Today’s Question: Is it possible to take a still image from a video file in Lightroom Classic? If so, how?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can very easily create a still image from a frame of a video in Lightroom Classic with the “Capture Frame” option.
More Detail: Lightroom Classic enables you to manage video clips alongside your still photos, which can be very helpful if you use video to supplement your photography. In addition to being able to trim or apply basic adjustments to a video, you can also capture a still frame from the video.
Start by browsing the video in the loupe view display in the Library module. You then want to pause the video at the frame you’d like to capture. You could play the video and pause at the right moment, but it is generally easier to use the slider that indicates the current point in the video being displayed to “scrub” through the video to find the right frame.
Once you’re viewing the frame of the video that you want to capture as a still image, click the “frame” button to the right of the numbers indicating the current position within the video. That button has an icon that features a rectangle with a frame around it. Clicking the button will bring up a popup menu, where you can select the “Capture Frame” option to create a JPEG image from the current frame of the video.
Keep in mind that this still image extracted from the video will generally be of relatively low resolution. Many still cameras that support video have a maximum video resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, which equates to about a 2-megapixel capture. If your camera supports 4K video resolution, the pixel dimensions will be around 3840×2160 pixels (the exact values will vary among different cameras), which translates to about an 8-megapixel capture.