Heres my first attempted at keying - let me know what u think. The image is taken from the documentry "return of darth vader".

Not bad (compared to some crap chroma keying I've seen before). The only think that makes it seem unrealistic is the backlighting on his hair, it makes him stand out way too much

Yeah I agree, unfortunitly I dont have enough knowledge of Adobe Premiere's lighting controls to dim / remove it at present.

Doing a few green / blue screen effects in my current film project u see, so before I actually film anything I'm taking time out to understand keying, and its benifits / drawbacks

The whole thing looks a bit washed out. Other than that, the key is pretty good. I'd say to do a levels adjustment, to deepen the shadows a bit, and darken the character a tiny bit more than the you do the background.

That shot looks great....but:
as an example of a key, it's not very good. But, in that particular screen grab, the problems aren't that obvious unless you look for them. The biggest suggestion I could make is to learn to use garbage masks with all your keys. That will get rid of the really obvious keying artifacts (like the dark areas on the brick and the red reference dot). Also, adjust the levels (like our newest admin suggested...congrads, BTW) but also knock down the white output (to reduce the backlight). Then work with the hue/sat to make it better match the background.

Hey thanks for the advice guys, it will really come in handy for wen setting up the real shoot.

EDIT: Taken ur advice - heres the latest version ...



OH - I'll be using keying for driving scenes as I think it may be too dangerous to ask the actors to drive / act + be filmed at the same time

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bign2000,

good catch on the smudge and red dot Joren!

bign, the levels look a bit better. you'd still need more dramatic light (i know, its hard when you're keying!) to get the actor to blend perfectly. but you didn't take care of the red dot and the shadow in the left. other than that, you've got yourself a key thats a LOT less detectable than most amateur jobs i've seen. you've inspired me to try one someday

try fliping the background, it will make the backlight on his hair sort of apear to have bounced of the wall

The hardest part when lighting the subject is matching the plate, since usually no one actually wrote down where all the lights/sources were for the plate to match them to the subject.

Thanks guys, heres a new version based on some of your suggestions. At first glance it looks pretty much the same but there are a few differences.

The plate has been reversed and the forgrounds colour scheme has been tweaked to match the background.



As for the red dot and blur - cant seem to get rid of them. I am keying a video file u see, because I find keying video to be easier than still grabs - let me know wat u think

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bign2000,

Looks good. I've never tried doing this, so I can't imagine how hard it is.

I've wanted to try to do keying for a long time, be it for stills or movies. I think alot of the people here will agree that although confusing wen u first start to do it, it quickly becomes fun. And once it becomes fun, then its easy. I'm not saying I'm a good keyer - this is my first try afteral, but if it hadnt of been fun, I'm sure I would have gave up on my first attempt.

I suppose the real fun will be wen I start to key MY footage rather than other peoples

flipping it really helped with the light!! to get rid of those pesky smears you need to figure out how to do a garbage matte, or crop it. basically, after keying you need to cut off the edges of the top layer, as close to the actor a you can get.

Been experimenting with the crop / garbage matt. Cant seem to get it right however, as when I crop out the red dot the background behind becomes lighter in colour, as the green / blue key is no longer present because I cropped it out O_0

put a solid blue color (eye drop from original blue) on a layer behind the one your cropping.