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I have an image with some smoke and a microphone and a more or less black background. I want to make the black transparent. I set the clip to screen but this makes the clip to transparent. When I key the black with color range key its not perfect, to much of the smoke dissapears. Is there any alternative to these?
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Channel --> Channel Combiner. Calculate transparency from luminance or other info.
Mylenium
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I think you need to add some more layers and other effects. I would rotoscope the body of the mic and add a minor color correction to remove the green reflections.
On a second copy of the mic, I would also add Change Color to remove the color from the greenscreen that is showing and make some slight levels adjustments with Output Black (slightly negative) and Output White (slightly positive). Feathered masks are also required to blend in the edges.
You should then be able to stack the layers with the roto on top and the color corrected and masked below set to screen.
This took about 5 minutes using some Adobe Stock footage.
The masked Roto layer on top keeps the mic and brightest part of the fire from blowing out. I hope this helps.
Compositing smoke and fire almost always requires at least two copies of the footage with different effects and blend modes. I don't recall ever being very successful with just one layer.
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Great! Thanx for your time. I hope you understand that I have just worked one day with this, its just to see how the mic, the sky/clouds and the singer works together. I notice that you have a almost black bakground behind the mic, that simplifies a lot. The footage of my singer is just some tests, the top of the head is cut off by mistake in the photoshoot. I think I will go for a dark/black background behind the mic and use your and myleniums suggestions for the actual video. LOVE YOU ALL
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I get it now, I use the mic with the mask as "normal" and the other set to "screen", this way the mic will not be translucent, great! Thanx. Its a easy solution and higly effective. Is it possible to post short clips? The test-video is done.
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If Screen or Add blend modes will not adequately add the smoke to your scene, try adding Curves or Levels and crush the blacks. You will have more control if you change the Project settings to 16 or 32-bit color.
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Here is a link to a clip where I shot the mic. Its fun with my Nest smokealarm kicks in and warn me about smoke in the livingroom. I used a black background and was hoping the set to screen would wirk. It wold work if the other layers where darker.
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I think I can increase contrast also, to make smoke whiter and BG blacker?
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That's looking very cool!
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Its the 640 format that spotify wabts it looks better in 4k
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I have started shooting the final video, I have a pre-test of the song, its not finnished but the general idea is getting more concrete. I use the technique Rick suggested with two layers with one masked and the second set to screen, its a simple and efficient solution. There is green in the mic, I will remove that. Here is a clip:
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I think the clouds in the background should be darker, the frames looks ok with realy dark background, the clouds are also "smoke" so they blend and makes smoke from the mic dissapear.
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The third party "Unmult" effect by Red Giant creates an alpha channel for any image or video shot on a black background (it does white as well).
Maxon still provides the older free version; however, it may not work in current versions of After Effects:
https://support.maxon.net/hc/en-us/articles/360010345194-Where-can-I-get-Unmult-
For your shot of the microphone, you would draw a Mask around the microphone and then use Unmult to remove the black (it should be very clean where the black is darkest). Assuming that can be knocked out cleanly (it works best on true black that's consistent across the background), you just have to worry about the green reflection on the highly reflective matallic surface of the microphone.
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Very nice, and why has not adobe got that tool in Ae? It seems like a elegant solution.
I have used change to color to get rid of unvanted colors on another mic-frame so I know how to do it.
Thanx Warren!
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I used to little gallium so I will pour in some more in the mold, it will weld together with the first batch forming a complete mic.
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A good frame
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I installed Unmilt now, but dies not seem to do anything? There are no parameters to adjust, just theeffekt and there is a exklamation point somaybe something is wrong?