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Feathering a garbage matte
Hi, I have a sixteen point matte on a duplicate of a piece of video on video 2 over video 1 where the person is too dark and needs to be brightened up without the background (with is the bright blue sky and clouds) to appear washed out.
I accomplished this with the matte by placing it around the subject and changing the blend mode to linear dodge (add). However, the problem is now the edges of the sixteen point matte are too hard and thus you can blatantly see the separation between the brightened person and the untouched background.
Is there any way to feather a garbage matte or the edges of the frame to allow there to be a better blending of the duplicate image? Or is there a better way overall to do this?
Mikkell Khan
Director
Diamond Films Ltd. (Trinidad and Tobago) -
7 Replies
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Short answer: After Effects.
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Lol, and the long answer?
Mikkell Khan
Director
Diamond Films Ltd. (Trinidad and Tobago) -
Masks in AE can be feathered.
Track Mattes created in Photoshop can have feathered edges and used in Premiere. -
If you were familiar with After Effects, you would probably know about the softness parameter on the masks. If you aren’t familiar with After Effects, it would be too complicated for me to to explain the whole process. Thus the brief answer. Unfortunately, soft mattes aren’t available in Premiere, unless someone makes a 3rd party plug-in – maybe something like Boris FX.
But I would highly recommend getting into After Effects (if you aren’t already). It is a great tool for this sort of thing, as well as many other things.
I should add that although After Effects has variable H and V softness on it’s masks as a whole, Autodesk Combustion has variable softness on each mask line – much nicer.
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Thanks Eric. I know some after effects and I’m exploring this possibility. It should most likely work, thanks for the assistance.
Mikkell Khan
Director
Diamond Films Ltd. (Trinidad and Tobago) -
There is a way to do this. (But it certainly does not beat using After Effects on an every day basis.)
Instead of using the Garbage matte, use the titler to make the mask. Go to the frame you want to adjust, and create a new title. Use the pen tool, or the circle tool, to select your area around the people. Make sure the Fill box is checked with solid white.
Place the title on track 3. Duplicate your footage on track 2, and apply the “Track Matte Key”. Set video 3 as the matte, using matte alpha. Then apply your color correction or levels to adjust the brightness.
Now add a fast blur to the title, and adjust the amount to create the feathered edge.
(See why AE is easier. Especially if you need to animate the mask over time.)
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Genesis! What I love about this technique is that all of the effects are GPU accelerated which on a CUDA card means realtime playback color grading!
Thank you!
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