on 13/12/02 7:13 AM, Richard Lewisohn at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > In a past life producing TV commercials, we always needed huge (unfeasible) > amounts of steam coming of various Uncle Ben's products (and cups of > Nescafe). > > We tended to shoot real backlit steam (usually using the tampon route > described in another post). We shot a lot of footage and looked for the > best bit. In post-production we increased the contrast to make the steam > more visible, this was then pulled of the black background and matted onto > the live action shots. > > I don't know how well you can pull steam off a black background in Photoshop > (should be a quick test if you shoot digital). The advantage is that you > can treat the steam as a separate layer that can be shot before the client > turns up. > > It would be interesting to hear what route you take.
Hi Richard Just what I was thinking of, if the background is to be dark on the final shot then it should be fairly easy to strip in previously shot stem using layer properties etc. Only thing is, today the client sent me a revised visual showing the steam as a more 'illustrated' look, I spent 5 mins in PS and managed to come up with something close to what they want, I used the magic lasso to create the steam 'curley / wispy' shape, feathered the selection a little, filled with white, used a bit of Liquify filter, copied the layer, made a layer mask on each layer, brushed out with various opacities of brush parts of the steam, finally adjusted later opacity and dragged if over the visual that the client sent. Looks quite funky if I may say so! many thanks Darrin Jenkins =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
