Appendix 1

The Filmmaker’s Guide to Final Cut Pro Workfl ow
generator has some serious limitations. While it’s great for simple titles, there are many things it
simply can’t do.
Adobe makes several great pieces of software that can be used to create graphics and titles. Photoshop,
Illustrator, and After Effects work seamlessly with each other as well as Final Cut Pro. Each
of these Adobe applications has functions necessary to creating, processing, and managing graphics
and titles. There are many other graphic systems on the market, but these are the most popular.
Adobe’s Illustrator is its vector-based system and is resolution independent. It can be used to create
text and shapes in color, and because it is vector based, any text can be moved, resized, or edited in
any way and rendered into any practical size or image format.
Illustrator fi les cannot be imported directly into Final Cut Pro; they must be rendered into a pixelbased
image format fi rst, as in Figure 8.1. The Illustrator fi les can be exported in any popular pixelbased
image format and used directly in Final Cut Pro. It can also be exported as a PSD fi le and
imported into Adobe’s Photoshop, and “rasterized” or rendered, into a pixel-based image. The original
Illustrator project remains intact and can be changed, resized, edited and reexported in the new
size.
Figure 8.1 Adobe Illustrator titles
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