The latest version of Adobe Photoshop has a two new interesting features…one is called Import Frames as Layers and we quickly covered it in our NAB 2007 Video Podcast on After Effects. The other is called Auto-Align Layers, and is a carry-over from Imageready. John Nack posts about a very cool and very creative MIS-use of these two features combined.

“After attending NAB this week, however, Photoshop engineer Mike Clifton came up with a crafty (and, to be honest, not “as-designed”) use for the Auto-Align Layers command: stabilizing a chunk of video. First, he shot some deliberately horrible footage out the window on our floor. He then used Photoshop’s new Import Frames as Layers command* to turn the video frames into Photoshop layers. Lastly, he selected all the frames and chose Edit->Auto-Align, telling Photoshop to line them all up. To our surprise, the results are not half bad…”

You can view before and after comparisons here. Pretty sweet results, actually.