ABSTRACT
Creating the matte is typically referred to as pulling the matte in the compositing business. The precise technique for pulling the matte varies from plugin to plugin, and depends in part on the precise process the plugin uses to define transparency and edge quality. Edge problems from color sampling are also easily visible when viewing the matte directly. While the specific controls and even the names of the controls vary from software package to software package, the basic edge cleanup operations boil down to only a few: geometric blurring or mathematical interpolation to smooth out undersampled color, matte blurring, and matte choking. In fact, since each keyer handles the image processing differently, readers may find that the plugin that produced stupendous results on the last shot simply can’t create a clean matte for another shot. So the first step in solving problems is to try several different plugins and observe how each behaves.
