Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity Forums Adobe After Effects How do I add an effect to just a mask or to what’s behind the mask

  • How do I add an effect to just a mask or to what’s behind the mask

    Posted by Sean Harper on June 12, 2008 at 3:18 am

    If someone could help me I would be incredibly appreciative! 🙂

    I am in the process of learning After Effects so there may be a simple way to do this I just haven;t figured it out.

    So I have an Actor sitting on a bench which is about 30 feet away from a lot of trees and I am trying to creative a depth of field to make it seem like everything behind my Actor’s is blurred out. And since my Camera doesn’t have Depth capabilities I have to do this in post production.

    So I put a mask around him and the bench and then added a lens blur… But I am having trouble keeping the effect out of the mask. What should I do?

    Chris Wright replied 17 years, 11 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Mike Clasby

    June 12, 2008 at 6:57 am

    Add an adjustment layer.

    Draw your mask for the man-on-bench, there on the adjustment layer.

    Set the mask to subtract.

    Add you blur effect to the adjustment layer.

    Feather the mask as needed.

    Adjust the mask with Mask Expansion (MM reveals all mask properties) to grow or shrink the area of the mask.

    This Cow tut from Andrew might be of help too:

    https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/dof.php

  • Chris Wright

    June 12, 2008 at 7:12 am

    You could try the difference matte and isolate actors by luma or rgb so that rotoscoping is not required. It has worked great for me. I can set the actor to be the only thing not blurred automatically.

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy