Are you sick and tired of photographing (plus seeing) the identical old photography, over and over again? You have been told that “blue screen” could be the way to go, however you do not really comprehend it or even know a lot about it? Here is everything you have to be familiar with to use it as a photography background!

Firstly…What exactly is it?

You’ll hear the words “green screen”, “blue screen”, and “chroma key” tossed around and employed to mean the same thing when discussing a photography background.

Chroma key only could be defined as working with a backdrop that is one un-patterned, evenly illuminated color. The green and blue tend to be the most frequently used colors. In reality, you can actually work with ANY color – but green and blue tend to be best. I am going to make clear why that’s the situation in a minute.

Green screen techniques can be utilized for either video and still images. You shoot somebody in front of the chroma key and then later (or at once with high quality video cameras) you eradicate the solid color and supplant it using any type of backdrop you desire!

It is how the local weatherman/woman does the weather report. They’re standing in front of a blue screen and the camera digitally strips it out and puts in your local weather map. They’re watching themselves using a television monitor to find out where to point and so on. That’s confusing and more difficult than you may think in order to be a weatherman!

Next…Why use green or blue?

Commonly we tend to employ blue and green since they’re the farthest from the colors found in skin coloration. The procedure was primarily done with blue, however as the quality of cameras improves, green seems to work better. It’s simpler to strip out of the backdrop, therefore most studios are changing to green. Nevertheless it doesn’t hurt to get both.

An additional good advantage for green is that it produces less clothing conflicts.

Since color is mechanically stripped out and substituted, if the subject is wearing a hue of that color (blue) as part of their clothing…it will be substituted. You can time and again see shirts and ties that turn into funny appearing holes in the subject – showing through to the new background.

It has even happened with blue eyes!

Green tends to bring about not as much of a clothing conflict, it happens to be easier for the cameras to work with and it’s easier to light evenly.

Uniform illumination is crucial since shadows on the backdrop will appear in the end result. This tends to destroy the realism of the photography background. And more, working with irregular illumination, you’d obtain several hues of the color…several of which may not get eliminated properly.

The three chief varieties of chroma key backgrounds are: paint, fabric and paper.

Paint is nice for people with a studio with a cove and you do all your work there…it can be of no use if you ever ever must go on location.

Paper is available in large rolls, but is easily ripped and continually needs replacing. This will get pricey in a hurry.

Cloth tends to stay fresh longest and is portable. And fabric is easy to wash (unclean chroma key backgrounds don’t work well).

Any fabric store can offer some material that could do the job. Get a little and do some testing with your photography background, any photo editing program is able to strip out the color. Try it, you will like it!