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Activity Forums VEGAS Pro Picture Foreground/Background Crop

  • Picture Foreground/Background Crop

    Posted by Ryan Koala on July 30, 2014 at 9:48 pm

    Lets say I have a complex shape, like a photo of a man’s head and neck, and around that and the contour, I’d like erased. This would enable me to put object in the “background”, with lets say, a video.

    To be more clear, lets say I’d like to put a picture of a barrel on the bottom of the screen while a video plays behind it. Just the barrel to take up the foreground – an inorganic shape, oppose to an regular picture shape – like a square or rectangle.

    How would I do this with a photo? It’s essentially like what I’d typically do with a green screen with a person lets say in the foreground, while a video or picture of my choice is in the background. But how does one then make a picture the foreground, with just whatever trivial object you are trying to put in front?

    Following?

    V*V

    John Rofrano replied 11 years, 9 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • John Rofrano

    July 30, 2014 at 11:07 pm

    [Ryan Koala] “How would I do this with a photo? It’s essentially like what I’d typically do with a green screen with a person lets say in the foreground, while a video or picture of my choice is in the background. But how does one then make a picture the foreground, with just whatever trivial object you are trying to put in front?”

    In Vegas Pro you would use the Mask Tool that is in Pan/Crop on the Event and you would draw a mask around the object to eliminate the background. If the object is moving, you would have to keyframe the mask which will could be very difficult and time consuming depending on how much movement there is.

    ~jr

    http://www.johnrofrano.com
    http://www.vasst.com

  • Andrew Lenczycki

    July 31, 2014 at 2:24 pm

    Building a little on what John Rofrano says, if the barrel is just a static picture, I would deal with that in Photoshop Elements. You can erase the background of the picture of the barrel, then save the picture to a PNG format, which retains the alpha channel info, in this case the “invisibility” of the area you erased from the photo. You would then put this PNG photo on a track above the video you want to have in the “background” (i.e. Track 1 – PNG picture, Track 2 – underlying video).

    If it’s not a static photo, then what John talks about with masking is the way to go.

    Andrew Lenczycki

  • Ryan Koala

    August 1, 2014 at 1:16 am

    Oh good, it does not seem like such a complicated process. I just had quick question however – If I do save it as a png, and leave it on top of the video layer in Vegas Pro, wouldn’t it be possible to move it frame by frame, i.e, stop motion the static image with no background in Vegas Pro itself, or would I have to do this in Photoshop?

  • John Rofrano

    August 1, 2014 at 12:12 pm

    [Ryan Koala] “If I do save it as a png, and leave it on top of the video layer in Vegas Pro, wouldn’t it be possible to move it frame by frame, i.e, stop motion the static image with no background in Vegas Pro itself, or would I have to do this in Photoshop?”

    Yes, you can keyframe any motion you want using either Pan/Crop to position it, or Track Motion to position it.

    ~jr

    http://www.johnrofrano.com
    http://www.vasst.com

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