Blue Screen and Video

[xenogia]

I have captured characters walking behind a blue screen, and I was wondering if there was a quicker way to make sprites, rather than using the magic wand in photoshop and cutting them out and then aligning them in Animation Shop.

[LGM]

Well.. If you blue screened.. You could mask out all blue. Dunno really how you would do that.

I'd say that you should just do what is working for you. Sometimes a faster solution isn't always the better one.

[xenogia]

I'm not that great at photoshop, how do you mask?

[Kinoko]

Walking behind a blue screen? So, you're making an animated gif of a blue screen?

[xenogia]

Sorry, the blue background and a character in front of it

[Eggie]

I would alsio be vey interested in learning about techniques for this.
Y'see...When I grow up I want to be Robert Rodriguez...Nt be LIKE Robert Rodriguez just...Y'know...Him...

[ildu]

There are a lot of quite easy methods to do this. When dealing with video, you need some capable software. Adobe AfterEffects actually has a great feature automatically built-in that lets you customize the color and the feathering. When dealing with images, any software with layers, masks and vectors will do.

In Photoshop, you can do it in various ways. Because you're not dealing with video, you don't need a dymanic feature for it, but it is certainly feasible.

(1) A simple easy way, which isn't the most effective way, is to just use a magic wand on each image and delete the blue areas. So select the magic wand, turn on 'contagious' and customize the number of colors it reaches from the clicked color. Click on the blue and delete it. Remember to have the image on a separate layer from the background, so that you get a transparent deleted area. You can use the same configuration on different images to keep it consistent. However, this requires that you click the magic wand on the same exact color in each image.

(2) You can use the same magic wand method, but go for a less destructive method than deleting. After you get the selection, just create a mask on the layer and on the mask fill the selection with black. This will result in the same conclusion as before, but will give more possibilities to backtrack and customize.

(3) One great dynamic method, no doubt the best if done correctly, is to have an exclusion layer on the image layer that basically excludes all of the color that you define. The great thing about this method is that it's totally lossless, it's dynamic and you don't need use the somewhat unreliable magic wand tool. The feathering of the color is difficult to set in this method though.

(4) There's also a feature somewhere in the image options to delete a specific range of colors. It's somewhere in the image color adjustments. Somewhere close to the contrast levels. I have to check it when I come home from uni.

[xenogia]

Excellent if you can find out, it will be great.  The 4th option seems the easiest and the least time consuming.

[Matt Goble]

Try this:

1. Pipette (sp?) a good blue from your background.
2. Go to SELECT > COLOUR RANGE
3. Drag the slider until the entire blue area is white in the preview window
4. Press OK

[xenogia]

I shall have a look today when I get home at this colour range option.  Thanks for all your help guys

[voh]

Some classmates of mine did a project that was stop-motion green screen animation.

They used Adobe Premiere, which is up to the task.

When it's not crashing, that is

[xenogia]

Premiere, just seems do daunting

[TheYak]

Methods and software vary quite a lot depending upon whether you're doing a set small number of frames or processing video. 

For video, a free alternative is Zweistein (unsure on spelling at this time), but if Premiere seems daunting, Zwei is downright diabolical. 

As far as processing a few (e.g. 8 for each view) frames in Photoshop, it's really not so bad.  After figuring out your process it'll take minimal time for each following frame.  Just make sure you use a consistent method so that no frames stand out.  As far as eliminating the blue, you can magic-wand the basic blue, but you're likely to get some blue bleeding and reflection on pixels you want to keep.  In this case, you can use image-balances to eliminate the blue (of course, best if the person's not wearing blue).

Since transparency can be pulled from a corner of the image colors, no need to actually create a transparent section.  You can just magic-wand it and make it its own layer, inverse selecting the character and replacing bluish bits on a different layer.  Save the end result as character-on-blue with blue being your transparent color (unless you'd rather just do a transparent PNG or something).