User manual DIGITAL ANARCHY PRIMATTE CHROMAKEY 3.0

[. . . ] Primatte Chromakey 3. 0 Make complex masks in minutes. A fast, powerful plugin for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. [ from: Digital Anarchy] f/x tools for revolutionaries [alorithm by] www. digitalanarchy. com Primatte 3. 0 : Table of Contents Table of Contents What's new in Primatte 3. 0 Improved interface New feature: AutoMask 6 6 6 Introduction to Primatte How does Primatte work?Compatible host apps Primatte for other applications Terms in this manual Follow along with photos Working in Photoshop Primatte with Backdrop Designer Primatte with Texture Anarchy So many terms!Foreground & Background Behind the scenes Choosing a screen color Lighting and staging What Primatte does & doesn't do. Preview Window 7 7 7 8 8 8 9 10 11 11 12 12 13 14 16 18 20 20 21 21 22 23 24 25 7 Overview of chromakey 11 The Primatte interface View tools & methods 18 20 Comp View Mask View Front View Back View Toggle your Views Look at other backgrounds Use Zoom & Pan tools Pan tool Move tools 25 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : revolutionary tools for photo & video | Primatte 3. 0 : Make masks in minutes. Primatte 3. 0 : Table of Contents Zoom tool (Zoom) Reset tool Zoom box 25 25 25 26 26 26 26 27 27 27 27 28 29 30 31 31 32 32 33 34 35 35 36 36 37 37 38 38 Assist tools Undo, Redo tools Reset tool Mark, Recall tools Save settings between sessions About button Manual button Apply button Cancel button 26 Navigation Bar 27 Display Options Comp Shows Color button Comp Shows Layer button Color Picker Transparency (Transp) button Split button Step 1: Select tool Step 2: Clean BG (Background) tool Step 3: Clean FG (Foreground) tool Try, then try again Point Selection tool Box Selection tool Use for batching photos Doesn't work on all photos! [. . . ] If this is turned on, whenever you load the Primatte interface, AutoMask will automatically be applied to your photo without you doing anything. This functionality is very useful if you want to eyeball each image but let AutoMask do most of the work. AlwaysOn creates an `in-between' workflow which is half manual, half automatic. Primatte is doing most of the work and you're just checking to make sure everything looks right. Of course, if AlwaysOn doesn't work to your satisfaction, you can make modifications using the other Primatte tools before saving back out to Photoshop. Read more about AlwaysOn in the Actions & Batch section of this manual. WORK TIP The real power of AlwaysOn comes when you apply Primatte via an Action 38 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : revolutionary tools for photo & video | Primatte 3. 0 : Make masks in minutes. Primatte 3. 0 : Workflow power Use Actions & Batching Primatte fully supports Photoshop's Actions and Batch process. This process works especially well with Primatte 3. 0's new Automask feature. Actions and Batches will work best on a environmental conditions. group of photographs that were taken under similar lighting and Overview of workflow The Action that you create retains Primatte's parameter settings, and applies them to another object. You are, essentially, pulling settings from one Primatte mask and bringing them over as a preset for the next photo. Open the Actions palette and create your settings. Once you have created an Action for Primatte, you can apply the Action to a group of photographs. Select the File> Automate> Batch menu item and set up a process. That Action will apply the same mask settings to all of the photographs that are batched. A photo session that Primatte will Action/ Batch properly. The same model appears under the same lighting and back screen. 39 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : revolutionary tools for photo & video | Primatte 3. 0 : Make masks in minutes. Primatte 3. 0 : Workflow power AlwaysOn checkbox The AutoMask button's AlwaysOn checkbox is critical for Photoshop's batch processing. If this option is turned on, whenever you load Primatte, AutoMask will automatically be applied without you doing anything. This creates an `in-between' workflow which is half manual, half automatic. AlwaysOn must be turned on if you're going to use Primatte in an Action. If it isn't, Primatte will just apply the settings from the last image to the new image. If you're dealing with different backgrounds, children with different hair color or whatever, this will give you very poor results. When AlwaysOn is turned on, Primatte analyzes each image separately, pulling the best key for each image. What the settings were for the previous image don't matter and are discarded as soon as the new image is loaded. About Actions In Photoshop you can record the things you do. For example, if you have a lot of images you want to crop down to a specific size, you can record yourself cropping one image, saving it, then closing. [. . . ] These polyhedrons separate all the colors in the foreground image into one of four areas. While we've depicted the polyhedrons as circular shapes in our diagram, in reality they are more like globes. These surfaces can be distorted into many different shapes to accommodate the color regions in each unique Foreground image. region 4 red 3 2 1 green Four regions of color Looking at the four regions that are created by these polyhedrons, we can see that each region has a particular property. black blue The polyhedrons that form Primatte's 3D RBG olor space. Region 1 This region is the small polyhedron. It contains all of the pixels in the foreground image that are designated as 100% background. [. . . ]