#Ez green screen license key plusSo I started to think about plugins for automating this process and after some research I focused in on EZ Green Screen which costs $119 and Ke圓6 Photoshop plugin which is a combined cloud plus script approach where you pay by the extraction – the first 25 are free (which is where I am still) and then 100 extractions are $24.99 with a high volume price of 1000 extractions for $149. I probably spent an hour working on this and while it isn’t great against a white background it actually blended OK into a normal background, but it wasn’t an easy process. #Ez green screen license key manualThe back of the head was similarly slightly out of focus and my efforts here were a bit more amateurish: Extraction using the manual tools in Photoshop I then found that the thermometer was not fully in focus and so its edges were rough in the selection and I had to use the pen tool all along the arm and edge of the thermometer. Hair is always difficult and I used the Select and Mask tool to try to improve the hair. So I had to use the pen tool around those areas to get a better edge. I tried selection by color range and that works pretty well, although with a relatively open aperture, not everything from front to back is in focus and my efforts struggled a bit with the slightly out of focus areas where the green was bleeding into the subject. My first attempts were just using the capabilities in Photoshop itself. But I wanted to talk more today about how I extract myself from that background without spending hours on it. In Premiere I would draw a mask around the subject so that I remove the darker areas of the screen, and the same technique works well in Photoshop as well. The end result of all this is a shot like this with an exposure of 1/40th second at F6.3 with ISO400: Face view of the subject with the green screen behindĪs you can see, the background with this wide shot is a bit dark in the corner but the shadows are well away from the subject. I turned the power down for the real shot so that it is less obvious. Here I am using one as a hair light which also provides some lighter edges to my head and shoulder to separate them better from the background. These are great on the camera for continuous lighting for video (or still photos) and are lightweight and battery powered. Finally, I managed to buy two Rotolight NEO2 lights when they were half price at $149 each. These provide the main light to the face and they are offset so that the shadows fall to the sides on the screen. These don’t seem to be available in a kit any longer, but there are a number of similar things on sale for around $250 for two panels. The tripod in front of me is to make sure my face is in the zone of focus of the lens (manual focus and exposure) and I can drop the center column for half body shots. The lightbox is to my right in this shot and that is providing lighting on the screen which is around 5 feet behind me. My lighting setup for green screen extraction You don’t really need high quality light just to light the green color of the screen – consistent lighting is much more important. After trying to shine two lights on the backdrop from each side, I found that a 40W daylight balanced LED bulb in a Neewer 24 inch softbox placed just besides the subject provided pretty even lighting and cost less than $50. The problem with green screens for video (and still) is that you need to get constant light levels across the screen and no shadows from the main subject, especially around their head. It collapses neatly into its case and raises with a hydraulic lift up to around 6 feet high. I’ve experimented with various ways of lighting the green backdrop, which as I mentioned in a previous post came from Elgato Gaming and is aimed at people streaming their gaming activity online. So to get this, I need to set up continuous lighting and a smooth green backdrop so why not use the same arrangement for my still shots as well. I’ve been doing more green screen oriented stock photos recently because my travels have been sorely restricted! Why a green screen when it might be much easier to extract against a pure white background? Well, I wanted to produce both videos and stock photos of the various ideas and Premiere already has a great extraction tool with the Ultra Key effect and that seems to do an excellent job with getting clean edges and a smooth video composite as you can perhaps see from this example: Man breathing nervously in face mask prior to a flight
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