| Chromanator tutorials: Garbage mattes Introduction to garbage mattes Despite Chromanator having very powerful automated tools, there are some occasions that still require the human eye. Garbage mattes can be an important part of a successful composite, especially if a greenscreen is unavailable or of poor quality. Garbage mattes can be used to manually specify which areas of the image are retained and which are removed. This is done by drawing directly onto the canvas and can prove useful for removing problematic areas of a greenscreen shot or even to cut an element out of a normal shot. Terminology
It is easy to become confused when using the terms ‘mask' and ‘garbage matte'. Here are a few tips to help make things clearer: - A mask is a shape that obscures part of an image.
- Standalone masks (see the Masking tutorials, coming soon) can be placed on the timeline and applied to multiple objects.
- A garbage matte is a special type of mask that is used with the keying tools, allowing you to manually specify which parts of the image are removed and which are retained.
The following examples will show how garbage mattes can be used to achieve a variety of effects. | 