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Photograph Separation for Z axis Animation
This is my first time coming across thing sort of a project, but I have a client that wants a foreground person & a middleground person cut or masked away from the background of a digital photograph that the client has taken.
They then want the two people to move independently of the background photograph in Z space without revealing the obvious holes in the background. They have no clean background plates to work with, only the photograph which is fairly cluttered.
Any suggestions?
Thanks, Jerry
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7 Replies
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I am not sure what type of animation your client wants with the individuals, but I might try to photoshop a clean bg plate from surrounding areas.
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Hi Jerry,
I think as long as you move the ‘people’ layers (the layers with the bg masked out) towards the camera in Z space, and perhaps up a bit as well, there is no need for the holes in the background to be shown. You could also move all the layers forward in Z space to begin with, then when you move the people layers further forward you could move the BG plate backwards slightly. Another thing that could be done is duplicating the people layers and then adding a blur or glow effect to the lower layers, so that the edges of the people layers appear to shine. I’ve seen this in other people’s work, and it gives a nice separation between the bg and the people. Anyway, just some ideas.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
Mike,
Thanks for your reply…that was the very first thing I thought of, but these bg’s are too cluttered with other people, office equiptment, furnature, etc. I was thinking I could possibly move the people slightly toward camera to envoke a scale effect hopefully withour exposing any of the bg plate’s removal.
That’s the only thing I have figured so far. The people’s animation doesn’t need much, just a multiplane effect type of move. -
Simon,
Thanks for the helpful ideas, these could actually work for this project. Another question, personal opinion really, do you think masking out the people would be done well enough in AE or should I just use photoshop & bring in the layers separately? I originally though I would just mask out one photo layer in AE & then duplicate original photo for a bg plate, however now I am thinking I could just pull the separate pieces in from Photoshop instead & limit my AE layers. Thoughts? -
I suppose it depends how quickly you can work in PS versus AE. I’m quite a bit quicker in AE, so I would probably do it all in there. However, doing it in PS would mean you didn’t have to create a huge comp for your full res image and stress AE out!
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
Photoshop. Absolutely.
But, I’ve got to interject a warning. The foreground objects do not need to move very far for the background hole to become visible. You could be quite disappointed in how difficult this is to pull off well. It’s not easy to get this to work unless you can fill the hole or at least make it about 20% smaller with some careful cloning. Or try applying some other effect to the items you have removed. Use the mask you’ve created to select the object and apply some interesting visual effect. this takes careful coordination with he client to develop a style for the project they may not have considered but that has become crucial because of their unrealistic desires.
Keep in mind you don’t really need to use the plate with the holes as the background, you can use the intact version.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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Jerry,
Is there anyway to post a small image of the picture you are attempting to manipulate without breaching any of your clients confidences. I would like to see just how complicated the bg is. Also, have you considered placing another element in the hole left by the people you are rotoscoping out so that you dont have to precisely clone things like people’s faces which may have been cut off.
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