Chapter 2 – Pulling Mattes

The first step toward any composite is to pull a matte. Although your software probably has one or two excellent keyers, such as Ultimatte, there are many occasions where they don't work well or are not applicable at all. This chapter describes several alternative methods of creating mattes, some of which work with bluescreens and some of which work with arbitrary backgrounds. The purpose here is to provide you with as many different methods as possible for creating a matte for either compositing or element isolation—to put as many arrows in your quiver as possible. No single matte extraction procedure is good for all situations, so the more approaches you have at your disposal, the better the chances are that you can pull a good matte quickly. Subsequent chapters will address the topics of refining the matte, despill methods, and the actual compositing operation itself.