Chromakey Backgrounds

I have a client that wants to be "creative" with his background for his picutures to make it look like he is in other places. Because of this I have been asked to shoot the photos with a chroma green background and then process it out before deliver the final image with no background.

Has anyone here ever done this before and if so did you use any tools to make life easier to filter out the chroma green? This seems like it would be really time consuming without a tool/filter. I am a PS CS2 user.

This is a big subject ,, basicly you want your green blue-screen to be lit very even with no wrinkles, hot spots or shadows , you want your subject enough in front of the screen as to limit shadows on the screen and color spill and fringing on the subject , the better the screen the better result you will get ,, it doesnt have to be green either any high contrast matt color that is very contrasty different to your subject will do .

The cutting out part can be done in PS using channels , extract tool etc ,, or there are 3rd party plugins for the job ,, Fluid Mask ,, Primatte , Knockout , Auto Mask etc it all depends on your needs and the plugins offer many clean up tools that PS dont have ,, chromakey and compositing is a tricky thing to do really well , some jobs are relativly easy while others are a nightmare .

http://www.videomaker.​com/article/8787/
http://homepage.mac.co​m …homemade_greens​creen.html
http://www.studio1prod​uctions.com/Articles/C​hromaLighting.htm

Rod

Here is a link to a good Russell Brown video on extraction. The biggest challenge will be the color spill between the subject and the background. Get your lighting spot on. Good Luck

http://av.adobe.com/ru​ssellbrown/ExtractSM.m​ov

Thanks for all of the information. The spill over is much more problematic than I imagined it would be. If I can just get this refined so it didn't take so much time to remove the halo's even after running one of the plugins.

Chromakey screen are awsome... IF you know how to use them.

Lighting is everything... I learned this the hard way.

you are absolutely right, lighting is everything. I have some shots that worked real well. The ones that had issues did not have enough overhead light