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Transparent Figures

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LedSled

Technical User
Apr 11, 2006
1
US
I recently discovered something pretty cool in Adobe, I figured I would share it to help some of you guys out.

I am not very adobe literate so please excuse me if my "tip" is completely obvious and already widely known.

Well recently I was working on a video in which I wanted to talk to a still image. I wanted to the image to look like I was almost talking to a cut out... it took some trying but I figured out A way to do it.

I started out with the picture in Photoshop and drew around the image (I had a picture of a girl), I traced around the girl and had the entire image green but her. I then loaded a clip into Premiere (6.5) and loaded the still green backgrounded image into the second video slot. I set the transparent settings to "green screen" and fiddled with the threshold and cutoff settings. I notice first and foremost my my image was distored, the height was basically correct but the width was not. So I added the "Transform" effect to the still image and adjusted the width. The only problem with this? For some reason the clip underneeth would shrink in width as well. It was only as wide as the newly adjusted still image and the rest of the screen was black. When I set the setting to "Alpha Channel" (Transparent), the underlying clip was fine but my still image was not transparent. I decided to export the Alpha Channel version AND the green screen version. Reason? The Green Screen version had my still image with transparency, but the Alpha Channel had the correct width for the underlying clip. I figured I might be able to "fill in the gaps". I then started a new Premiere file, and Layered the GREEN SCREEN version on top of the Alpha Channel version... Confusing? I hope not. I then took this "Green Screen" exported version, adjusted the transparency settings, this time selecting "Luminice" and setting it very low (Threshold 1, Cutoff 0) and BOOM... I had it, Me talking to a still cut out image... Hope this helps. Hope there wasnt something extremely easy I could have done to do this...
 
The easier way is to cut out the wanted part of the overlay image and paste it onto a new layer above the background and save as a PSD file. The, when you import the still, you will be asked which layer you want. Choose just the cutout layer. Drag onto V2 or above to get automatic Alpha Channel transparency. Apply Motion to the overlay clip to size and position if required.

That way you get a clean edge and avoid the other pitfalls of chroma keying.
 
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