Stop photos from changing colour in iMovie

April 30, 2007 9:08 PM

Problem in iMovie: When I select an imported photo and click on "Show Photo Settings", i.e. to apply the Ken Burns effect, my photo changes colours to reds and oranges. It changes back if I click "Hide Photo Options". Does anyone know how to fix this?

I've tried:

-Changing the extension on the photo (I think it was scanned as a .bmp, which might be the trouble) to anything else: jpg, png, gif, etc.

-making sure iMove software was up to date, restarting iMovie

-applying this effect to other photos I have scanned: the other photos work, it's just this batch of photos I had scanned for me for a project.

I don't have the originals anymore, so rescanning is not an option. Any help would be great!

posted by The Coach LD to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Are you using an external drive by any chance?
posted by wavejumper at 11:07 PM on April 30, 2007

The problem probably has to do with the color profile of the photos. They probably haven't got a profile and then iMovie just makes an uneducated guess which color space it belongs too.

If I were you, I would probably try to import the photos to iPhoto, but making sure that there is a preference set correctly first. In preferences->advanced, you should make sure that "add ColorSync-description" is checked and then see how it goes.
posted by KimG at 11:54 PM on April 30, 2007

Try resizing it and/or saving as a different type of file (not just changing the extension). Resizing it will pretty effectively reset the image attributes and, considering the picture will be shrunk anyway for display on TV/DVD, won't do any harm.

Because of OS X's almost complete lack of any built-in image editors, I use ImageWell for my resizing needs. It's free.
posted by humblepigeon at 4:17 AM on May 1, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks humblepigeon. Importing them into ImageWell then resaving as .png seems to work. Much appreciated.
posted by The Coach LD at 11:25 AM on May 2, 2007