Final Cut Pro User Guide for Mac
- Welcome
- What’s new
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- Intro to importing media
- If it’s your first import
- Organize files during import
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- Import from Image Playground
- Import from iMovie for macOS
- Import from iMovie for iOS or iPadOS
- Import from Final Cut Pro for iPad
- Import from Final Cut Camera
- Import from Photos
- Import from Music
- Import from Apple TV
- Import from Motion
- Import from GarageBand and Logic Pro
- Import using workflow extensions
- Record into Final Cut Pro
- Memory cards and cables
- Supported media formats
- Import third-party formats with media extensions
- Adjust ProRes RAW camera settings
- Import REDCODE RAW files
- Import Canon Cinema RAW Light files
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- Intro to effects
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- Intro to transitions
- How transitions are created
- Add transitions and fades
- Quickly add a transition with a keyboard shortcut
- Set the default duration for transitions
- Delete transitions
- Adjust transitions in the timeline
- Adjust transitions in the inspector and viewer
- Merge jump cuts with the Flow transition
- Adjust transitions with multiple images
- Modify transitions in Motion
- Add adjustment clips
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- Add storylines
- Use the precision editor
- Conform frame sizes and rates
- Use XML to transfer projects
- Glossary
- Copyright and trademarks
Intro to blend modes in Final Cut Pro for Mac
In Final Cut Pro, you can use blend modes to combine (composite) two or more images. Each blend mode presents a different method of combining images. Blend modes work in addition to a clip’s alpha channel and Opacity control.
How blend modes work
While the Opacity control defines a uniform level of transparency for an image, the blend modes allow you many more creative options to control how the overlapping images interact, based on the colors in each clip. By default, each clip’s blend mode is set to Normal, so changes to a clip’s opacity affect every part of the image equally.
Blend modes can create transparency in an image regardless of the Opacity setting. This is because the pixels of an image with a selected blend mode are combined with the pixels of any clip immediately below it in the timeline. For example, if you overlap two clips, then set the blend mode of the top one to Screen, the darker areas of the screened image become transparent, while the lighter areas remain more solid, resulting in the following image:
Setting the top clip’s blend mode to Multiply yields a result opposite to that of the Screen blend mode, as the darker areas of the image remain solid, and the lighter areas become transparent.
Important: The transparency created by most of the available blend modes affects how a clip combines with overlapping clips underneath. These blend modes do nothing to affect an image’s alpha channel. For information about blend modes that do affect an image’s alpha channel, see Alpha channel blend modes.
Blend modes only affect the combination of a clip with the clips below it. Any clips appearing above have no effect on this interaction, even if the clip is transparent.
For overlapping clips with different blend modes, the bottommost pair of clips is combined first, and that combination then interacts with the next clip up, and so on until all overlapping clips are combined for the final image. In this case, each clip with a specified blend mode only interacts with the image below it, whether that image is a single clip or a pair of clips blended together.
Each blend mode in Final Cut Pro works in conjunction with the Opacity control to alter the interaction between the foreground and background images. Adjusting a clip’s opacity lessens the blending effect assigned to it, even as it reduces that image’s visibility, allowing you to customize any blend mode to better suit your needs.
Blend modes have no interaction with the viewer’s background color.
How blend modes mix colors from overlapping images
Blend modes mix colors from overlapping images based on the brightness values in each color channel in an image. Every image consists of a red, green, and blue channel, and sometimes an additional alpha channel. Each channel contains a range of brightness values that define the intensity of each pixel in the image that uses some of the channel’s color.
The effect that each blend mode has on overlapping clips depends on the range of color values in each clip. The red, green, and blue channels in each overlapping pixel are mathematically combined to yield the final image.
These value ranges can be described as blacks, midrange values, or whites. These regions are loosely illustrated by the chart below.
For example, the Multiply blend mode renders white color values in an image transparent, while black values are left alone. All midrange color values become translucent, with colors in the lighter end of the scale becoming more transparent than the colors in the darker end of the scale.
Note: Changing the color processing setting between Standard and Wide Gamut HDR may affect the look of blended images. See Use wide-gamut HDR color processing in Final Cut Pro for Mac.
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