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Smooth out background

Specific to Premiere Elements version 15

Smooth out background

Postby abwaterbury » Thu Nov 24, 2016 5:10 pm

I took some interviews of different people using a white fabric background, but having just unfolded it you can see all these dark folds where the lighting didn't hit it evenly. What would be the best way to clean this up? Thanks
Problem.jpg
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Re: Smooth out background

Postby Steve Grisetti » Fri Nov 25, 2016 8:36 am

Unfortunately, there is no substitute for a well-shot key shot. I don't know any way to fix this. At least not in Premiere Elements.

After Effects has a high-level tool called rotoscope which can help select people from almost any background, and that may be an option. If you want to buy and master After Effects.

But if you plan to do key work in pretty much any other program, you need a clean, wrinkle-free, smoothly-lit background.
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Re: Smooth out background

Postby sidd finch » Fri Nov 25, 2016 12:11 pm

A couple of suggestions. Next time prchase a small hand held steamer https://www.amazon.com/Steamfast-SF-445-Compact-Fabric-Steamer/dp/B01GSRSTZG/ref=zg_bs_3303862011_17/166-3326902-4361733?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=4QQ1VSH39HC571TRJSBD that will keep the material wrinkle free.

In the mean time you might try experimenting with the following:

1. Try copying the video and place it on top of your existing video.
2. Add a track matte to the top layer video and place the cropping area in strategic locations (around her head and shoulders) to isolate her from the background
3. on the bottom track put a Gaussian blur effect on the video. This will help blur some of the lines.

Kind of like this:
Problem.jpg


You would need to experiment to see what you like best but as Steve said there is no substitute for a well-shot key shot.

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Re: Smooth out background

Postby Chris B » Fri Nov 25, 2016 3:28 pm

I've done this with PE8 - I presume the tools are still available. Because your background is mostly white I tried to create a mask from the foreground automatically. I'm assuming that the head is reasonably stationary.

I reduced the saturation to zero and increased the contrast and brightness then posterised with two colours and inverted. Because the clothes are hair are quite dark this produces an image like this:
bw.jpg


This is then used as track matte to bring through the white areas and a 4 point garbage matte to remove some of the edge sections of paper that show through. I've used bars and tone as a background.
no face.jpg


Lastly I've produced a garbage matte around the centre of the face and put this on the top track to restore the "white" areas.
newbackground.jpg


You can of course use a different background.
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Re: Smooth out background

Postby Bob » Fri Nov 25, 2016 4:09 pm

Here's yet another approach using the track matte key effect. You'll need three tracks. Track 1 is the background. Track 2 is the interview footage. Track 3 is the matte that will determine which portions of track 2 to keep.

For track 1, you can blur the interview footage as Sidd suggests. Or, you can save a frame from the video and edit it in Photoshop or other editor to create a uniform background that matches the color of your background. In my example, I used Photoshop's content aware fill to eliminate the person and followed that by the average blur effect to make a uniform matching background image.

Place the interview footage on both track 2 and track 3. On track 2, apply the Track Matte Key effect and set the matte property of that effect to "track 3".

On track 3, apply the sixteen point garbage matte effect. In the applied effects panel. click on the header for the garbage matte you just applied. The points should show up on in the monitor panel. adjust the points by dragging with the cursor to closely surround the subject. It should look something like this:

problem_masked.JPG


Because the subject will not be sitting perfectly still, the mask will need to be adjusted. Enable key frames for the garbage matte. Advance the video one frame at a time and adjust any of the garbage matte points that need it.

One final step. The small area around the subject that was not removed by the garbage mask will be visible and most likely stand out. You can improve the results by applying the Chroma Key effect to Track 2. Select the color for the effect from a typical value close to the head. Adjust the effect parameters to get the best key while keeping the subject intact. Expect that it won't be perfect. But, it may be reasonable. Here's the final result:

problem_final.JPG
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Re: Smooth out background

Postby abwaterbury » Sat Nov 26, 2016 1:58 pm

Thanks for all the help, great suggestions! Actually I also have Color Director 4 from Cyberlink that has a mask feature that tracks the subject. works on this video but not so great on two others of people wearing a white shirt, so they blended into the background and made it hard to track.
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