using keylight to key out white background?

[Ken Evans]

I’ve found that keylight works well in some scenarios and bad in others. Try the colour keyer instead.

[Matthew Woods]

I don’t find the color keyer very clean. The best way I find to key something on a white or black backdrop is to duplicate the layer, desaturate the top layer (either with hue saturation, or shift channels whichever gives you the best result, The black and white effect in CS5 might work well too). Then use the levels effect to get a high contrast silhouette. Finally, set the lower layer to use the top layer as either a luma matte, or inverted luma matte depending on if you started with a white or black backdrop.

Hope that helps,

-Matt

[Chris Wright]

Here’s my AE cs3 procedural keyer for luma/sat.

use matte adj controls layer to create a procedural matte keyer using the inner/outer sliders

https://www.megaupload.com/?d=AA6X17LF

https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/

[Patryk Rebisz]

Chris can you elaborate just a bit?

Patryk Rebisz
Director/DP
http://www.patrykrebisz.com
(917) 291-2565

[Chris Wright]

I made an easy to use matte keyer. Simply select the matte adj controls composition and click on the adjustment layer.

Its effect controls inner/outer b/w mattes are scripted to
run an alpha/saturation channel on your footage that you can see in the output composition.

https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/

[Chris Ruckert]

keylight pulls very good keys on chroma (color, green or blue) but us useless on pulling keys on white.
It is not you, it is keylight. Procedural keying is the only way to go, albeit more complicated.

[Oliver Smith]

A (half) decent way to key away a white background is to use keylight to pick the colours of your subject until it disappears leaving only the white background, and then use this layer as an Alpha Inverted Matte of the same bit of footage…

This has worked well for me in the past

[Danny Hays]

Ultra will do it.

[Danny Hays]

Granted, there was no real white in that flower, and one click gave me that key. Here’s alot harded one where I had to tweek it, still not perfect but it will depend on how much white is in your clip.

[John Gerome]

Here’s a solution for keying out white on high contrast material. I’ve got a silhouetted couple dancing on a white background. First I added a Hue/Saturation effect, and colorized the whole thing turning the white area green. The black parts stay black because they were black to begin with, and they don’t change therefore – but the white does. Next I use the Keylight effect, and using the screen colour picker, I select the green. That’s it.