Techniques for Turning Video into Print Photos

The world is quickly entering into the Video Age and leaving print photos behind to an extent. YouTube and smartphones have combined to give everyone unprecedented power to preserve their memories in video form, and many people are filming their events and moments by default, figuring that the power to preserve memory that lies in print photos is augmented by the moving image.

One limitation that videos have in comparison with still images is the difficulty in incorporating them into interior design. In fact, the desirability of having moving images all around you in a room is questionable at best. People still love to decorate with wall art made from print photos – but what do you do if all of your memories are in video format? Simple – you turn those videos into still images. Here are two ways to do this that even a complete neophyte can probably handle.

Print Photos from a Screen Shot

If you have smartphone video of a trip, an event, or a random moment that you’d like to memorialise in your home as art prints either on your wall or in frames on your benchtops and tables, the simplest thing to do is import the video files onto your home computer by connecting your smartphone. When you double-click on the video files, your video player should automatically launch and begin displaying your video.

Take a moment to make the video as large as possible – full screen if you can – and to make any other obvious quality adjustments that are available. Then, watch the video and select the right frame and freeze the video. Choose a moment without distortion or blur. Then, press the ‘Prt Sc’ button on your keyboard. In almost every operating system in the world, this will snap a photo of whatever’s being displayed on screen at the moment. Then, launch your photo manipulation program:

• In PhotoShop, choose ‘New image’ and then just paste in the screen shot.
• In The GiMP and other programs, choose ‘Create from clipboard.’

Note: This image will be low-quality, but if you size it properly it will be usable to turn into print photos.

Saving as an Image Sequence

A more advanced method is to load your video file into a video editing program, such as Virtual Dub (www.virtualdub.org) or OpenShot (www.openshot.org). Once loaded, you can edit the video down to just the brief sequence you want to harvest your image from, and then export the project as an ‘image sequence.’ Instead of a video file, this will turn each frame of the video into a separate image file which you can then review and choose from.

Note that the longer your video, the more frames it contains and thus the more image files that will be produced. To save yourself from waiting a hour for the export to finish, cut down the video to just the moment you want to capture before you hit the export button.

Now, you can open the image files in your photo manipulation software, review them for distortion and blur, and size the selected photo as needed.

Video is quickly becoming the new photo, and eventually most families will have their mementos in video form. That just makes choosing print photos for wall art more challenging – but not impossible. When you’ve edited your video files and produced that one still image that’s going on your walls, click here and we’ll turn it into the most spectacular photo canvas you’ve ever seen.