Have you gotten to the point of being sick and bored with capturing (plus seeing) the identical old images, time and time again? You’ve heard that “blue screen” is the way to go, except you don’t truly understand it or even know a great deal about it? Here is everything you need to understand to utilize it as a photography background!
Firstly…What exactly is it?
You will hear the words “green screen”, “blue screen”, and “chroma key” tossed around and employed to mean the same thing.
Chroma key merely means working with a backdrop which is one unpatterned, evenly illuminated color. The green and blue are the most employed colors. Actually, you could work with ANY color – however blue and green tend to be easiest. I’ll explain why that’s the situation in a minute.
Blue screen strategies can be employed in both video and still pictures. You photograph somebody in front of the chroma key and then we later (or at once working with high quality video cameras) you delete the solid color and replace it using any type of backdrop you want!
It’s how the local meteorologist does the weather report. They are standing in front of a blue screen and the camera digitally strips it out and puts in your local weather map. They are watching themselves with a monitor to find out where to point and so on. It can be confusing and harder than you might imagine in order to be a weatherman!
Secondly…Why use blue or green?
Typically we work with green and blue because they’re the farthest from the colors found in skin coloration. The technique was primarily done with blue, but as the standard of cameras changes, green seems to work more efficiently. It can be less difficult to strip out of the background, thus most studios are switching to green. However it does not do any harm to own both.
Another good advantage for green is that it creates fewer apparel conflicts.
Since the color is mechanically eliminated and substituted, if the subject has on a hue of that color (blue) as part of their apparel…it’s replaced. You can often see shirts and ties that become strange appearing holes in the subject – showing through to the brand new background.
It’s even happened among blue eyes!
Green tends to produce less of a apparel conflict, it’s less complicated for the cameras to work with also it’s easier to light evenly.
Flat illumination is vital because shadows on the backdrop will show in the ultimate effect. This can ruin the realistic effect of the photography background. Plus, employing irregular lighting, you’d make different shades of the color…a few of which might not get deleted properly.
The 3 main types of blue screen backgrounds are: paper, fabric and paint.
Paint is good if you have a studio that has a cove and you do all your photography there…it’s useless in the event you ever need to go on location.
Paper is available in big rolls, but is easily ripped and continuously needs to be replaced. This can get pricey in a hurry.
Fabric tends to keep going best and is transportable. And fabric is easy to wash (soiled blue screen backgrounds do not work well).
Any fabric supplier can offer some material that could accomplish the job. Obtain a little and do some testing with your photography background, any photo editing program is able to strip out the color. Experiment with it, you will like it!