Phillip Cohen
(K=9538) - Comment Date 3/8/2008
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Personally, I find green screen and blue screen a real pain and not worth the problems. If you are shooting stuff with fine detail such as hair, you will always get a fringing in the image. You also must make sure that the background is lit very evenly but not too bright where it puts a color cast on the edges of your image.
You use blue or green based on what you are shooting. If there is blue in the subject then use a green screen, etc...
I have found it better just to use a projection background system like the Scene Machine so you don't have to do any of the blue screen processing.
Some tips for using green screen. Keep your subject about 6 feet away from the background to prevent color contamination. Do not exceed 2 stops in background brightness over main subject exposure or you will get color flaring. Make sure your screen is evenly lit within a half stop so that you have a constant color.
Blue and green screen are really meant for video and movie production where the quality is lower then in still photography. The slight edge color and details will not be seen as the subject is moving and overall the image is not near as sharp as a good still image. That is how they get away with it in the theatre and on TV. In a good still image, you will see every detail including the color contamination.
Attached is a bluescreen image that I did many years ago. Manually dropping out the blue screen using photoshop magic wand tool and then the erase tool. I got tired of messing with it, what you see is about 15 minutes work. If you look around the hair you can see a slight color fringing that I didn't feel like fixing, but is fixable if you have the time. Also important is that if you substitute a background, make sure the lighting on the subject is coming from the same direction as the background or it will look fake.
Hope this helps,
Phil
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Replaced Blue Screen Background
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Justin Campbell
(K=1398) - Comment Date 3/8/2008
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That did help quite a bit actually. I don't think green screen is quite for me than. It seems like it's far too much trouble for achieving only mediocre results.
Where can I find more information on the projection backgrounds?
Thanks again for your help
-Justin
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Dan Wilson
(K=20333) - Comment Date 4/15/2008
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Yes I agree with Phil, I have tried the blue screen thing and hunted around for software to process, my results in photoshop were the same with fringing around the edges.
Are you using Photoshop CS3 because this is much easier now using the quick selection tool, you then can adjust the edge selection with the refine edge button, works amazing.
Hope this helps
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Justin Campbell
(K=1398) - Comment Date 4/16/2008
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I'm using cs2 actually but I think I decided against the green screen and am opting more for the projection backgrounds... I'm hvaing a hell of a time finding info about them
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Phillip Cohen
(K=9538) - Comment Date 4/17/2008
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Justin,
Check out this site, http://www.virtualbackgrounds.net/home.html the machines they sell work great but are horribly over priced. Keep an eye on eBay, they come up now and then. Do a search for "Scene Machine" Give them a call and get one of their videos, you will be amazed at how well it works once you get it dialed in.
Phil
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