colored layers…

[Michael Szalapski]

Depends on the color of the background behind the airplanes in your footage. If it’s footage of an airplane against a cloudless sky you could use keying methods to isolate the plane.

If it’s a busy background behind the airplane in your original footage, like, if the keying doesn’t work, you will need to do rotoscoping.

In either case, you merely need to isolate the plane, then you can put whatever you want behind it and use the plane as a track matte for whatever you want it to look like.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Mike Park]

Let me make sure I understand you. You basically want to take a real video of an airplane, cut it out, color it one solid color, and color everything else another solid color – kind of like clipart.

The ease of this depends on the difference between the colors or luminance of the airplane vs. its surroundings. You will want to key out either the plane or the background. Then, simply create a new solid the color you want and place the keyed footage on top. Use a fill from “effects/generate/fill” on the keyed layer and you have it licked. Easy in concept – may be trickier depending on how well the keying goes.

The other option is rotoscoping, where you will need to manually cut out each frame with masks instead of keying – if there is not enough seperation between the luminance or colors.

Best of luck

[Erik Waluska]

Rotoscoping or keying the footage. Which one to use depends on the footage and the background.

[Erik Waluska]

Whoa, that was weird! All three of us posted within seconds of each other with the same basic answer. Jinx!

[Mike Park]

That happens when it is the correct answer. Now if we had 3 different, mutually exclusive ideas…

[Alan Lloyd]

“Now if we had 3 different, mutually exclusive ideas…”

…then you’d be economists.

[Chris Balogh]

Thank you all for the same answers…lol. Are you all in the same room…weird. Anways I thought that and was making sure…could i even try a longer process of cutting the objects out in photoshop by rendering a film strip through premiere to be real precise?

[Michael Szalapski]

Rotoscoping in AE can be pretty precise, but yes; you can do it in Photoshop too.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Mike Park]

or politicians.