Using a green screen

[Shirley1963]

I do a fair bit of portrait work. I don't want to invest in a whole lot of backdrops but want a new look for every shoot. Has anyone had any experience in using a 'green screen' and then photoshoping a background in?

[Vermin87]

i've seen pictures of people who have tried... You better be good at photoshop if you wanna try this. I think the hardest thing to deal with is if there are shadows or highlights on the background AND the color of the skin from the reflected green light. Whether or not it is evident at first glance, the color of your backdrop affects the skin tone and color pretty noticably, and so a mis-matched backdrop might produce a "fake" look.

[sparcd]

I do this with Adobe After Effects using Keylight, which works well, but more film orientated as well. There are some good green screen plugins out there.

[brunester]

i've seen pictures of people who have tried... You better be good at photoshop if you wanna try this. I think the hardest thing to deal with is if there are shadows or highlights on the background AND the color of the skin from the reflected green light. Whether or not it is evident at first glance, the color of your backdrop affects the skin tone and color pretty noticably, and so a mis-matched backdrop might produce a "fake" look.
when i use a green screen for film work (adobe after effects FTW)
its best to have the model about 10 feet from the backdrop to prevent most of those things from hapening. the hardest park about it is lighting. u want the back drop as even as possible and with the model far enough in front u can light them as you want
check out
theforce.net/theater (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/theforce.net/theater)
in their tutorial section for alot of great stuff on greenscreening(chroma keying)

[milleker]

I don't think I've ever seen a chromakey'd background in a photograph that didn't look fake. If someone wants to prove me wrong I'd eat my words - but just never have. The colors are off, or there is a slight green/blue fringe around the subject, in hair, etc.. Of course, to non-photographers it might not be visible at all.

I'd recommend getting a grey background - either paper or muslin. You can then get grids, cookies, and gels and make a ton of different backgrounds from that. Even blowing it out for high-key or even turning it black if you bring your subject forward enough away from the background.

[DocFrankenstein]

Theoretically, you can't chroma-key with a bayer sensor. You need either a 3ccd video camera or a foveon sensor to render the edges properly.

Of course the internet downsamples look quite nice.

[brunester]

yeh they use a green screen for digital video because they are the most sensitive to green.
they use a blue screen for film video because the film is the most sensitive to blue
now what is it for dslrs?

[milleker]

Whatever color (green or blue) that your subject isnt wearing? :)

yeh they use a green screen for digital video because they are the most sensitive to green.
they use a blue screen for film video because the film is the most sensitive to blue
now what is it for dslrs?

[ssim]

I've only ever tried this once on a friends chroma key background which was green. I spent way too much time in photoshop and in the end it still looked fake to me. Being able to get a unique look in each and every portrait is a nice idea but when you are doing studio shooting this is impractical as well.

If you are doing enough portrait work splurge for a few different backgrounds and then you can always change them somewhat by adding props to the shots to make them a little bit different. If you are really good (and I mean really good) at photoshop then you might get away with this. Blending the digital background to the shot has always been the hardest for me.

[DocFrankenstein]

yeh they use a green screen for digital video because they are the most sensitive to green.
they use a blue screen for film video because the film is the most sensitive to blue
now what is it for dslrs?
Digital's noisiest channel is green, that's why there's 2 greens for every blue or red in the bayer sensor.

Film depends on emulsion.

They use blue or green simply because those are the colors which never appear in humans no matter the skin color.

The other primary color left to chromakey is red, and humans would be transparent.


IMHO chromakey is only truly useful for video. If you can actually afford to have the space and equipment to light up your background, then you can definitely afford the standard white/gray/black set of photopaper.

[braduardo]

My wife is really good at knocking her subjects off the background. She doesn't do much with a chromakey, but she does have one somewhere.

[milleker]

I have noticed with web work and working with transparencies you'd want to prepare the graphic depending on where you were placing it. If I was placing a graphic with transparencies on a light colored page, I would place it on a light colored background and then mask it from the background.. Opposite for the dark background. Basically the anti-aliasing of the pixels and all that mumbo-jumbo made it easier to blend because you could never nix that final 'fringe' around the subject.

Perhaps here would be the same? High-key blown out background if you plan on placing your subject on something light colored and vice versa for a dark background. In this instance it would make sense that as Doc said, Chroma just ain't designed to work on our equipment.

I would rather have a white or black fringe around my subject than a green/blue one any day. Well, if I absolutely had to have one at all that is...

[liro]

I do a fair bit of portrait work. I don't want to invest in a whole lot of backdrops but want a new look for every shoot. Has anyone had any experience in using a 'green screen' and then photoshoping a background in?

Hi Shirley
I have used many programs and work daily with the Photoshop Tools ( Background eraser, Masking, etc) however I have found what I believe to be the most effective tool for green screen editing, a piece of software called Ultimatte, it is a Plugin which runs in Photoshop ( I am using PS CS3 ) and has brilliant results with all things being equal - Green screen well lit etc.

I just completed a sports shot for an advert and used the green screen and Ultimatte to do the editing.

If you are interested in getting to know more about the software, drop me a mail. I will attach a image of the advert which has the model taken in the studio with Green Screen. Using Ultimatte and Editing in Photoshop.

[waynedsargent]

I use a program called photokey. It is drag and drop fully customizable works really well.

[braduardo]

Corel Knockout 2 is what my wife uses. It works pretty well, especially if you don't have a nice, neat background.

[c71clark]

It can be done without a green screen, but green is nice because it's not a common color for people to wear. The following 2 were against gray backgrounds. The biggest problem I have found so far is that there is always a thin fringe around the subject, and I have to zoom deep into the photo and manually remove it. I hope to try this with a green screen soon and see if it helps.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3214/2383924861_be5d911052.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2373/2273458964_d72da978e6.jpg

[LIBOLADY]

YES I NEED TO KNOW WHAT KIND OF PROGRAM I NEED TO DO THIS I USE ADOBE6.0 NOW + AND I MADE ME A GREEN SCREEN BUT HAVEN'T USED IT YET BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW WHAT PROGRAM TO USE OR WHAT TO DO WITH IT . THIS IS ALL NEW TO ME . LOST AND NEED HELP THANK YOU ELIZABETH

[HuskyKMA]

YES I NEED TO KNOW WHAT KIND OF PROGRAM I NEED TO DO THIS I USE ADOBE6.0 NOW + AND I MADE ME A GREEN SCREEN BUT HAVEN'T USED IT YET BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW WHAT PROGRAM TO USE OR WHAT TO DO WITH IT . THIS IS ALL NEW TO ME . LOST AND NEED HELP THANK YOU ELIZABETH

First of all...please press the Caps Lock key. ;)

Second...did you read the thread? A bunch of people have already said what programs and methods they use to accomplish this.

[Mike-DT6]

It can be done without a green screen, but green is nice because it's not a common color for people to wear. The following 2 were against gray backgrounds. The biggest problem I have found so far is that there is always a thin fringe around the subject, and I have to zoom deep into the photo and manually remove it. I hope to try this with a green screen soon and see if it helps.


Really nice photographs there. Strangely enough, when I first saw your photographs, before reading what you typed, I thought that the one on the right had a distinctive green tint to upper-back and above-shoulder area, at least on my (calibrated) monitor.

Regarding colour choice for backgrounds, this isn't an area of photography I have much experience in, but in general, but wouldn't blue be a better choice than green? Blue is far more prevalent in the various natural daylight colour temperatures, plus is a more natural tint for a human being to portray, despite the fact they may indeed be dead towards the bluer end of the scale! :lol:

Mike