{"id":2810,"date":"2012-07-31T14:50:27","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T18:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dougbardwell.com\/db\/?p=2810"},"modified":"2017-11-19T09:57:02","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T14:57:02","slug":"zmatte-a-full-featured-keyer-for-composites-from-tiffens-digital-film-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dougbardwell.com\/db\/zmatte-a-full-featured-keyer-for-composites-from-tiffens-digital-film-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"zMatte \u2013 a full-featured keyer for composites from DFT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Composite<\/a><\/p>\n

Being able to composite images easily has always been a dream of still, video and film creators. Pulling a background and replacing it with another is still heavily used today by the broadcast industry. You only need to watch the evening weather report to see it in action.<\/p>\n

The weatherman walks back and forth in front of a green wall and the broadcasting equipment pulls the green out of the signal, replacing it with the weather maps. It therefore gives the illusion of the weatherman walking in front of the actual maps themselves.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve got a project for school or work that could benefit with a different background, \u00a0this is the software to make it happen. zMatte<\/span> \u2013 part of the Digital Film Tools (DFT) collection \u2013 comes ready to work with many different software packages and systems you may already be using:<\/p>\n

Photoshop CS3 and up
\nAfter Effects CS3 and up
\nFinal Cut Pro 6 & 7<\/p>\n

Avid Symphony, Media Composer, Newscutter, Xpress Pro (32\/64 Bit)<\/p>\n

Macintosh Multicore Intel\u00ae processor
\nMac OS X 10.5.x – OS X 10.8.x<\/p>\n

Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7<\/p>\n

I had occasion to try out both the Photoshop plug-in as well as the After Effects plug-in.<\/p>\n

After Effects<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just say the plug-in was next near to magic the first time I tried it. It comes with default settings, and more often than not, you won\u2019t need to tweak much to get it to work. The beauty of the software is that if you have a really problematic image, zMatte has every conceivable parameter you can adjust to get the matte just right. It will even do multiple matte creation, automatic spill suppression, sophisticated matte and edge manipulation, and color correction.<\/p>\n