Infinite White Background Help

[bilale36626875]

Hi there everybody,

I was trying to achieve an infinite white background in my videos but I couldn't due to the unavailability of proper lighting, so I captured the video using a creamy colour background (my room's wall). Is there a way to colour grade that creamy background to white without affecting the foreground.

If you have any solutions or suggestions please post them below, that would be appreciated.

Bill,

Thanks

[Roei Tzoref]

what's in the video other than the wall? show us

[bilale36626875]

It will be me explaining something.

[kirkeric]

The most likely and easiest is going to be to color grade/brighten the shot, however you could be at risk of blowing out other things in the process.  Brightening it will lighten everything.

Now, there is a thought that occurs to me that may also help, depending on whether overall color is important, you could probably apply a tint, which will basically make it black and white.  That would probably make the wall white, along with a curves or brighten/contrast adjustment.

Then begin bringing some of the color back in using the tint settings (0-100%) and see if anything in that range gets it there.

ROTO would be a last resort and could be a mess depending on what's going on in the video.

Eric

[Roei Tzoref · Accepted solution]

it all depends what you see. if you can show a frame, it would help to examine the proper workflow. this could be little or much work, or simply advice to reshoot.

• for brightness: a curves adjustment could work to some degree by isolating the tone levels with proper re-adjustment of the curve. for color: maybe a hue/saturation effect could work if the colors are different between foreground and back. you could tone down the yellows and see where that gets you.
• if there is enough differences in brightness and color between you and the background, a secondary color correction based on luma or chroma changes could work. lumetri effect has a tool for that as of CC2015.3
• a high contrast key could remove the background if there is a big difference in contrast with the foreground (like with the extract effect). you could then replace it with a white background. maybe a combination of extract with decent softness and a cg background.
• maybe a garbage mask with a generous amount of feathering could alleviate some of the problem, or only after it is combined with other techniques suggested here.
• other than that you could try using rotobrush. it's a semi-auto rotoscoping tool. it does require experience to not work more than you need to. if this a long duration of a shot, this could mean a lot of work.

[bilale36626875]

Thanks for your help! But can you please explain what you mean by isolating the tone levels, I am a beginner, please don't use these sophisticated terms!

[kirkeric]

I'm sure Roei will provide additional insight but there's a lot of playing around with curves adjustments to get it right.

This tutorial is about color grading but has many useful information that could help you too.

https://youtu.be/usNAHKXzzjU

[Roei Tzoref]

in the curves effect you get a curve of the tone levels (bright/dark areas) through the still/video. you can then set dots on the curve to change areas of tonality (bright or dark) to be brigher or darker.

here's a tutorial about it. it is photoshop but same principles apply with any curves effect

[Rick Gerard]

One more note on your problem. Color Grading done right is an extremely technical operation. An amateur can easily create an image that they like in AE or Premiere Pro, or even Photoshop by monkeying around with the controls but if that image drives colors outside of some very precise and really unbreakable technical specifications your image will quickly fall apart when it is distributed or printed or posted to your friends in YouTube or Facebook. Just jacking your white levels in the background up to 256 in 8 bit is going to give the compressor fits around the edges and you'll be back on the forums asking why the quality is so bad.

If you are going to be doing any kind of video work that you expect to be paid for or your are a serious amateur you owe it to yourself to spend some serious time studying how color grading works and learning the specifications for video work. There's a lot of information out there from professionals that can help you figure it out, but there's a lot more bad information and poor advice from folks that think they know what they are doing. Make sure you vet your trainers.

[kirkeric]

Couldn't agree more.  The level of work is certainly important (i.e., being paid or just for fooling around on YouTube, etc).

Eric

[Dave_LaRonde]

"It will be me explaining something...."

Does this mean the video of you standing against a white wall is already shot?

Do yourself a favor -- shoot against a green screen, pull a chroma key, and put yourself over a nice background you make yourself.

Quit farting around with color grading to fix something you did wrong in the first place.

[Roei Tzoref]

Dave... always so poetic

[Stefan Gruenwedel]

Bilal: Try changing what's called HSL Secondaries: Change or correct a specific color |

This tutorial has sample files you can practice with. The idea is that you identify a specific color (hue, saturation, luminescence) and then change only that color. You could then blow that color out to white so it appears to be infinite.

[bilale36626875]

This can be considered as a correct answer as well!!! Thank you for your help Stefan

[Stefan Gruenwedel]

Great to know. Let us know which answer works for you!

[Warren Heaton]

You might be able to use the footage as its own luma matte to isolate the foreground from the background.