Digital Compositing for Film and Video, Second Edition (Focal Press Visual Effects and Animation)

This practical, hands-on guide addresses the problems and difficult choices that professional compositors face on a daily basis. You are presented with tips, techniques, and solutions for dealing with badly shot elements, color artifacts, mismatched lighting and other commonly faced compositing obstacles. Practical, in-depth lessons are featured for bluescreen matte extraction, despill operations, compositing operations, as well as color-corrections. The book is presented entirely in an application-agnostic manner, allowing you to apply lessons learned to your compositing regardless of the software application you are using. The DVD contains before and after examples as well as exercise files for you to refine your own techniques on. Provides you with professionally-tried tricks, tips, and solutions to the complicated and difficult compositing issues that you face New to this edition is a section on stereo compositing for 3D movies, a brand new chapter on CGI Compositing, 7 new QuickTime movies on the DVD, and more DVD is packed with instructive before and after examples as well as excercise files that allow you to refine your own technique Digital Compositing for Film and Video is a hands-on, how-to guide that addresses the problems and difficult choices faced by the professional compositor in real-life situations. This book presents you with tips, tricks and techniques for dealing with the badly shot elements, color artifacts, and mismatched lighting that bedevil compositors. Included in this book is: in-depth, practical methods for bluescreen matte extraction, despill operations, compositing operations, and color correction-the ''meat and potatoes'' of all digital effects. Written in a completely software independent style, it is totally applicable to any brand of compositing software. The second edition contains many important additions: * printed in full color with over 400 color photos and illustrations * companion DVD with 3.7 gigabytes of test images, including hard to get HiDef video and feature film scans * new section on working with HiDef video * new section on digital intermediate, the feature film finishing process of today * more Adobe Photoshop blending modes and procedures * new material that reveals the add-mix composite, light wrap, slot gags, and how to defeat banding problems . The ultimate artistic objective of a digital composite is to take images from a variety of different sources and combine them in such a way that they appear to have been shot at the same time under the same lighting conditions with the same camera. Compositing Is The Artistic Blend Of Several Disparate Elements From A Variety Of Sources Into A Single Image While Making All The Component Elements Appear To Be In The Same Light Space And Shot With The Same Camera.