Compositing Visual Effects

There are many ways to combine images by using image blending operations rather than a compositing operation. These operations have the virtue of not requiring a matte, which is a huge advantage because creating a matte is often a difficult and time-consuming process. Two images are input to an image blending operation and its output is the new image. It's as simple as that. Image blending is also the core technology behind speed changes, a phenomenon that is growing in demand. While these operations have been seen earlier in the context of working with mattes, in this chapter the focus is on how they are used to blend two color images together ...