retouching in after effects

P

Patrick Barta

Member
I'm coming from a stills / photoshop background and I'm attempting to learn Premiere pro and After Effects. Primarily i'm going to need to figure out how to retouch imperfections on rotating products and backgrounds. I't's all very easy in photoshop but I'm finding it difficult wrapping my head around After Effects.

Does anyone know of any good tutorials out there that would specifically address this? I've been doing Lynda.com and it's been very useful but I can't find a process that covers my needs.
 
what kind of imperfections? can you describe them?
Depending on the shot, i might use a still. use your basic photoshop skills to cover up the imperfection on a new layer as a 'patch'.
bring that layer into after effects.
if the camera or object moves, you will need to track that movement and be sure the patch is in the right spot. if the patch slips, it will be obvious.
if the lighting or perspective of the object changes, this complicates things. youll have to match both of those things . . and thats extremely dependant on the situation.
 
As far as retouching in AE effects concerned, you'll come to find that anything you can do in Photoshop, you can pretty much do in AE.
In your case, I would say the clone stamp tool and the 'liquify' effect should get you headed on the right direction. Most likely, you find yourself using the 'curves, levels' and various blur effects quite frequently in this type of work. Hope this helps.
-B
 
Dust, scratches, all the things we might retouch in a still image for commercial product photograph. The problem of course is that they're moving now. Think of a product on a turntable, maybe throw in a jib with pan/tilt head giving the product even more motion. Most of the time these will be of a subtle change of contrast and color. I've tried doing the motion tracker but the contrast / color is to subtle for the tracker to follow.

I've tried painting in a bright colored dot on a layer above the original track (thinking I could then use that as a tracking point) but I can't figure out how to animate that with the footage to follow the area I want to retouch. And I also have now idea if that will even work.

I suppose I could retouch every single frame but that would take forever at 30 fps over a minute of video.
 
the best tracking points are extreme contrast, like a small x or a dot. something thats extremely easy to follow the whole length of the video and that follows the motion the patch needs to follow . . . . maybe a corner of a label. beware of reflections and highlights unless they are extremely consistant throughout and do not move or change shape, which is rare. . . .

i think much of your work still might be frame to frame unfortunately. you maybe be able to make patches and track them for 5 or 10 frames.

has your prop department ever considered filming flawfree products? fakes? resin instead of real items?

garbage in, garbage out. . . .
 
Welcome to the World of Thirty-Stills per second! Your in the semi-same boat as you were in Stills land...get it as good as can be got when capturing your Movie/Still. Meaning you need to nix the dust and scratches before pulling the trigger! Too damn much work doing it after. And yes, I've done it frame by frame in AE when I HAD to have it!
 
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