This week on MacBreak Studio, Steve Martin from Ripple Training shows us how to key a shot in Final Cut Pro X.
Shooting a subject against a solid color background in order to remove that background and replace it with something else is more popular than ever. Green is the color most commonly used for compositing human subjects, because of the three primary colors (the source of all colors in the additive color space of light), skin tones contain less green than red or blue. Blue is also a popular choice, particularly for blonde-haired subjects.
The quality of the key you can create is a function of how evenly the background is lit and how far the subject is from that background to avoid the color bouncing back and “spilling” on the subject. But even with a less than perfect lighting set-up, you can still create a good key with Final Cut Pro X.
Both Motion and Final Cut Pro X use the exact same keyer – that's a good thing, because it's a very powerful tool that produces great results with very little effort.
In this episode, Steve shows us how you can adjust the initial key to produce better results.