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Tracking a non-animated mask
I have a shot consisting of a pan along a river bank. While color correcting I added a solid layer (with the multiply mode on) above the pan with a nice blue to white ramp to help bring out the sky. Of course, the ramp interferes with the treeline causing the tops of the trees to be a funny shade of blue.
Ideally, I would like to add a mask to the solid layer with the ramp, track the treeline pan (very easy because the sky is very light and trees are very dark) and link the two together. I have read in previous posts that you can do this using the trackers perspective corner pin feature but I couldn’t get the results I was looking for.
My big problem is that I don’t want the ramp layer to move, I want the ramp layer’s mask to move.
Any pointer would be greatly appreciated.
DS
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2 Replies
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Instead of botherng with tracking a mask. You said the sky is very bright and the trees are dark. In this case I would either create a luma matte out of one of the color channels or try a luma key. If the sky and trees have some color in it then look at each channel individually and see which one has the most contrast between the sky and trees. Let’s say it’s the blue channel.
Duplicate your footage. On the duplicate, use whichever channel effect allows you to isolate the channels (not at AE right now). Have it set so that you only see the blue channel. Then add a levels and crush them until the sky is pure white and the tress are pure black and there is some soft gradiation between them at the edges of the trees.
Now you may need to precomp this layer. But put it one layer higher than your gradient layer. Set your gadient layer’s track matte to luma. So that the greyscale of the layer you just worked on knocks out the gradient to only be in the sky area. Then set the gradient to multiply. You may also need to do a quick garbage mask around the sky to kill any other spots that leaked in that you don’t want.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Thanks for the response. I actually tried your idea first and was having some difficulty cleaning up the area between individual tree branches.
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