[kimsay]

Dear forum-members,

For a matte-painted shot I have to extract my actor from the rest of the image. I tried a luma-key but it is not very good at the moment, because the bg is nearly the same value in luminance as the actor. So I just wanted to ask if I can do some color-correction before I go into the Luma Key node. I played around with the expand and contrastLum nodes of the color toolset and it helped a bit but I think it could be done better. So maybe someone out there has an idea how to manage this problem a "professional" way...

Thanks a lot for reading this!

Cheers, Michael

[redlum]

Hi Michael

You will need to use a combination of luma-keying and rotoshapes to get the job done. Colour-correcting the footage may help you get a cleaner matte but for certain portions (specifically where the actor intersects the tree line) you will need to create mattes by hand.

Currently you have a one node fits all solution and consequently the edges of your matte are very hard and lacking in detail. You will need use multiple nodes and combine mattes in order to get a satisfactory extraction. Think strategically about tackling invidual areas one at a time to maintain the detail.

[Zedster]

Try isolating the saturation channel (w. colour space node). Looks like that will help. I think the png format has killed a lot of the info but you may find it works ok with the original material.
Z.

[kimsay]

Hi!

Thank you very much for your help! I did it as you said, it was a bit tricky but it worked.

Cheers, Michael