Primatte 2.0 Manual - Digital Anarchy

59 Pages·2007·3.74 MB·English

Make masks in minutes.

Primatte Chromakey 2.0
A fast, powerful plugin for Photoshop
and Photoshop Elements.
[ from: Digital Anarchy] [alorithm by]
f/x tools for revolutionaries
www.digitalanarchy.com
Primatte 2.0 : Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction to Primatte 6
How does Primatte work? 6
Compatible host apps 6
Primatte for other applications 6
Terms in this manual 7
Follow along with photos 7
Working in Photoshop 7
Primatte with Backdrop Designer 8
Primatte with Texture Anarchy 9
Overview of chromakey 10
So many terms! 10
What is a mask? 10
Foreground & Background 11
Behind the scenes 11
Choosing a screen color 12
Lighting and staging 13
Installation and support 15
Windows installation 15
Macintosh installation 15
Using demo software 15
Support materials, file locations 16
The Primatte interface 17
Preview Window 17
Viewing tools & methods 19
Comp View 19
Mask View 19
Front View 20
Back View 20
Toggle your Views 21
Look at other backgrounds 22
Use Zoom and Pan 23
Navigation tools 24
© 2007, Digital Anarchy : f/x tools for revolutionaries | Primatte: Make masks in minutes.
Primatte 2.0 : Table of Contents
Undo and Redo 24
Reset 24
Mark and Recall 24
Pan tool 24
Zoom tool 24
Zoom box 25
Navigation Bar 25
About button 25
Manual button 25
Apply button 25
Cancel button 25
Options popup box 26
Composite Against Color 26
Composite Against Background Layer 27
Options Color Picker 28
Three-step masking tools 29
Select 29
Clean BG (Background) 29
Clean FG (Foreground) 30
About spill correction 31
What is ʻcolor spillʼ? 31
Two strategies for spill removal 31
How the tools work 32
Careful not to over-correct 33
Spill Removal tools, one-click 34
Spill Sponge 34
Matte Sponge 34
Make Transparent 35
Restore Detail 35
Spill Removal tools, repeatable 38
Spill Plus/Minus tools 38
Matte Plus/Minus tools 38
Detail Plus/Minus tools 39
Matte Blur sliders 40
© 2007, Digital Anarchy : f/x tools for revolutionaries | Primatte: Make masks in minutes.
Primatte 2.0 : Table of Contents
Using the spill sponge 36
How it works 36
Sampling the Spill Sponge 37
Fine tuning sliders 41
Three sliders work together 41
How the Tune sliders work 41
Remove Spill slider 42
Transparency slider 42
Restore Detail slider 43
Tune color chip 43
Remove Spill, good example 44
Remove Spill, bad example 45
Restore Detail, good example 46
Restore Detail, bad example 48
Color Spill Replace options 49
Complement Color Spill Replace 49
Solid Color Spill Replace 49
Limitations of Photoshop 5.5-6.0 52
Try, then try again 52
Using garbage mattes 54
What is a garbage matte? 54
When a garbage matte is used 54
Creating a garbage matte 55
Add in lost portions of foreground 56
Split image into multiple sections 57
The Primatte algorithm 58
Itʼs all about polyhedrons 58
Four regions of color 58
How does this relate to me? 60
Final thoughts 60
© 2007, Digital Anarchy : f/x tools for revolutionaries | Primatte: Make masks in minutes.
Primatte 2.0 : Introduction
Introduction to Primatte
Primatte brigns the power of film and TV special effects directly to you, the
photographer or graphic designer. Primatte is a powerful plugin for Adobe Photoshop
and Elements. It has one main function: to remove solid colored backgrounds from an
image and place the resulting foreground image into a different background.
How does Primatte work?
Primatte creates its masks by removing the pixels of the designated color, and
replacing that color with transparent pixels. Effectively, you are creating a very
complex soft-edged mask.
Primatte is commonly used in motion picture and television post-production for the
creation of special effects. Increasingly, chromakeying has become indispensable in
graphic design and still photography. In fact, in the three years that our Primatte has
been on the market, we have seen a significant shift in the industryʼs relationship to
chromakey and other high-end compositing solutions. Donʼt be the last on your block!
Compatible host apps
Primatte 2.0 is compatible with Adobe Photoshop, versions 5.5 +higher, including CS3
for WIndows. It is NOT compatible with Photoshop CS3 on Macintosh. You will need to
upgrade to version 3.0 for Primatte to run natively on Intel Macs and in Photoshop CS3.
Primatte also works in Photoshop Elements, version 2.0 +higher.
Prmatte is not currently compatible with other drawing applications, like the Corel
suite. This is because Primatte makes use of transparency and other host apps handle
transparency differently than Photoshop. Primatte may load and run in another host
app but you will not get the ncessary end result, which is your subject isolated on a see
throuh background.
Primatte for other applications
The process of chromakey is present in many visual disciplines: photography, special
effects, video production, and 2D compositing. Therefore, Primatte is available for
most applications in each of these disciplines.
Digital Anarchy only develops and sells the Photoshop version of Primatte. If you
are interested in Primatte for any software other than Photoshop or a Photoshop-
compatible application, please go to the Photron website at www.photron.com for
more details.
5 © 2007, Digital Anarchy : f/x tools for revolutionaries | Primatte : Make masks in minutes.
Primatte 2.0 : Introduction
Proprietary notices
Primatte was developed by IMAGICA Corp., Tokyo, Japan
Primatte was authored by Yasushi Mishima of Imagica Corp., Tokyo, Japan
Primatte is a trademark of IMAGICA Corp., Tokyo, Japan
Primatte is sold and distributed by Photron USA, Inc.
Terms in this manual
Throughout this documentation, we will refer to the color background in the example
being worked on. If weʼre working with a subject shot against a blue background, all
of our language will refer to blue. Similarly, if weʼve used a green screen, weʼll refer to
green when talking about color removal and color spill.
Keep in mind that Primatte can be used to mask out ANY color, like red or yellow or
hot pink (our personal favorite) so if your photographic subject is different than ours,
just mentally substitute that color. Of course, the backing screen color should be
chosen to complement the colors in the foreground object. A red apple will need a
green screen. A green apple might use a red screen.
To simplify our instructions, we will often generically refer to blue. ʻBluespillʼ is the
standard term for unwanted color that seeps into an image, and ʻbluescreenʼ is the
standard reference to the solid color that your subject has been photographed against.
Follow along with photos
For this manual, weʼve photographed one model against a blue background, which
is the most common backdrop used against flesh tones, and another model against
green, which is the second most popular backdrop. Weʼve also photographed objects,
like coffee mugs and holiday ornaments, against blue and green screens.
You can follow along our tutorials and explanations using the graphics that weʼve
provided. If you are working in demo mode, please go to the downloads section of
www.digitalanarchy.com. If you have purchased Primatte, you will find an FTP link in
the email that confirmed your purchase. The images are available as layered Photoshop
files or as smaller files that each hold a single layer.
Working in Photoshop
In our examples, we often refer to the workflow and tools in Photoshop. While Primatte
and Photoshop are separate pieces of sofware, they are intertwined. You must have
some knowledge of Photoshop in order to make use of Primatteʼs results.
If any of the functions or concepts mentioned in this section are unfamiliar, we
recommend that you read portions of the Photoshop manual. They are all beginner
or intermediate ways of working in Photoshop that are easy to understand once
explained, and can be helpful to your daily work.
6 © 2007, Digital Anarchy : f/x tools for revolutionaries | Primatte: Make masks in minutes.
Primatte 2.0 : Introduction
Primatte with Backdrop Designer
Some of the background textural images in this manual were all created with another
Digital Anarchy plugin, Backdrop Designer. This Photoshop plugin creates beautiful
resolution-independent backdrops, very similar to those expensive physical muslin
drapes you may currently have in your photography studio. Customize the presets with
a variety of simple tools. Then save your new pattern (if desired) and apply the digital
backdrop to your photograph. Itʼs as simple as it sounds!
Check out Backdrop Designer for Photoshop out at www.digitalanarchy.com/backdrop/
backdrop_main.html, and download the free demo for Windows, Vista or Mac OS X.
7 © 2007, Digital Anarchy : f/x tools for revolutionaries | Primatte : Make masks in minutes.
Primatte 2.0 : Introduction
Primatte with Texture Anarchy
Many of the background textural images were all created with another Digital Anarchy
product, Texture Anarchy. Texture Anarchy is a set of three plug-ins that generate
seamless procedural textures in Photoshop. The plugins ship with tons of presets for
naturalistic, organic, and pleasing textures, and have tons of features that allow you to
edit and create new textures.
Check Texture Anarchy for Photoshop out at www.digitalanarchy.com/texture/texture_
main.html, and download the free demo for Windows, Vista or Mac OS X.

8 © 2007, Digital Anarchy : f/x tools for revolutionaries | Primatte: Make masks in minutes.
Primatte 2.0 : About chromakey
Overview of chromakey
The process that Primatte performs is called ʻchromakeyingʼ. Chromakey is the
process of eliminating a single color from an image for the purpose of inserting a new
background into that image. When you watch a movie or look at a photograph that has
an unreal mix of images, you are usually looking at the illusion of chromakey.
To prepare for creating a chromakey, the principal subject is photographed against
a background of a bright single color or a relatively narrow range of colors, usually
blue or green. A digital tool is used to extract the background color by making it
transparent. Chromakeying, therefore, allows a false background (such as a weather
map or scenic view) to be inserted behind and around the subject.
Throughout this manual, we will refer to ʻkeyingʼ or ʻpulling a keyʼ, meaning the
operation that selects a body of color for removal from an image.
So many terms!
The chromakey process is also called ʻblue-screeningʼ or ʻgreen-screeningʼ, depending
upon the color of the background youʼve placed behind your model.
When referring to the key created, the word ʻmaskʼ is used frequently and
interchangeably. Mask is a term that refers to a location thatʼs been isolated in a digital
image and is commonly used in graphic design and digital photography.
Some Primatte tools also make use of the term ʻmatteʼ, which is a term used often in
video and compositing work. Matte usually refers to a mask that moves across the
screen, outlining a person walking across screen, for instance, or a trail of smoke
created by special effects software.
What is a mask?
A common definition of a ʻmaskʼ is an area of an image that is protected or ʻmaskedʼ
from editing. Another commonality is that a mask controls how different areas within
an image are hidden and revealed.
In a Primatte mask, both definitions hold true. The pixels in a mask are made
transparent, effectively leaving only the object that you want to place into a new
background.
9 © 2007, Digital Anarchy : f/x tools for revolutionaries | Primatte: Make masks in minutes.
Primatte 2.0 : About chromakey
The term ʻmaskʼ should be familiar, because Photoshop employs mask technology for
many of its functions. For instance, the Magic Wand, Lasso and Marquee tools all create
a selection, which is really a mask that isolates part of an image as you apply filters or
effects to the rest of it. Alpha Channels are masks that save these selections so they
are permanent and reusable.
Still inside Photoshop proper, the Quick Mask mode lets you create and view a
temporary mask for an image. A Layer Mask lets you obscure part or all of a layer or
layer set. So does a Vector Mask, and between the two mask types, you can create soft
and hard masking edges.
In Photoshop, masks are stored as 8-bit grayscale channels. Similarly, Primatte
displays its mask as an 8-bit grayscale image.
Foreground & Background
Another concept that youʼll find in working with Primatte is the idea of ʻForegroundʼ
versus ʻBackgroundʼ. Foreground refers to the object that is the chromakey subject;
the person or object that is photographed against a single color screen. ʻForegroundʼ
also refers to the area of the Primatte mask that stays opaque, and thus, reveals the
foreground subject. This portion of the mask can be represented with white pixels in
the Primatte interface.
Background refers to the visual that will be composited behind and around the
foreground object. This is typically an environment that would be difficult to
photograph or film behind the subject, such as footage of a solar system or a
Prehistoric scene thatʼs built in a 3D application.
Background also refers to the area of the Primatte mask that becomes transparent, and
thus, reveals the background environment. This portion of the mask is represented
with black pixels in the Primatte interface.
Behind the scenes
So what is actually happening inside Primatte when you tell it to separate the
Foreground from Background? How does the plug-in determine where the mask edges
should be? Where the blue screen ends and the object begins?
Primatte doesnʼt look at a particular area of the image, like a hand or an apple stem,
that you have clicked on to sample. Instead, Primatte looks at a tone that you have
clicked on, and finds a range of lightness relating to its color. Then Primatte finds that
tone distributed throughout the entire image youʼve loaded in. The tool performs the
correction it is built to do, like extracting a tone or eliminating a tone, on the entire
image.
10 © 2007, Digital Anarchy : f/x tools for revolutionaries | Primatte: Make masks in minutes.