It’s fascinating — and maybe a bit disturbing — to realize that mundane scenes in TV shows are now regularly treated as visual effects events. Digital Anarchy first developed Primatte Chromakey, our Adobe Photoshop plugin for green screen masking, in mid-2005. At the time, we had to spend a lot of time simply explaining to photographers what ‘green screen’ meant. Five years later, green screen is a recognized entity with information accessible on non-pro sites like ehow.com. The convergence continues!

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Recently, Joe showed me a photo composite that he created while writing one of his upcoming books. The image was masked with Primatte Chromakey, our blue / green screen Adobe Photoshop plugin.

Joe wrote, “My first try with Primatte. The on-line tutorial really helped and the photo was shot blue screen. Same pic, one in color, the other black and white to match the original Godzilla movie. I need to find something to add scratches and dirt!”

The upcoming book is titled ‘Joe Farace’s Studio Lighting Anywhere’. This image is from a chapter about backgrounds, specifically using green or blue screen backgrounds, and Joe’s wife is the model. The book will be published in 2011 by Amherst Media. You can read about Joe Farace’s books and photography on his website, joefarace.com.

Joe’s original photo, before using Primatte to remove the blue screen:

The color version of his composite:

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Well… apparently not all paper backgrounds are made equal!

I don’t remember who made the paper background we initially tested. But it was awful. Very reflective and prone to hot spots. We figured all paper would have the same problems. After listening to a talk by another company that does greenscreen software, I decided to revisit this and give Savage Paper’s ‘tech green #46′ a try.

So how’d it fare vs. the foam materail we’ve been recommending since day 1?

Excellent! I was very impressed with how evenly it lit. The paper has a very flat finish on it, meaning very little reflection and easy lighting. Of course, we lit everything with two big softboxes, so that helped I’m sure.

I’m going back on my opinion that paper won’t work for greenscreen backgrounds, and give a solid recommendation to the Savage #46 paper. I DO NOT think that all paper will work as well. As in our initial test, some papers are glossy and not suitable for chromakey. Also, Savage just released vinyl backgrounds that come in green and I’m highly skeptical that it’ll work for greenscreen. It’s got a pretty glossy finish, which is usually a disaster for chromakey.

We still recommend the foam material as well. But I think the Savage paper is on par with it, except in terms of reusability. I think the foam material generally works well, it’s easy to transport, and you can easily clean and reuse it.

For full length in a studio, I would give the nod to the paper. I think you’re likely to get a little less spill around the feet, but I don’t think the difference is that significant. You can take a look at the results with the two materials:

There are other materials out there… paint, canvas, etc. The important part with any material is a very flat finish on the surface. If you have that, it should work fine as a greenscreen.

If there are any other manufacturers of greenscreen backgrounds reading this that would like our recommendation on their product, please feel free to contact us to send us a sample. However, right now, the only materials we’re recommending is the Savage #46 paper and foam-backed material made by velcro.

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Your info. Your techniques. Tips and tricks. I had an interesting tech support call yesterday with one of our users. He’s a photographer that’s been using Primatte for some time. He related an encounter he had with a fellow photographer in his area. She asked him what he was using to create his greenscreen shots, and he told her to go buy one of our competitor’s products! His logic was that he wasn’t going to share info with someone in the same market. He was quite pleased that she was unable to get the same results and was frustrated by the whole thing.

So my question to you is… do you share?

Personally, for me the answer is yes. Sort of. We are not an open source company, so our code is safely behind walls. But I have no problem telling folks what we’re doing from a marketing and support standpoint. There’s definitely some types of info that it benefits everyone, even if you’re competitors, to share. But if it’s mission critical to your success (like our code), then sharing may not be a hot idea. Then again, it may not make any difference because there are so many things that go into a successful company. When you go to ImagingUSA or WPPI there are certainly lots of folks sharing info, who’ve been doing it for quite some time and don’t seem adversely affected by it. But maybe showing off at big national conference is a bit different than showing off at your local photography club that’s filled with potential competitors.

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Shawn is a photographer of all talents and trades. Not only does he specialize in many subjects — high school seniors, industrial product shots and sports teams, to name a few — but he also runs photography seminars. More info on his company site, www.wrightstudio.us.

The images of Shawn’s that caught my eye are customized portraits of cheerleaders. After all… who doesn’t like cheerleaders? Admittedly contributing to my interest is a recent discovery on Hulu.com of the pilot episode of Fox’s ‘Glee’, which has adorable cheerleaders plus rags-to-riches young singers. Shawn photographs his subjects in several cheerleading poses against a greenscreen, uses our Adobe Photoshop masking plugin to remove the screen, and adds in his own original backgrounds.

I love the vibrant colors and juicy patterns that Shawn Wright brings to these portraits. Doesn’t get any better than that, unless you’re lucky enough to have one of his 4 x 6 print in your hands.

regards -Debbie

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Something that I really enjoy about LENNON is that his personality seems as colorful as the celebrities that he photographs. That’s why his first name is always written in CAPS; very Hollywood, yes?

LENNON the Photographer also showed us the final composites for Ambercrobie Model Billy Marquette for International Press. You can see them all by going to our Portrait Gallery page. We don’t have much information about the photoshoot or the original greenscreen images. But these are all composites created in Photoshop after using Primatte Chromakey for the masking process.

In 2008, LENNON did a photoshoot for Michael Petersen, star of Disney’s ‘Movie Surfers’. You can see the ‘before’ and ‘after’ images of these terrific composites in our Primatte Gallery. You can also read last year’s blog post about LENNON and go to his commercial portfolio at www.lennonthephotographer.com.

regards -Debbie

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Steven is using Flickr as his gallery medium these days, though he used to show a wider expanse of his work in a gorgeous website called Imagecarnival.com. Seems like he has his creative fingers in lots of stuff including commercial portraits, musician photos, CD covers. If you click around his People set, you will see a lot of interesting and even recognizable people. Steven is quite humble about his accomplishments. One of my favorite photos in this set is the lead singer for a band called MILKSHAKE!.

The work of Steven’s that I most appreciate is his self-produced graphic novel called Medusa’s Daughter. You can see that work on Flickr in his Medusa’s Daughter set and explained further in our online Digital Anarchy gallery.

We posted Steven’s work on our Primatte gallery a few months ago, but I want to call out his work. Just yesterday, I just stumbled upon the charming email that he sent to kickstart our relationship in 2007. The title of his email was “i’m SO glad for Primatte…..” and the body was simply a stunning image that he had composited with the help of Primatte Chromakey, our easy Photoshop masking plugin.

His email signature was a quote: “The mightiest of weapons is truth. And everyone knows you’re not permitted to enter a Government building with a weapon.” Which is witty and insightful, just like Steven’s photography. Enjoy!

regards -Debbie

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I was in DC for the inauguration and in my hotel you could get a picture with President Obama pretty much any time. The trick to this was that they had a green screen set up and they’d composite you into a picture with the Prez. (or Joe Biden… but c’mon… how many people are going to go for Joe?). It was pretty entertaining to see people lined up to do this. It’s pretty cool to see how prevalent greenscreens are becoming.

Here’s some shots of the setup….

Which caused me to stumble upon one of my favorite artists in our Primatte Chromakey gallery. John Riley, Ph.D., is a physicist and associate professor who initially contacted Digital Anarchy about some graphics work for which he was using Primatte, an Adobe Photoshop plugin for blue/greenscreen masking.

John showed us the Virtual Reality work, otherwise known as VR, that he was preparing for a portion of the artifact collection of the National Museum of Costa Rica. We were wow’ed. John uses Primatte inside a Photoshop batch to pull multiple shots of the collection objects off a bluescreen. Then he composites those new images into object spin movies and panoramas

Since that time, John has expanded his already enviable talents into a VR consulting business, 4Pi-VR Media Solutions. If you want to know more about creating photographic virtual reality, he’s your guy and you can find that info here

To see John’s Costa Rica VR work, please visit the Digital Anarchy gallery.

regards -Debbie

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