Digital Backgrounds

[CEK40]

Hi to all

This is not a specific Disney question, but I was wondering if anyone out there ever shoots with green screen and then uses digital backgrounds? If so, do you have a specific site or program that you use for your backgrounds? My DIL does photography and has just started to shoot Senior Pictures and Sports Teams and was wondering what some of the better sites/software are.

Thanks so much for the information in advance.
CK in VA

 

[ford91exploder]

Color key - or Green Screen as you call it generally is used to insert some cheeseball (note I LOVE CHEESEBALL) background into a picture. Generally I use photoshop and using the 'magic lasso' tool to select the subject and then I create a new layer to replace the green or blue background. It actually can be any color just needs to be consistent. The replacement layer contains the background of choice. There will always be a boundary between the real subject and the background.

This is lots easier than when I was in high school and working for a school picture company. We had 70MM Camerz cameras which had front projection units which worked like the HUD in a jet fighter and we would insert a slide and the background would be projected onto a semi-silvered mirror this gave a extremely realistic looking shot. the background in use was white.

For general portrait use I would use a painted muslin background on a portable stand as it gives a much better looking portrait. especially if a background light is used along with rembrandt style lighting,

Painted backgrounds can be found at the major NY and LA Camera stores which advertise in photo mags.