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matching indoor lighting (chromakeyed) with outdoorlighting (background)
Hello All,
I have a greenscreen shot of a person sitting at a table. i also have a backdrop of a restaurant with alot of windows. not the subject at the table is lit with indoor lighting and it clearly looks like indoor while the restaurant backdrop shot is shot with all natural light.
i’m having a problem matching the two. any suggestions? thanks. oh, and i’m using keylight for the keying and cs3 for the effects.
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4 Replies
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I’d take a look at the max. white and black levels of the outdoor shot and note their intensities. Then I’d use levels or curves on the indoor shot to match them. For colour matching, there are a whole bunch of tools under Color Correction to help you out.
HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace -
I would try and use an adjustement layer over both shots, then add a slight tint to the overall shot….Maybe towards the red or orange to bring the shot warmer. Then I would add a levels filter to the keyed shot and adjust the intensity to try and match the outdoors.
Mark
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also if you study the shot and track in masks to create highlight spots on your foreground subject that match with the background light sources, it’ll better sell the effect. For instance if your shot arcs around the table (or trucks by) then create an appropriately shaped “reflection” of the light source on all would-be-effected areas. A Masked adjustment layer additive glow would probably suit this. Just don’t overprocess this stuff, or you’ll get grainyness. If you can work in a higher bit-depth than 8 I would recommend it.
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Here’s a few tricks that will help. The first is matching values:
1. Apply a Levels effect to the greenscreened footage.
2. Adjust the blacks and whites to match the background. Once those match reasonably, you should also look at the color of the shadows and highlights. Most shadow areas aren’t pure black but rather a cool or warm color. Match those using the individual color channels in the Levels.
3. Create an adjustment layer above everything. Apply Levels to it, and crank the white values all the way (or most of the way) up. This will blow out the footage, but it will reveal subtle differences between your foreground and background. Identify what needs to be fixed to match the two, then temporarily hide the Adjustment layer to make fixes to the Levels on your greenscreen footage. Repeat as needed.
4. The most important thing is to match your shadows and highlights. Not just how much of the subject is in shadow, but the quality of the shadow as well. Are the shadows on the background plate milky? Deep black? Warm? Cool? Whatever it is, your greenscreen shot won’t look natural until the shadows and highlights match, then finally the mids.Another technique for matching direct lighting from background plates:
1. Examine your background to see where the primary light source is coming from, and what kind of light it is. For example, is it bright sunlight coming from the right?
2. Create an adjustment layer above your greenscreen layer. Apply levels, and crank up the whites some.
3. create a mask on the adjustment layer, using the pen tool, that is the shape of light spilling onto your actor. For example, if the light is coming from the upper right, your mask would cover the top of the actor’s head, the camera-right shoulder, and on down the camera-right arm. Feather the mask enough to make the effect look natural.
4. Go back into the Levels on this adjustment layer and reset it. Now you want to dial in settings that match the light source in the background footage. For sunlight, this usually involved upping the input whites, warming it up a touch etc.
5. For this trick to work, you will need to roughly keyframe your mask to follow the actor, but the end result is worth it if done right.
6. When you are done, you will need to precomp the greenscreen footage and the masked adjustment layer to keep the Levels effect from affecting the background as well.There are several other techniques, but these two should get you close.
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