Digital Artist
I AM RETIRED
Posts: 93
New York, New York, US
I have a muslin green screen I've failed at using with each attempt. When I photograph someone in front of it and use the color range option in Photoshop to remove the green, it removes clusters of the subject as well. Bits of their face become partially transparent along with the edges of their body. How can I fix this? It's very frustrating considering what I can do as far as photo manipulation goes. This should be so simple.
Photographer
waynes world pics
Posts: 832
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
DJ Jarak wrote:
I have a muslin green screen I've failed at using with each attempt. When I photograph someone in front of it and use the color range option in Photoshop to remove the green, it removes clusters of the subject as well. Bits of their face become partially transparent along with the edges of their body. How can I fix this? It's very frustrating considering what I can do as far as photo manipulation goes. This should be so simple. considering that you "do" have some obvious talents with PS,it surprises me that you are unsure of how to correct this problem.I'd say, forget that it's a green screen,and just extract your subject from the background as you would with any other background.I use Vertus FluidMask,which does a pretty good job of this if you use it properly.Topaz also makes a good plugin for extracting background,but I haven't used that one myself,so cant say other than it looks good from watching vid on it.
Photographer
Jakov Markovic
Posts: 1128
Belgrade, Central Serbia, Serbia
Move subject away from the backdrop.
Reduce the amount of light on the screen, to stop it blowing back onto the subject and making hair backlit.
Photographer
ChadAlan
Posts: 4254
Los Angeles, California, US
Light the background evenly and separately, then keep some distance between the model and the background to prevent green spill on the model. Then light the model.
But it may be easier to use one of the software masking tools out there, or refine edge, clipping paths, channel masking or a combination.
Photographer
Kent Art Photography
Posts: 3588
Ashford, England, United Kingdom
Green screen was intended for use with video, not stills. You might find using a white background easier.
Photographer
Marin Photo NYC
Posts: 7348
New York, New York, US
White is much easier to work with.
Retoucher
ST Retouch
Posts: 393
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Ken Art and Marin gave you right and great answer.
For images it is much better to shoot model over professional white/light gray background instead of green screen background ( especially if you have small studio and small space).
Without a doubt you can get great results and with green screen background but only if you have large studio and large space.
Main trick with green screen shooting is to know how to set up lighting ( you need a lot of experience for that) and the most important thing to have large space because model MUST BE at least 2-3 meters in front of the green screen background ( for top results 5+ meters) - otherwise if your model is close to the green screen background you will find a lot of problematic shadows on the background and green color cast on skin edges and between hair details and later it is a very time consuming to clean mess around.
Also you have to understand one thing - there is NO MAGIC with green screen backgrounds .
If you expect to just push the button and to clean green screen within 20 seconds of job with perfect extraction and without any halo edges , it won't happen.
Sometimes you can get decent results but in many cases you will have to make serious extraction with pixel level density or similar.
I work and video composites with green screen footage and in many cases for great results on some parts of footage you need very time consuming rotoscoping and special extraction , there is no MAGIC BUTTON .
So my advise - always use white/gray background for images in small studio unless you shoot green screen in very large studio where you can control lighting and the distance between model ( foreground) and the green screen background.
Hope this helped,
Best
ST
Retoucher
Pictus
Posts: 1379
Teresópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
I wonder how effective is the use of magenta gels to diminish the green spill...
For blue is yellow.
Digital Artist
I AM RETIRED
Posts: 93
New York, New York, US
Thank you everyone for your wonderful advice.
Retoucher
ST Retouch
Posts: 393
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Pictus wrote:
I wonder how effective is the use of magenta gels to diminish the green spill...
For blue is yellow. I know what you are speaking about, good idea and I had same idea 
I have tried this trick but nothing special - again green spill unless you shoot in very large studio.
There is one piece of great software Primatte Keyer 5.1 ( you can see this piece of software in amazing programs like Nuke and After Effects for video composites) http://www.redgiant.com/products/all/primatte-keyer/
This software has very powerful tools for green spill and you can get very good results but again a lot of things depend from your original green screen shoot.
If you have professional powerful green screen shoot fully controlled in large studio with special lighting and the distance between the foreground and the background -yes you can get great results ( but again not always, it depends from file to file)
Otherwise in small studio and with problems which I described above with shooting green screen in small studio without distance between the foreground and the background - No magic - you have to manually refine edges etc .
Green screen shooting is very tricky and needs a lot of experience to achieve perfect green screen shoot ready to use for quick extraction.
This is for video and film because first of all HD video is only 1920 pixels and when you watch movies -you watch first of all action, you have in front of you moving images ( 25-30 frames per second) and when you watch fast moving frames you can not see to much problematic halo edges or any green spill around especially after high end cinematic color grading .
But when you have in front of you one single image /canvas with 6000+ pixels and you watch that image on 100% of view -then you can see a lot of problematic halo edges which are results from quick extraction ( you can clean green spill but you can not make perfect skin edges for seamless blending without any dead pixel ) .
Simply for high end retouching with composite work you can not use any quick mask tool -standards are clipping path for skin edges ( with special decontamination of skin edges) and special hair extraction .
There is a huge difference between quick mask skin edge extraction and pixel level clipping path extraction.
It is the same like with skin retouching - one result is quick plug with slider on skin and another result is pixel level D&B skin retouching.
So, that's why I wrote there is no magic with green screen background unless you spend a lot of time with composite work .
Maybe with small resolution of images for web images with 800 pixels you can get some "decent results" but in professional workflow where professional client check image on 100% of view -no way .
Best
ST
Retoucher
ST Retouch
Posts: 393
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
ST Retouch wrote:
I know what you are speaking about, good idea and I had same idea
I have tried this trick but nothing special - again green spill unless you shoot in very large studio.
There is one piece of great software Primatte Keyer 5.1 ( you can see this piece of software in amazing programs like Nuke and After Effects for video composites) http://www.redgiant.com/products/all/primatte-keyer/
This software has very powerful tools for green spill and you can get very good results but again a lot of things depend from your original green screen shoot.
If you have professional powerful green screen shoot fully controlled in large studio with special lighting and the distance between the foreground and the background -yes you can get great results ( but again not always, it depends from file to file)
Otherwise in small studio and with problems which I described above with shooting green screen in small studio without distance between the foreground and the background - No magic - you have to manually refine edges etc .
Green screen shooting is very tricky and needs a lot of experience to achieve perfect green screen shoot ready to use for quick extraction.
This is for video and film because first of all HD video is only 1920 pixels and when you watch movies -you watch first of all action, you have in front of you moving images ( 25-30 frames per second) and when you watch fast moving frames you can not see too much problematic halo edges or any green spill around especially after high end cinematic color grading .
But when you have in front of you one single image /canvas with 6000+ pixels and you watch that image on 100% of view -then you can see a lot of problematic halo edges which are results from quick extraction ( you can clean green spill but you can not make perfect skin edges for seamless blending without any dead pixel ) .
Simply for high end retouching with composite work you can not use any quick mask tool -standards are clipping path for skin edges ( with special decontamination of skin edges) and special hair extraction .
There is a huge difference between quick mask skin edge extraction and pixel level clipping path extraction.
It is the same like with skin retouching - one result is quick plug with slider on skin and another result is pixel level D&B skin retouching.
So, that's why I wrote there is no magic with green screen background unless you spend a lot of time with composite work .
Maybe with small resolution of images for web with 800 pixels you can get some "decent results" but in professional workflow where professional client check image on 100% of view -no way .
Best
ST
Photographer
Abbitt Photography
Posts: 13564
Washington, Utah, US
I think the reason to use green screen or blue screen for stills is so you can use one of the very simple and quick software programs designed to very quickly extract the background and add another. If you are going to extract in photoshop, I think it makes more sense to use a color which won't create such obvious fringing and cast off.
Some things that help reduce green fringing and extraction, at least with the software I've used:
Getting the subject aways out from the background.
Don't over light the background
Have a smooth, wrinkle free background
Light the background evenly
Use mild backlighting on the subject
Avoid colors similar to the background
I've found I can light the background much less than recommended and still get a clean extraction with less fringing.
Model
Sandra Vixen
Posts: 1561
Las Vegas, Nevada, US
I use GIMP, and using any tool set to Color Erase with the current color to the color that you want to erase usually works for me, PS doesn’t have an equivalent?
Lace and semi-transparent material is a challenge to key out, but it can be done but you may need to do two passes.
Photographer
waynes world pics
Posts: 832
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Sandra Vixen wrote:
I use GIMP, and using any tool set to Color Erase with the current color to the color that you want to erase usually works for me, PS doesn’t have an equivalent?
Lace and semi-transparent material is a challenge to key out, but it can be done but you may need to do two passes. there are some free PS plugins that can do this task. One is MV Plugin called Color Replacer, another is Mehdi Eraser Classic and Erasr Genuine.I don't have a link to offer for those to download,but Google search would find them I'm sure.The color replacer is excellent,I use it quite a lot.
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