Super imposing people onto backgrounds

phantelope wrote in post #17628044
I guess that's also possible

I had contact with a "photographer" who worked for one of these companies, i saw their software and their "workflow".

To work for them you need no prior photographic knowledge or skill, as their lighting and camera setup are all "standardised" and the have quick guides to set up camera, lights and background. They use a in-house tether software to catalog all the photos, same goes for the editing platform its in-house which also is connected to their lab.

Not to say it they all do it like this, but this how the biggest company here in Sweden does it anyways.

Be wary of under quoting. Try it out and see how much effort it takes, and it'll be a lot in terms of research then implementation. Give them a reasonable quote for photography, let's say $2000, then it may be $10,000 for the green screen option.

Thanks for all of the valuable feedback, it looks like it might be more work than it's worth to be totally honest, I will provide them with the photos in front of their key sponsors backdrop and give them rights to edit should they choose to. I might look into the green screen option once I've got a good work space ie my own studio but that's a couple of years down the track.


Thanks again


Jason

Milutiche wrote in post #17628182
Thanks for all of the valuable feedback, it looks like it might be more work than it's worth to be totally honest, I will provide them with the photos in front of their key sponsors backdrop and give them rights to edit should they choose to. I might look into the green screen option once I've got a good work space ie my own studio but that's a couple of years down the track.


Thanks again


Jason

I think you are on the right track. Sometimes a client understands what is possible, but never considers what is practical,

You can pull a decent key in Photoshop even from a fairly bad shot in front of a green screen or sheet. The idea is that the green channel of the RGB image will be lighter (grayscale) in the background where the green screen is compared to the darker skin tones and clothing (unless people are wearing green!). That is, the green channel will have the most contrast for most skin tones and non-green clothing.

You can make an action that selects the green channel and does a curves move to blow the green channel background to white and the remainder to black - making a binary mask with a feathered edge.

However, depending upon the level of precision required for your output, you may have some labor intensive tweaking to get hairs and other small features masked properly on some subjects.

If you have never done something like that before, it is an experiment for when you have extra time, not when you have a large shoot on your hands for a paying client.

Good luck with your gig.

kirk

For reference, many times Joel Grimes shoots his subject and then looks for a background. He lights his subject the way he wants it and then adds the background regardless of how his subject was shot. He then blends the two w/ additional edits to make them work.

I've done what the OP is asking using white, grey and even black as my backdrop. This being for 150-200 kids. I've got a process that works well and I've done it for years so for me its not that hard and you learn what you can ignore and how to light the BG in comparison to the subject. For a first go around it will be challenging.