Just 10 years ago, film was still mostly used for digital photography. Quite a few photographers kept shooting film as long as they could thinking it was better than digital. It is technically true that medium and large format film has higher resolution than today's digital SLR cameras. However, the benefits of shooting and processing digital rather than shooting film are far to great. Almost all portrait photographers are shooting digital now.
A similar trend is now happening with digital backdrops. More and more photographers are shooting on a chroma key backdrop and using digital background replacement. At first there was some resistance by photographers to move in this direction. However, over the last few years, chroma key has really been gaining ground.
There are many obvious benefits to shooting with a green screen or blue screen background.
1. It is a huge money saver. Traditional muslin backdrops are very expensive.
2. Your studio is now very portable. You only need to pack 1 green or blue screen backdrops wherever you go.
3. You have complete control of the background selection. You can have a library of thousands of digital background options. You can even create and fine tune your own backgrounds for each photo.
Is shooting chroma key difficult?
Its not as difficult as it may seem. You will need to ensure that the chroma key background is evenly lit for the best results. If you can accomplish that, then you can successfully shoot chroma key.
With today's latest software, removing the background is really easy. This can be done in Photoshop. There are several ways to do this. If you are using Photoshop, I recommend using color range selection or the background eraser. I highly recommend NOT using the magic wand or magic eraser tools. These will often yield poor results.
While Photoshop can give decent results, there is a much easier alternative. For our studio, we use a software call Photo Key. It is made by a company called FX Home. It is specifically designed for green screen and blue screen. There is no difficult background selection process. It is almost a "one click" process. In addition, the results are amazing. The "green spill" suppression is the best on the market, bar none. It is able to leave fine detail in detailed areas such as the hair while completely removing the green or blue fringe. It doesn't crop out the fringed areas where the hairline blends with the background. Instead, it de-couples the green/blue hue out of these areas. It is really amazing. Photo Key can also batch process as many file as you want. You can process an entire photo shoot in a few minutes. I'm in no way affiliated with FX Home. I just really like there software. It has enabled my studio to expand what it can do with chroma key. You can check it out at fxhome.com.
What about digital backdrops?
Really, you can use any digital image for a background. When shooting chroma key, you have the freedom to use whatever you want. This opens up so many possibilities.
When I started using chroma key a few years ago, my clients were so excited about the background options that they had. We could create images that we just could do with conventional photography.
Free Photoshop script for making digital backgrounds!
I started creating digital backdrops using Photoshop. I soon realized that this process could be automating using Photoshop Actions. These actions started to pile up into a very large collection. Also actions had some limitations.
Since I have a background in computer programming, I decided to give Photoshop scripting a try. Photoshop scripting was the perfect place to put all that I had created into one file with a user interface. Also, scripting allowed me to create random algorithms for textures, drape folds etc.
After a few years in the making, Backdrop Creator is now available for everyone to use. It can create muslin style backdrops, solid texture surfaces, lighting effects etc. You can blend colors and textures to create as many backdrops as you will ever need. Backdrop Creator has brought my studio to the next level. I hope it can do the same for yours.
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