User manual DIGITAL ANARCHY PRIMATTE CHROMAKEY 3.5

[. . . ] Primatte Chromakey 3. 5 Make complex masks in minutes. A fast, powerful plugin for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Digital Anarchy Smart Tools for Creative Minds. alorithm by www. digitalanarchy. com Primatte 3. 5 : Table of Contents Table of Contents Introduction to Primatte How does Primatte work?Compatible host apps & OS's Terms in this manual Working in Photoshop Primatte for other applications What's new in Primatte 3. 5 Primatte with Backdrop Designer Not a general masking tool. 6 6 6 7 7 8 9 6 What Primatte does & doesn't do. 10 10 11 11 11 10 Overview of Primatte interface Preview & View Options Preview Window View Option modes Comp View Mask View Front View Back View Toggle your Views 12 13 14 15 15 16 16 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 13 Display Options Comp Shows Color button Comp Shows Layer button Comp Shows Layer popup Render Against BG checkbox Transp, Split buttons Which Preview/Display should I use? 17 2 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : Smart Tools for Creative Minds. | Primatte 3. 5 : Make complex masks in minutes. Primatte 3. 5 : Table of Contents Move Tools 23 Pan Zoom Zoom Reset Zoom Plus, Minus, Numeric Reset All Undo, Redo Mark, Recall Save settings between sessions OK button Cancel button Using AutoMask Always On checkbox Radius slider Use for batching photos Best for head, shoulder, 3/4 shots How to shoot for AutoMask Step 1: Select tool Step 2: Clean BG tool Step 3: Clean FG tool Use 3-Way to clean up AutoMask Point Selection tool Box Selection tool Overview of workflow Always On checkbox About Actions About Batch processes Training for Actions How it works (Actions) How it works (Batches) 23 23 23 23 24 24 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 30 31 32 33 33 34 35 35 35 36 36 37 Assist Tools 24 The AutoMask tool 26 3-Step Mask Tools 29 Selection Tools 33 Use Actions & Batching 34 3 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : Smart Tools for Creative Minds. [. . . ] In either case, Photoshop opens the file and makes the photo a Background layer. This type of layer can not have transparency so you don't want to apply Primatte to it. Primatte can then delete the background and replace it with transparency, so you can drop in a different background behind it. Once this is done, you can apply Primatte. 36 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : Smart Tools for Creative Minds. | Primatte 3. 5 : Make complex masks in minutes. Primatte 3. 5 : Using Actions & Batching Apply Primatte The next step is to apply Primatte to the image. When you apply Primatte, click on the AutoMask button and turn on the AlwaysOn checkbox. You should now be back in Photoshop with the green/blue background removed. At this point you can click on the `Stop Recording' button in the Actions palette or you can do other things like save the image, copy in a background from a different file, or many other things. All of which will be recorded to the Action until you hit the Stop Recording button. As mentioned, this is a little easier to show in a video than describe in print, so if you're still unclear on how Actions work, please check out our free video training on our web site. How it works (Batches) Now that you've got the Action created, we can start the business of applying it to all of your images. The hard way of doing this would be to open each one in Photoshop and apply the Action individually. However, since that's a pain in the ass and you have better things to do with your time. . . We'll use the Batch function under Photoshop's menu File> Automate. There's a couple checkboxes to deal with and you can also specify a folder to save the `actioned' images to, but it's a very easy process. This is a great way of applying Primatte to hundreds of images at once. Photoshop will open up each image, apply the steps of the Action and then save everything back out. You'll need to make sure you follow the steps that we list out in the Action section, but if you do, you should get good results. 37 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : Smart Tools for Creative Minds. | Primatte 3. 5 : Make complex masks in minutes. Primatte 3. 5 : Using Actions & Batching We recommend that you set up a test folder with just a few images in it. Actions can sometimes not behave as expected and you want to run them on half a dozen images before trying to apply them to hundreds. You could also accidentally save over your original files, so you want to make sure you have the originals backed up onto DVD or in a different folder before running the Action. We have more information on Batch in our video tutorials and Photoshop also a good deal of resources that talk about it. It's a very powerful feature for doing many things and now works very well with Primatte. 38 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : Smart Tools for Creative Minds. [. . . ] red Four regions of color Looking at the four regions that are created by these polyhedrons, we can see that each region has a particular property. 3 2 1 green Region 1 black blue The polyhedrons that form Primatte's 3D RBG olor space. This region is the small polyhedron. It contains all of the pixels in the foreground image that are designated as 100% background. This means the foreground colors in the small polyhedron will be replaced completely with background pixels. 65 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : Smart Tools for Creative Minds. | Primatte 3. 5 : Make complex masks in minutes. Primatte 3. 5 : Behind the scenes Region 2 This is the region between the small polyhedron and the medium polyhedron. [. . . ]