How to Make the Perfect Green Screen Cut Out in Photoshop

On this  video photographer Glyn Dewis looks at how to do good cut outs out of gree/blue screen in Photoshop.

You might think that doing a cut out off a green/blue screen is simple – and it can be if you know what you are doing. What you need to remember is that your subject might have green/blue reflections from the background and so using color alone might not be the right way to go.

Dewis start with select>color range and you can see the difference between the subject and the background. You can use the fuzziness slider and play with it until you get enough separation.

Now you will want to add a black layer mask – you can do that by hold down the alt/option and add a mask. To add a layer below this one hold the cmd/cntrl key and click a new layer. Remove and leftovers with a black brush (100% opacity).

Now we reach the point where we need to remove the green cast. So you are going to add a hue/saturation layer and choose a clipping mask in green (or blue depending your original color). If this isn’t enough choose the yellows as well. Finally you need to click on the layer mask – go to the filter and choose other>minimum and select 1 or 2 depending on how much you want to remove some of the dark outline. This will require you to soften the outline – for this stay on the mask and choose filter>blur>gussian blur and choose 1.

We have covered the actual use of a green screen in the past with a video by Matt Forbes from Telestream and a video by Ryan Connolly from Film Riot.

You can find many more Photoshop video tutorials on LensVid’s Photoshop section. You can also find more of Dewis’ videos on LensVid on this link.

 

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

2 comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *