How To Use a Green Screen

hello guys it's mark Newton here from the school of photography and in this tutorial we're going to look at using a green screen from lighting all the way to the Edit process so firstly let's talk to you about what you need obviously you need a green screen and just so that you know just to be clear you use green screens so that you can't replace the background so you can take pictures of people on a green screen and then you take away that green and you put in a picture of whatever you want to and that's what green screens are used for so we need some stock pictures for our courses so I've got a model coming in later she's gonna be holding a camera and looking like she's taking pictures and then I can change the background and put her into any situation that I want her to be so first let's talk about the lighting setup that you need now clearly you need a green screen or a green background it's called chroma green loads of different versions out there my recommendation is to get the paper ones because they are the smoothest ones and the smoother you make your green screen the easier it is to edit so firstly get your green screen obvious then you need to light your green screen and here's the key to it you need even soft lighting across the whole of the green screen so I'm going to show you how to do that now so I am using two soft boxes to light the background now you don't have to use soft boxes you can use LED panels or anything really that is going to throw even and soft lighting onto the background and then you set those lights up so that they're nice and evenly hitting the background and then you do an exposure test to test that the light is even across the background so I'm going to do that now but we need to switch off the filming lights for that so that I can get an accurate exposure so I'm just going to turn the filming lights off so to do an exposure test you need a light meter and you need a remote trigger okay this light meter measures the light obviously this hit the background and I've got a remote trigger here that's connected to the flashes and when I click that button all the flashes go off okay so that's what you need now learning studio lighting is quite complex you're not going to learn it on YouTube because it's so much to learn but we have a whole cause of how in-depth course a guide to studio lighting over at the school of photography comm come over and check that out if you want to learn all about studio lighting but for now I'm just going to show you how to measure the background so firstly I'm going to put the light meter dead in the center I'm going to try and keep out the way of the lights fire off the lights and it's giving me f/8 and a half the exposure here in the middle of this green screen is f/8 and a half so I need to make sure that the whole green screen is at the same exposure so I'm going to come over to here and do another one again that's saying eight and a half and a couple of extra increments but that's not really going to matter too much so I'm going to come over to this side do it again and again eight and a half so what that means is the whole of this area of the green screen is currently exposed at f/8 and a half now I'm going to test it along the bottom here okay let's give me eight in half again in the middle here 8 in half again and over here eight and a half again okay so that is brilliant what that means is that this whole green screen is nice and evenly lit at around f/8 and a half the exposure hitting this whole screen is FA and a half and that is brilliant now what you need to do is get your exposure right for where your model is and balance it out against the two so I'm going to get my model to stand well in front of these lights and that's really important because you don't want if it if you see me standing here you can see that these soft boxes are actually hitting me the green screen and you don't want that you just want these lights to be lighting the green screen so we come forward a few steps so now you can see that I am only being lit now by the Brawley and just so that you know we did have this broadly on but when I was doing all of this exposure testing because it will make a difference so I've already done a rough test on this so you already know but for the sake of this video I'm now going to explain to you again what I've done so I'm going to use a white Brawley to light the model and that is going to give me a reflected soft light and it's going to spread it quite wide now I'm doing that because I want general stock shots right I want stock shots that I can put into any picture that I want if I want to change the background white I can just change it white if I want to put a sunset in the background I can put a sunset in the background now if you are doing it for a specific image you are going to need to look at that image and figure out where the lights coming from so for instance if you've got an image and there is strong light coming over from the right hand side then quite clearly you will move your light to the right hand side so it matches the picture that you're gonna be plunking from the person into all right so I hope that makes sense but for me we're doing a general one so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna put the white Briley over to the left to take a few shots but the white broadly in the middle take a few shots put the white broadly over to the right and take a few shots so then I've got a nice generic kind of load of pictures that I can use for our courses so now what I've got is a setup where the model is going to stand exactly where this masking tape is and the lights coming in slightly from the left hand side of the face and I need to take a reading for this area here you're doing it exactly the same way you hold your meter up towards where the camera is going to be and you take a test shot and that's giving me f/8 now that's exactly what you want because what that means is that the background is half a stop brighter than the foreground remember the background was eight and a half if I in half what you do not want when you're doing green screen photography this is really important is overspill so if these background lights are brighter then your foreground light by a lot so half a stops fine if it starts to go to a stop and a half two stops brighter it's gonna reflect back light but it's actually gonna reflect back green screen lights and then when you erase the green screen on the computer you're going to start erasing parts of the skin parts of the hair and everything in it so right nightmare so getting this set up right first is absolutely key so in this case it's f8 in the foreground and f8 and 1/2 in the background now all I need to do is wait for the model to turn up we're going to take some shots and then we're going to remove the green screen and put all sorts of fancy stuff in the background so let's wait for her to turn up [Music] so our model has arrived and this is Rosie the best model in Essex and if you want to see more of Rosie actually season our guide to studio lighting cause she's a model for that hull Coast I don't explain a couple of things because I forgot that Rosie was actually smaller than me so I've had to lower the background lights a bit to keep the background evenly lit obviously I've added a white reflector as well and that's just a filling shadows around this side of the face when I'm shooting with the broadly to the left or the right okay so now really all I've got to do is take loads of shots one with a broadly they're broadly in the middle body over there move the reflector over this side and that's pretty much it and we're gonna get the shots here we go [Music] [Music] right I've took loads of pictures with the light source coming from the left from the right from the middle we've had pictures with a white t-shirt pictures with a black t-shirt so I am sure I've got enough now I just want them for stock picture so that I can use them for lots of different things okay now let's go into Photoshop where I'm going to show you how to remove the green screen very easily and plunk in any background that you want okay guys we are now in Photoshop and this is the picture that I have chosen and this is the picture that is going to be on the front cover of our new book and while I'm on the subject let me take this opportunity to tell you about the courses that we run over at the school of photography calm yes we've got a book but we also do lots of video courses as well courses in photography in Lightroom in Photoshop in studio lighting like you've looked at before obviously and we are professional teachers I've been teaching photography since 2002 and I promise you I can make you a better photographer so if it's photography that you're looking to learn come over and check us out at the school of photography comm also we've got loads of freebies so you can try before you buy right let's now go into Photoshop and remove the green screen okay so the first thing that we need to do is separate the green from the person all right now for that we're going to go up to select at the top here go down to color range you're going to make sure that your fuzziness is around about 80 or 90 I'm just going to leave it around let's put it in the middle just for argument's sake let's put it on 85 and then you're gonna click on this eyedropper tool here make sure that that is selected make sure that you've got sampled colors selected at the top and then you just click on the green parts of your picture now if you if you watch if I click onto the white if I click onto the t-shirt here as you can see it's now selected the white color the t-shirt now obviously we want the green so we just click on the background and we select the green and as you can see down the bottom here and the bottom of the selection here it's it's not quite selected it's still gray so basically everything that's white in this box will be your selection and everything that's black will not be your selection and you can see it's not selecting these bottom bits of the image because it's darker it's like a graduation now if you just hold down the shift key as you click further on the screen it adds extra selections and I'll just show you what I mean so if I hold down the shift key here as you can see a plus sign is now appearing next to the eyedropper and that is saying that you're going to add a selection to what you've already created so now if I click down the bottom there you go you can see it's now adding these parts of the green screen so just click all the way around you're glick green screen whilst holding down the shift key and that will give you a good selection just like that when you've done all of that simply click OK at the top and it creates a selection of the green of the green screen in the background the next thing we do is we go over to select at the top here and we go down to select and mask and then it brings up the Select and mask window here as you can see now depending on whether you've used it before it might not look exactly the same as mine but don't worry it's going to do the same thing now over here under view you need to select black and white now click on the arrow again at the top to close the box and then over here you can see the it's not quite selected just the outside the green bits on the outside is it's selected also some of the green bits on the inside of the body and you can see that here and that's why we've gone into black and white and if I press ctrl and the plus button I can zoom in on this area and what you can see actually is that that is green reflection on the camera now quite simply all you do is you come over to the - at the top here the - brush make sure the brush is actually selected this one here come over to the areas that have been selected within the body these bits here the bit of the camera and quite simply click and paint over them like that if I hold down the spacebar I can then also have a look if there's any other parts of the body that are showing so sorry you hold down the spacebar and then it brings up the hand there as you can see and then you click and move around on your screen let's press control + - to zoom out again like that and now I want to view the image as it is so I'm going to go back up to view and I'm going to go to marching ants this time and then I'm just going to click the arrow at the top here under view just to get rid of that box to get it out of my way and then I'm going to press ctrl + + again zoom in on the edges so that you can see them okay and now what I want to do is invert this because it's the person that I'm gonna cut out really I'm gonna grab that person and move it into a different picture in a minute so I'm gonna invert this and you do that quite simply by clicking invert here and then up in view at the top I'm going to just go back to it to overlay and that's so that we can see the picture a bit better click the arrow to remove that box again and then I'm going to zoom back into the picture by pressing ctrl and the + key holding down the spacebar and moving around to about this area here I'm going to press ctrl + - a little bit there we go and you can see that there is still some green around the edge of the model here because she's got blonde hair it is harder to remove this person from a green screen but it's still possible of course but what we're going to do now is go to decontaminate colors here click on decontaminate colors and then as you can see it does exactly that you can see let's have a look around the edge here I'm going to click off and on and you can see that it's just getting rid of them greens a bit better for us the next thing I'm going to do is come up to the feather slider and I'm going to feather the edge of the selection or the edge of the person like that it gives a nice soft edge that makes it much more natural if you like when we put it into another background we've got a softer edge only slight just by a few pixels well I've got it there look two point eight pixels so it's only very slight but it will make a hell of a difference and the next thing I'm going to do is add some smoothing to that edge as well so effectively what you're doing is softening the edge and then smoothing off that softening if that makes sense so you've got a soft smooth edge and that gives a much more natural look to when you're cutting something out now what we need to do is output this picture to another layer with a layer mask and you do that by coming down to output two new layer with layer mask is other options there but that's the one that we want there new layer with the layer mask and we're going to click OK and here it is now in Photoshop I'm going to press ctrl + 0 to go fullscreen and as you can see the background has now been removed but there's still some refinements to do like if you look here inside the camera where the camera is I've still got reflections here of the green screen now you can't help that because obviously the camera is shiny it's reflective and it's gonna reflect things that are around it ie green light okay so we are going to get rid of that now I'm going to press control and the plus symbol to zoom in on my picture a bit hold down the spacebar and move the picture to around about there let's zoom in once more like that okay that's good because what I want us to see is this area here which is the camera reflecting and this area of the hair as well and now what we're going to do is add a hue/saturation adjustment layer and that is found in your layers palette down the bottom here under this symbol you click on it and you're going to go to hue and saturation and here it appears and we're going to use this tool to target colors ie green colors in our picture and desaturate them and it's as simple as that so up here under where it says master you're going to click on that drop-down and you're going to select greens then you're going to select this eyedropper tool and you're going to come over and click in an area of your picture that is green like these parts of the hair so if I just click on this part of the hair here as you can see here it's selected that color range and a bit more around it and this is where you can get more refined in the color so firstly we are going to desaturate that color just to about here about 75% 80% there and as you can see it's desaturated everything within the scene and we don't want that we just want to desaturate the greens and this is where this slider comes in so I can now click on that and move it where I want it to be so if I come back to more of the greens which is obviously what I want let's click the hide symbol here to see the before and after okay so currently that's not doing that much you can see around here it's doing okay but not that much so I'm going to bring this middle slider in hide it again and that's working much better particularly around the reflection here of the camera so let's hide and bring back hide and bring back and that's not bad now you can keep playing around with these sliders so I can slide this up and that's not good come back a bit more and you basically get it to where you think it should be and I think let's just move this over a little bit yeah I think probably about their ease correct okay so what we're looking at is the tons of the skin the skin tones make sure that they don't change so here's the chin and obviously the the neck and stuff like that so let's hide the effect by clicking this icon here and bring it back again hide bring it back again so you can see there that it's not affecting the skin tone and now let's look at the camera where the reflection is in the camera and the edges of the hair hide bring it back hide and bring it back now that's doing a fantastic job around on the camera possibly it needs a bit more around the hair so let's now drag that over a little bit more about there and that's done a bit better job now on the hair but there's one more thing that we can change and that is the huge slider at the top here so if I click on that hue slider and drag it across and you can see that it is just doing them last little refinements that you need in that hair to remove the green so let's hide that and bring it back hide bring it back hide and bring it back and that's it you can see now that it's getting rid of the green on the camera and it's getting rid of the green around the hair so again hide bring it back hide bring it back now that is not bad at all so I'm going to shut that down I'm going to press ctrl + 0 to fullscreen it and now let's bring back the original layer the background layer the NIMH here by holding down the Alt key clicking on the ayats symbol and that brings the original picture and then if I press it again that's what we've done that's the removal of the green screen so that's before and that is after that's not bad and that is fairly quick it's a really quick and easy way to remove a green screen now you can at this point add extra hair in if you want to and you do that quite simply by copying parts of the hair and pasting it back in where you want it to be I don't think this image needs it because by the time you put it into a background of another image it's got loads of colors in the background it will just blend in nicely and let's prove that to you right now so I've got another picture up here and this I just got off of a stock website obviously it's just a road on high and I'm gonna go back to my other picture and before I move this picture into another picture I'm going to merge the hue/saturation layer we've the picture with the background removed okay with the green-screen removed and you do that by selecting this layer holding down the control key selecting the layer underneath that's the command key if you are on a Mac and right-clicking and going merge layers and here we have a cut out model with all of that green removed ready to be placed into any other picture that you want and then it comes really simple because you just used the move tool and move tool which is up here in your tool box click on the person and as you can see I can now move her I'm gonna drag her up to the tab of the image that I've opened earlier on I'm going to pull her down and then release with my mouse okay this bit here says the target document has a different depth now that's going to happen particularly if you're working from Lightroom and then into stock images off the internet but basically what that means is that this picture here is an 8-bit picture and the picture that are used for the model is a 16-bit picture then I'm going short of it is it doesn't make a prime bit of difference just click yes okay if that appears on yours now I'm gonna move her a little bit further down I'm gonna press ctrl NT for a transform I'm gonna drag the corners in to make her smaller plonker on the bottom there and it's roughly about there I think so she looks like she's in the middle of the road and once you've resized your person using the free transform tool which is ctrl + T or command + + T on a Mac you click the tick at the top to tell Photoshop to apply that transformation so at the moment it doesn't look that natural and that is because we've done the shoot of the person in a studio and the background picture is what will stock picture and it looks like actually it's got some kind of filter over it or stuff like that so you will need so if you're just grabbing pictures off the internet and then put in these pick your green screen pictures in them you know you will need to do some adjustments to make it look a bit more natural and we're going to do a few now the first thing is I'm going to change the background into a smart object and blur it okay so to do that we're going to right click we're gonna go convert to smart object I'm going to go up to filter I'm gonna come down to blur and go to Gaussian blur and as you can see there the background has now gone a nice blurry effect and you can change this slider if you want to to make it less blurry or more blurry but I reckon about there and was about right in the first place let's just put it back there click OK now to make this look even more natural the picture wouldn't just blur right it wouldn't just blur it's going off into the distance so it would blur off into the distance if that makes so it'll be sharp in the foreground and then go blurry in the background so I'm going to create that effect now by clicking on the mask of the smart filter that's this white section here using a gradient tool making sure that my foreground color is black and my background color is white and if it's not on your Photoshop you just click this at the top this little symbol here and that will reset the cap of the colors to the default colors and then you can click this arrow here to switch from black to white at the top here in the options of your gradients Hall you click this drop-down arrow and you make sure that this one over here in the top left is selected which says from foreground to background color select that come down to the bottom of your screen click with your mouse hold and drag up the cursor and then release and what it's doing is is creating a mask over that effect that you've created that blurry effect and that is why we change the picture to a smart object because we can then apply effects to a smart object and work on them effects separately if you did it straight on to the image you would be making what's called a destructive move and you wouldn't be able to apply extra effects on the top and stuff like that ok so there we go we've got a nice now blurry background and it's starting to look a bit more natural the next thing that we need to do is try and match the colors so that the picture of the person matches the colors of the background and to do that a really good tip is to look in the highlights of your picture and the shadows of your picture so let's look at the pic this picture here and in the highlights here I could see some yellows and in the shadows here I can see some blues so effectively what we've got to do is put some yellows into the highlights of this picture and blues into the shadows of it I'm going to do that using a curves adjustment layer so firstly I'm going to select the top layer here this is the one I want it to be applied to I'm going to click the adjustment layer icon at the bottom I'm going to select curves like that I'm going to right click on this curves adjustment layer and I'm going to go create clipping mask now what that does is that Clips the curves adjustment layer just to the picture below it if I didn't do that whatever I do now will affect everything including the background and obviously I only want to be affecting the person okay so that's why I've clipped it to the person layer in the curves box under RGB I'm going to select blue because it's just the blues I'm going to be affecting then we're going to be adding some Blues into the shadows and the shadow areas of your curves are down here in the bottom left down here this is your shadows so if I push up here then it's adding blues to the shadows okay so let's push up here just like that and then if this top section here this top right section is your highlights of the shot so if I click on this line and pull it down I'm effectively taking blues out of the highlights which is adding yellows okay now that sounds a bit complicated and curves can be quite complicated I've got a whole tutorial on curves and how to use them and what they are and stuff like that I'll put a link to it here now so you can go and have a look at that if you want to learn about curves in Photoshop so let's now hide this effect and bring it back again hide this effect and bring it back again and you can see if you look just look at the skin tone here around here you can see these suggesting it a bit but I think it needs a little bit more so I'm just quite simply gonna push that up a little bit pull that down a little bit here like that and now let's hide the effect and bring it back again hide the effect and bring it back again and now we're looking to the whites of the picture just to see if it's matching so let's have a look at the white of the t-shirt here and the whites or the mid whites if you like because that's a mint that's a mid white and the t-shirt and then you've got a mid white up here in the clouds and that that's not too bad at all actually I might remove the blues a little bit more from the shadows so just about there possibly hide the effect bring it back hide bring it back no actually I think it doesn't eat a little bit more it's putting it back to where it was hide the effect bring it back hide the effect bring it back yeah that is not bad at all actually and obviously you can play around with it for ages if you want to but I'm actually quite happy with that so I'm going to shut down this box here let's hide that effect in the layers palette and bring it back again hide it bring it back yeah that looks okay to me and that's that that's how you light a green screen and photograph people with a green screen in the background in the studio and this is how you remove that green screen and put the person into a background now I've used this picture on the front cover of my book and here it is now so you can actually see it professionally if you like because this book is now being sold all over the world and this is now the front cover of our book that's just to show you that we practice what we preach here and I hope this video has really really helped you out if it has please like the video share it with your friends and subscribe to our Channel that's how you support us and that is how we can bring you these tutorials if you don't do them things we can't bring you these tutorials and we thank every single one of you that do don't forget to come and see us over at the school of photography com if you want learn photography thanks for watching and remember learn more at the school of photography [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The School of Photography

Views: 57,099

Rating: 4.9357195 out of 5

Keywords: Green screen photoshop, how to remove green screen in photoshop, remove green screen photoshop, photoshop green screen, chroma key photoshop, how to use a green screen, how to light a green screen, green screen photography, how to take pictures with a green screen, how to shoot green screen, how to green screen photography, photography green screen

Id: TW-GRKzEze4

Length: 33min 43sec (2023 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2019