• Adobe After Effects

  “Instant Sex” technique Questions – Experienced Users?

  Posted by Danny Winn on March 2, 2010 at 2:24 pm

  I’ve got some questions for anyone that has a lot of experience using Chris and Trish Meyers “Instant Sex” technique.

  I have messed with all these setting many different ways but I just want to make sure there’s not certain optimal settings that I should be using.

  1. What is the best amount of Gaussion Blur to use on the upper layer?
  2. What is the best Mode for the upper layer? Screen, Overlay,Add?
  3. What is the optimal amount of opacity on the upper level?
  4. Do you do any color correction on the original layer (Bottom) or do you do all of your Color Correcting on the upper layers?

  5. Does anybody have any samples of this technique on the net anywhere? Before and after would be great. I have seen stills from the book but they are not very impressive.

  Thanks much!

  Darby Edelen replied 16 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Danny Winn

  March 2, 2010 at 7:50 pm

  Yeah, that’s what I suspected, just wanted to make sure I didn’t overlook some important parameters.

  Oh BTW Dave, you helped me with some Keylight technique a while back and it came out really good, took 3rd in the contest. Here’s the final output,

  Thanks Dave.
• 

  Jeremy Allen

  March 2, 2010 at 8:47 pm

  Pretty much what Dave said.. Every piece of footage is different… so the amount of blur, or the blending mode, or the opacity is totally dependent on the pixel values in the footage. Certain blend modes will make the footage much darker or lighter, others have a more subtle effect. Screen, Add and Overlay typically produce pleasing results, as do some of the light modes e.g. Hard Light, Soft Light, etc.. But again it all depends on the footage you are using.. This is one of those things where you just have to play with it and have fun. Its a good feeling when you find something you didn’t even know you were looking for and get one of those happy accidents!

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  Darby Edelen

  March 11, 2010 at 7:26 pm

  The attributes you set will be entirely dependent on the look you want to get.

  If you want everything to glow (get brighter) then you’ll use Add or Screen with a Blur.

  If you want the contrast of the scene to go up then you’ll use Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, or Linear Light and maybe a Blur or maybe not.

  If you want a bleach bypass look you can use Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light or Linear Light with a Tint (or Tritone if you want a color cast).

  Also, consider using an adjustment layer with these effects and blend modes instead of a duplicate of the footage. You can then do your color correction on the lower footage layer and the adjustment layer will apply the effects to the color corrected composite.

  Darby Edelen

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