Inspiring

Question

Keying black, set to screen or color range key?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
July 20, 2022
3 replies
2958 views

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?

How to

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Warren Heaton

Community Expert

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).

Red Giant Universe Unmult

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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Rolf5E3DAuthor

Inspiring

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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Rick Gerard

Community Expert

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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Rolf5E3DAuthor

Inspiring

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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Rolf5E3DAuthor

Inspiring

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:

https://youtu.be/UxupEK7fUzg

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.

Mylenium

Legend

Channel --> Channel Combiner. Calculate transparency from luminance or other info.

Mylenium

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Rolf5E3DAuthor

Inspiring

I have not tried this, I will. For now one easy solution was to make the rest of the comp darker and use set to screen. It is better in all aspects. Thanx again!

JagSjunger-Himlen-EldmickSuperUltraBättre--.zip

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