tony cooper wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:30:31 -0600, Joel wrote:
tony cooper wrote:
<snip>
These steps are easily researchable on the web. It’s recommended to place the subject about 4′ in front of the chroma green background and to light the background from the sides to eliminate color spill and shadows.
What you both say is just part of the very BASIC of photography, or it has nothing to do with green-screen specific but Photoshopy (Video as well) technique. BTW, I do not against what you two saying, but just add some
In basic photography, the background is not normally lit in any special manner. In studio photography, a solid background will be lit in a similar way, but there is less importance to lighting a "picture" background. Positioning to avoid shadows would be important, though.
Shadow was what I am aiming at, but this ain’t Photographer so I won’t go for detail on the shadow stuff.
My question is about the software. Many companies offer software to use in conjunction with a green screen. I can’t figure out if they do anything different than what Photoshop does.
YES, there are plug-in for photoshop which get the idea from VIDEO, or green-screen is original designed for Video. And the problem that some of you guys (not you specific but in general) don’t want to hear thing you don’t want to hear. So I will try to give a little more detail
– YES, there are several and they cost $400-800+ a pop.
– NO, you do not need to spend any extra $$$ on any of them because they ain’t any more special than Select Color with few extra tool to deselect some area with similar color (green).
– It’s much wiser to use regular Masking plug-in,
I don’t know of any "regular Masking plug-in". I know only of masking by the standard feature in Photoshop.
There are several of them, chroma is one of them. The Photoshop built-in masking can be as powerful as the commercial plug-in, but it requires lot of skill and different techniques combined. Also, Photoshop offers several different ways of masking.
– You can use the Extract which is similar to many regular Masking plug-ins do, except they are better and give more features/options than the Extract option does. You may want to check the Fluid-Mask and EZ-Mask for some general idea.
– You can use Quick Mask command which I often do. And with lot of practice and combination of layer, and other tricks you can make very good mask
– Or you can use CHANNEL for masking, and this seems that many Photoshop users use this technique. I did start with this and few others, but I had quite abit of problem with the edge (very hard to blend the forground and background). And because I didn’t have enough masking skill then so I had to develope my own technique (using Mask command or the [o] button), and after years of using it I am be able to do a better job than most powerful plug-in (except flying hair which I don’t do so the plug-in is better)
or learning to use
Photoshop’s built-in tool which is capable of doing the hundreds of $$$ can. YES, the regular Masking plug-in has more advance than Green-Screen plug-in
In what way?
Practicing and more practicing! here is your choices
– If you want to learn to use the Photoshop built-in then you may want to invest on the commercial video tutorial called Mask & Channels by Lynda. I don’t use the method shown in video, but it gives lot of different good techniques. I don’t use any of them not because they are not good, but because I had tried many similar before, but because of lacking of experience I got stuck at some point so I had to develope a different technique. Or the video wasn’t available at the time.
– Take a look at the plug-in like EZ-Mask and Fluid Mask etc.. they are not cheap but will give you a good started. Or just look at their video tutorials to have some idea what the regular Mask plug-in is.
– Or the 3rd option is to practice the Photoshop built-in tools.
It may take you few days/weeks on the first tries, but if you keep on practicing then who know months/years later it may only take you few minutes.
Some will remove the green (or blue) and replace it with a background image, but that seems the same to me as popping in a background image as a layer.
GREEN (a special green not normal green) because we won’t see that kind of green in our daily life, making thing much easier to separate. That’s it!
The web sources say that the blue and greens used are used because they are the colors that are the most different from flesh tones. It’s not the rarity of the color, but the opposite factor.
That’s it! and it has been working great for video and it’s been using on video for ages. But as I mentioned earlier that Graphic & Video are 2 different beasts, and graphic has a much more requirement than video so the Green-Screen doesn’t work well on graphic as it does on video.
I have the impression that the software is for those who don’t have Photoshop, but I’m trying to verify this.
.. and if the foreground is GREEN
The "foreground" is usually a subject, and unless that foreground is a Martian, the green will be distinct from the flesh tones.
It doesn’t matter what the foreground is, or try to think in general instead of ????. Or it won’t kill you if you wear a green shirt, the tree won’t die because the leave is green etc..
then you may find WHITE background is a
much better choice than Green-Screen background. Or I am trying to make the WHITE more special than GREEN-SCREEN.
The foreground subject’s clothing is more likely to have white bits, or colors near-to white, than either the green or blue used in these screens.
I can see that you may have some learning problem here, because it seems like you are looking for some negative and having problem getting a whole picture.
I appreciate your comments, Joel, but what I’m really interested in is finding someone who *does* use a green or blue screen and eliciting comments from them about the need for software.
Good luck on your quest. Also, if you want to find out yourself then why not just download some sample then try it yourself?
