[Max Jackson]

Okay, that makes things more defined.

Like, mattes involve alpha via chroma/luma. Masks involve cropping by bezier.

One is alpha, the other transparency. That sounds odd, but that’s my understanding of it.

Thanks Joey! 🙂

[Max Jackson]

That definitely makes sense. I specialize in Flash banner media. Creative solutions aren’t always about wowing the client, but pushing the squid through the keyhole…

…on deadline! 😀

[Max Jackson]

Ohhhhhh…Nice!

That’s awesome, thanks David!

[Max Jackson]

Cool, I’ll push the envelope and try to eliminate shadows in my practice then. As it sounds that since you never know what the composite scenario might be, it’s better to expect the unexpected.

Thanks Kevin.

[Max Jackson]

Sorry for the delayed response. I thought I had the thread set to send to email.

Yeah, I actually ended up doing something like that. A two-layer keylight job and then just tweaked the settings and added a simpler choker to the core reducing it a bit for edge pixelation.

Funny, I didn’t even need a junk matte for this one, it just sort of finally fell into place.

Thanks Dave!

[Max Jackson]

I think I figured out something for now, at least it’s pretty darn good for a beginner.

If another beginner is reading this, my issue was dealing with edge and spill in subject with hair blowing in the wind and spill covering roughly 50% of the matte area.

I used a two layer key, edges(top) and core(bottom).

edges: I used Keylight changing the despill bias color to facial tones to assist the core and overall spill, then pulled up the clip white until I was happy with the outline (nevermind the BG). Then I used the Color Key to select the floating leftover green screen BG grey matter still showing up in Keylight’s status window. I repeated this until Keylight’s status view looked clean of floating pixels around the edges. I can add a garbage matte for the rest.

core: the body of the subject was a white coat so it was picking up a ton of green. For this I used Keylight again focusing only on the body. I repeated the same Keylight method as in the edges layer, but this time selected the non-greenest part of the coat I could eyedrop for despill bias. I then used simple choker to cut down on the doubled edge. The hair is still chunky as there are two layers of it, so I’ll probably just garbage matte roto out her head on this layer so her hair’s not so thick at the roots.

This is from what I understand somewhat of a backwards way of doing things as the garbage matte is supposed to come first. However, I’ve learned that getting a good edge is the key (har har) so I started there first and worked my way back.

Thanks everybody for your input!

[Max Jackson]

Yeah, I’m primarily starting out my process with Keylight. I’ll have to check out their user guide. I have Mark Christiansen’s book on the matter, but for color spill he says just fool around with the edge color correction tool. I do and it doesn’t affect a single transparent pixel.

I’ve also played with Aharon’s inverted choke and trace method. Way cool, but his animation example doesn’t have any hair of feathering so I figured a lose hand-made garbage matte would probably work better. Maybe I’m wrong?

Thanks Kevin.

[Max Jackson]

I seem to get the closest with Keylight and the Color Difference key.

However, when I tighten either her hair gets chewy. I use a spill suppressor, but then I still have this like…thin purple (green opposite) outline that I can’t shake.

[Max Jackson]

Hi Bob,

That was a big help. I was able to get “relatively” close to what I was going for, but like you I had to leave the scopes and just play around with it to give me some kind of result.

However, instead of using curves I used the RGB tonewheels (shadows/mids/highlights). It helped me by inverse effect get the red to shine through on the far-right lady’s dress. But if those are indeed blue jeans on the left-man’s legs, then I needed to bring in more blue (less yellow) as they were rather grey. That would make sense though considering how yellow the room is.

I’ll try using the eyedropper and curves next challenge I get.

As for the interface, I feel I was initially using the less correct RGB WVM, the one where they’re all stacked on top of each other. The side by side view is much less confusing. That and my feel for the vectorscope is that it’s more-a-less a “target gauge” where you want the colors to be in the middle, but not too small (dark).

Thanks Bob!!

[Max Jackson]

Hi Dave,

I’ve been playing with Color Finesse all day. I’m starting to get the hang of it…Some what.

The one thing I’ve run into some trouble with I think is how colors inversely affect one another. Like, I have the WVM all stretched out for each channel (RG and B). The luma is in a good spot, yet I can’t seem to get cyan out of this picture no matter what I do.

The vectorscope is leaning towards the cyan, but…by playing with shadows, highlights etc. I just can’t seem to get the clothes of the people to make a plain red without pushing the entire RGB pedestal back into the red as well.

This is the image:
https://www.yourlifere-viewed.com/images/ex%20difficult%20color%20before.jpg

I’m trying to figure out what technique is used when Master RGB controls don’t cut it. I’m all tangled up in the shadows and highlights getting nowhere.

Thanks to you and anybody who has suggestions.