Compositing Visual Effects, 2nd Edition

Creating a mask is a core competency for any compositor. There is a constant need to isolate an object out of the frame for some kind of special treatment, such as color correction, blurring, regraining, and many, many others. The challenge here is that the object of interest has not been neatly shot on a bluescreen for easy isolation. It is an arbitrary object within an arbitrary background. This process is distinctly different than creating a matte for a bluescreen composite where the matte is created by a keyer and the purpose is to composite two layers. Here a mask is created in any number of ways, by hook or by crook, without using a keyer. ...