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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects in focus out of focus?

  • in focus out of focus?

    Posted by Matthias on January 27, 2006 at 5:41 pm

    is there a way to take some footage of lets say a close up of a person and put the back ground or foreground out of focus in after effects?

    Scott G replied 20 years, 7 months ago 4 Members · 8 Replies
  • 8 Replies
  • Steve Freebairn

    January 27, 2006 at 5:48 pm

    You could rotoscope the person (basically outline them with a mask) and then apply a blur to the background and then reverse it for the rack focus. Basically the simple answer is yes you can, to make it look real is much harder. It is way better to do that in camera if you can.

  • Matthias

    January 27, 2006 at 6:26 pm

    How do you rotoscope the object, do use the pen tool?

  • Steve Freebairn

    January 27, 2006 at 6:40 pm

    yes, you use the pen tool and you need to go frame by frame for the shots that you need the effect on. there are tutorials on rotoscoping, you just need to search for one, since they would be more helpful than me.

  • Matthias

    January 27, 2006 at 8:01 pm

    is there a way to lets say i rotoscope an oval around someones head, can i track his head movements for the rotoscoped oval to stay with his head.

  • Steve Freebairn

    January 27, 2006 at 9:38 pm

    That is possible in some programs, but you can’t link a mask point to a tracking point yet (I hope you can in the future) but there is a way to do a similar thing. you can use another layer as a mask (a track matte, is what they call it) and then you could track the head and link the track to an oval shape. The problem with this method is that if they rotate their head, the shape changes, but depending on how much you are blurring the background, with some edge feathering the results might be acceptable.

  • Thehardmenpath

    January 28, 2006 at 12:48 am

    Yes, you can, with this script:

    https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=329

  • Matthias

    January 28, 2006 at 1:37 am

    thanks steve, do you know if there are any tutorials on cretive cow about track matting.

  • Scott G

    January 28, 2006 at 12:17 pm

    use the lenscare filter set from http://www.frischluft.com. amazing depth of field effects, with or without a depth matte.

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