Using a Green Screen & getting green highlights

[Midwest Sunset]

I have been trying to play with digital backdrops & am having trouble getting green highlights in people's hair, under thier chin or along thier face & on light clothing..... I'm guessing it's my light set up but can someone help me correct it???

I am using a 10x20 chromagreen muslin backdrop, my lights are simple 3 hot lights one as main light at camera right about 45 degrees about 3ft from subject with silver umbrella, second hot light at camera left slightly less than 45 degrees about 4.5 ft from subject with white shoot through umbrella & occasionally I use a smaller hot light on the backdrop but not usually when working with a screen.

I am attaching one of my shots so you can see what I mean.... & if this is the wrong forum for this question could someone please direct me to the correct one. I don't have alot of money to put into backdrops nor do I have the storage room so mastery of digital backdrops seems like the perfect venue for me.





Thanks a ton for any & all help as it is greatly appreciated!!!

[anarchyjim]

Your background is a bit too bright and it looks like the subjects are sitting too close to the background. Generally we recommend that the background is one stop darker than the foreground.

This can usually be achieved pretty easily by moving the subjects about 5 feet or so away from the green background. The light falloff will take care of the background being darker (usually).

Also, head shots and 3/4 are easier than having the subject sit or stand on the greenscreen. Being on the greenscreen introduces a bunch of problems. Not that difficult to solve, but time consuming.

What are you using to remove the background?

cheers,
Jim Tierney
Digital Anarchy
Plugins for Photoshop

[Drkranger]

+1 for Jim...I think they are too close and the background too bright.

[Midwest Sunset]

thank you both for replying!! I am limited as to how much space I have, hence using the green screen to limit storing tons of backdrops. They were about 3-4ft from the drop, but it's a very large drop so they were sitting on it. I am also pretty sure I was using a background light as well. I use photoshop CS3 for processing, but am still learning the finer points of it unfortunately.



I have another shoot this wed, I will try again using your suggestions.

[anarchyjim]

Photoshop is not great at masking out hair. It works well enough for tshirts, jeans, and other stuff that has hard edges, but for hair, transparent fabrics, and other 'soft' things it doesn't work very well.

If you're going to use greenscreen professionally, I'd really recommend getting a dedicated tool. Admittedly, I'm a little biased since we develop Primatte Chromakey, which is a Photoshop plugin for greenscreen. But there are other tools out there. I recommend downloading some demos and trying things out.

Photoshop by itself is really not the ideal greenscreen solution. It's fine if you're just doing a greenscreen shot here and there, but if you're doing them on a regular basis, it'll be worth the time and aggravation saved to invest in a dedicated tool (Photoshop plugin or standalone app).

cheers,
Jim Tierney
Digital Anarchy
www.digitalanarchy.com

[Midwest Sunset]

Thank you so much for your help! I went to your sight & took this quote...

"Color spill' is an undesirable tint on your subject. This is the result of your photography lights reflecting the color of the backing screen. Primatte gives you 10 buttons and five sliders to fix color spill. Some Spill tools are for general purpose correction, while others attend to smaller details. Spill Removal and Fine Detail Tools"


Sounds exactly like what I need! I also checked out several of your other links there & was quite impressed!! I have added your Primatte Chormakey software to the top of my "To Get" list & will definately send others in need your way ~ Thank you again for your time & help!! It's people like you that make this this site a success

~ Jody


PS ~ And in the meantime I am adjusting my lighting & studio setup per your site recommendations