Replacing color back grounds.

Aaron Wilson

I paid over $400.00 for a plugin and I can't get it to work.. they gave my money back.. but thats not the point. What the plugin allowed me or should have let me do is shoot against a green or blue color back ground and replace that color with another picture or color back ground. In the past I have always put the photo on a trans back ground and erased all that needed to be deleted... Is there a better or easyer way or a plugin that works???
I would like to shoot against a solid color then take out the color and replace it with the back ground needed. Any and all help would be great!!

XO-Studios

Aaron Wilson wrote:

I paid over $400.00 for a plugin and I can't get it to work.. they gave my money back.. but thats not the point. What the plugin allowed me or should have let me do is shoot against a green or blue color back ground and replace that color with another picture or color back ground. In the past I have always put the photo on a trans back ground and erased all that needed to be deleted... Is there a better or easyer way or a plugin that works???
I would like to shoot against a solid color then take out the color and replace it with the back ground needed. Any and all help would be great!!

OK a couple of things on chromakey, or for that matter other solid color backdrops. In order of most importance:

1) Have enough distance between the subject and the backdrop in the shot to avoid/prevent color wash.

2) Light the background seperately from the main subject to create seperation.

3) If you have a choice, go with a color that mathces or comes somewhat close in color to your subject, so a color wash is less noticeable.

Now on photoshop, a couple of techniques:

1) Select: Color Range (works almost everytime for me)

2) Calculate a mask using channels and creat an alpha channel (complicated but does do a great job on things like hair)

PM me for more information, I have foubnd, that I can almost always do a better job with the two techniques above and cominations thereof than what I have seen with some plug ins, in what I consider a short amount of time.

FWIW,

XO,