know that filling in these fields can be cumbersome at times and counting frames isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. This is fine, because Photoshop gives us another options to make our lives easier. The next field will output just the frames that are in the current work area of the editable video. So, if you’ve got a specific work area set, select this option and that’s it. Photoshop will only output those frames.

If you don’t know how to set a work area, you’re in luck. I’ll show you how in this next screenshot.

work-area.jpg

To set a work area in the Timeline panel, all you need to do is to click and drag the beginning handle to the right and the ending handle to the left. The handles I’m referring to are inside the red box in the screenshot above. Not the blue playhead, but the two tick marks directly below it. Also, when you have a work area set in the timeline and play the video back inside of Photoshop, playback will be limited to that work area. Just an FYI.

Saving Out the File​

After all these options have been set, all that needs to be done is to have the Render button pushed. Once I do that, I’ll have to wait a few seconds and then I’ll have a completed file that I can use for whatever it is I want. And that’s it.

——

While there are other options available, the ones I covered in this post are the most popular. and really, if you’re the average user, you’ll likely only need to name the file and choose a destination to save it to. You can probably leave everything else alone. It is good to know what your options are though.

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

COMMENT: I need to save in MOV (quicktime) format but when I do it, Photoshop saves some frames and then a BLACK video. I’ve tried to view it with VLC to find out if it was a decoding problem, but there isn’t. I don’t know how to export that MOV file.

COMMENT: Let me look into this and if I find the solution to your issue, I’ll update this comment.

COMMENT: I just discovered this gem in PS today.. after nearly 10 years of using it! But it doesn’t work. The output file is just 1k with no content. I can’t find any information on a fix either.

COMMENT: I’ve actually had this happen. I just need to remember what was causing it. I’ll reply here when it comes to me…

COMMENT: I am editing (for friends and for the fun and learning!) videos of the performance of my fav. local band. Each video is about 2.5 mins long and I’m using Photoshop CC to edit for the first time. My workflow (bootstrapping my way through this) is import the raw video from a Fuji XT-2 with settings optimized for video and then using Camera Raw to do basic adjustments (Crop, White Balance, Black Point, Exposure). I then Render to default settings in Photoshop CC. Rendering is currently taking about 7 hours per video and I wonder if this is normal and if there’s anything I can do to decrease Render time? Many thanks in advance!

COMMENT: Thanks for writing in. I see you have an issue with rendering video from Photoshop. I am wondering how much RAM you have installed on your computer. I know there’s a point at which too little RAM will dramatically slow things down. I do think that seven hours for a 2.5 minute video is far too long to render though. I mean, that’s a long time. I have experimented with editing video clips in Camera Raw and that was extraordinarily slow as well, but it seems like you got through that point just fine. For you, it’s the rendering thing. The only area I can think of off the top of my head is the RAM issue. If you want, you can put this same question out on the forum to see what others think about it.

COMMENT: Excellent walkthrough, explained like a true pro but broken down in layman terms for a rookie like myself. Thanks so much.

COMMENT: Great tutorial! I am trying to record this as an action to run as a batch. Do you know how I can set the Name field to be the next opened file? Thanks in advance!
 
LukeLewis

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Can Adobe Photoshop Convert Video File Format?​

Quick question: My Canon Rebel T6i apparently only takes video in .MP4 format. I need a video in .MOV format to upload to iStock photo to try to sell some stock video footage. Last night, I imported my video file into Adobe Photoshop and attempted to export it in .MOV format. There were no options for that anywhere in the Render Video palette. Is there a way to convert the .MP4 video to a .MOV video once it’s in Photoshop? Or do I need another service for that?

Also, does Photoshop work on .MOV video files at all? I’m wondering if I imported that type of video into the program and then tried to export it, the options would change to .MOV ones in the Render Video palette. This seems like what would happen, but I’m not sure because I don’t have any .MOV video files to experiment with.
 
LukeLewis

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I Can’t Render My Video in Adobe Photoshop​

Question: Adobe Photoshop keeps telling me the video is still open, but I can’t figure out where it’s open or how to close it so I can render it. Can you help?

Answer: You should check to see if you have another version of Photoshop open at the same time. With these upgrades Adobe is doing, multiple instances of Photoshop are installed on the same computer. It’s driving me nuts trying to figure out which one to use.

Also, you can try pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del on your keyboard and then opening the Task Manager to see if something is screwy with Photoshop. You may want to save the file and then exit Photoshop altogether to start again. Then, open your file and see if the same thing happens.
 
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