Keying black, set to screen or color range key?

[Rolf5E3D]

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?

[Rolf5E3D]

I tried unmult on other frames but it seems really bad, you can not kontroll the keying, a lot of the image dussapears, it seems hopeless. But it does key the black + other colors.

[Rolf5E3D]

Here you get the idea. I duno if the link works.

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[Rolf5E3D]

It will be a cover song, its not mixed and mastered yet so for the test-shot video we use the original Eagles version.

[Rolf5E3D]

I will add some smoke/mist infront of the mic and singer to blend the scene better.

I think maybe you dont discuss artistic aspects of a comp. and thats ok (NOT!)

[Rick Gerard]

I think you are still going to need two copies of your mic. One with the body of the mic masked to use as a normal layer on top to sleep the brightest parts of the mic layer from blowing out, and another copy below that using the screen or add blend mode to mix the smoke with the background. Unmult will not help you blend pixels. It only creates transparency. 

[Rolf5E3D]

Yes, I will do that in the "real" video, I just wanted to show you a clip of the idéa, the test video of the art.

it will be very nice with your solution and its not much work.

I will test myleniumschannel blending but thats more work to learn something new, I am not familiar with that technique. Many thanx Rick!

[Warren Heaton]

@Rolf5E3D 

Here's an example of an image where Unmult works really well that's free from Adobe Stock:

https://stock.adobe.com/images/abstract-of-christmas-and-bokeh-light-with-glitter-background/3274146...

You'd want to shoot your footage such that the blacks in comparison to the lighter pixels look like this.  Or in the case of your current shot, you would want to get the blacks in your shot to look as close to this as possible.  It's ricky that you have a solid object (the microphone) and some masking may be needed to help that remain present.

[Rolf5E3D]

Yes, mayby it would be perfect if I use a mask first, I did not spend much time on it. I have the plugin now if I need it, thanx Warren!

[Rolf5E3D]

I have used colored detergent with some opacifier in it and this is dripping. With the Saber plugin I made it look like molten metal. This can be greatly improved but it works. I will have this dripping as the gallium mic melts, also flowing on the fingers/hand of the singer holding the gallium mic as it metlts.

https://youtu.be/lpCVY4b4b0k