I'm shooting a film and there is one photo I need to use, except it's a low-quality JPG. What are my best options for trying to get the most out of it in FCP7? I'm not limited to FCP if someone recommends another product, such as Photoshop
If you need to scale it up I would do it in a photo editing program such as Photoshop rather than FCP. I imagine PS has a more complex scaling algorithm. It will end up pixelated so perhaps a light blur might smooth it out. If it is already large enough but just of a poor quality I don't know what else to do. Nasty compression artifacts are pretty hard to get rid of. I would convert it to 16bit also before doing the editing.
If the photo is original you might re-shoot it. If it is a web download you might search for another shot of it at a higher resolution. You might also consider progressively softening a few shots before and progressively sharpening back a few shots after it in your sequence to lessen the shock.
