Color match methods for compositing?

bakamile · **Color match methods for compositing? -** May 26th, 2008, 08:00 AM

Hi. I have almost perfect DVCPRO HD green screen footage and backgrounds rendered in 3ds Max. I can pull the key with almost one click in Keylight and matte is fine with a few minor adjustments. That was an easy part. Now I have to color match actors with the rendered background. Usually people are doing this by eyeballing the levels. This is very subjective method and I'm not happy with that. My friend suggested to find black and white points first and then to use four windows mode to view the background in one view and each RGB color in separate view to match each individual color on background and foreground. Can anyone recommend some tutorial for advanced keying and color matching for After Effects CS3 or explain some other method? Thanks.

bimdas · May 26th, 2008, 08:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bakamile

use four windows mode to view the background in one view and each RGB color in separate view to match each individual color on background and foreground.

This is the way I'd do it as it seems the most effective. Not as easy as pushing a button and getting a dodgy color match but its basic enough.

bakamile · May 26th, 2008, 08:40 AM

Yes, but how to do it exactly? Under Show channel I can select one color, let's say Red and then image is in grayscale. Then Colorize will paint the image in that color. Then I have all three colors in each window and background in a fourth. Then what? Same question goes for adjusting black and white levels, that is shadows, midtones and highlights.

bimdas · 01:14 PM

for colour matching I only use levels, maybe curves to adjust the foreground element. I go through each channel and try and match the blacks, whites, midtones to the background by eye. When all the channels look like they match then I do a RGB adjustment but only slightly as I'm most of the way there already.

Oh yeah, for more detail on this method you should read advanced compositing in After effects by mark christianson. He explains it a hell of a lot better than i do.

bakamile · May 26th, 2008, 01:17 PM

Thanks! I'll look into that.

Coplin · May 26th, 2008, 05:16 PM

yes, that book by mark christiansen is a must have book for this subject also check this out to, it has the similar idea: http://library.creativecow.net/artic...reenscreen.php