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Cleaning Up an Alpha Channel – Photoshop vs AE
Hi,
I just saw a great Photoshop tutorial where you can ‘clean up’ an Alpha Channel with the Burn tool. Basically, you set it for the shadows with its Exposure way down, and you can brush over a b&w image to make grey/white areas black, without affecting the white areas very much at all. This is fantastic for getting at hair and other fine details that would be really hard to get a good Alpha Channel for.
My question “Is there a way to do a similar thing right in After Effects?” I know you can use Paint tools to paint on the Alpha Channel of a clip but is there something equivalent to Photoshop’s Burn tool – that gradually works in black areas without really affecting white areas. Would be a great addition to those of us dealing with difficult keying work.
Thanks in advance to anyone with a solution.
Cheers,
ALEX
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3 Replies
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You could burn an alpha channel with an alpha channel… if that makes sense.
Shift the channels of two instances of the same footage to Alpha only, then set the top layer to one of the darken modes: Multiply, Linear Burn, etc. Or you could use one of the overlay modes to boost contrast (darken the darks, brighten the brights): Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, etc. You can change the opacity or alter the levels of the top layer to vary the effect.
It’s not as “hands on” but it could help in certain scenarios.
Darby Edelen
Lead Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Do you have a link to that tutorial?
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Sorry, don’t have a link. It was on fxphd, which you have to pay to be a member of.
You could probably find something like it out there on the Internet though. Maybe with keywords like “Burn tool” and “Alpha Channel”, “Photoshop”.
ALEX
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