Ultimatte

The holdout matte used to confirm areas that are definitely foreground.

At first, the holdout mask input appears as triangle on the left side of the node, but when you drag it, it turns into an arrow labeled hm.

The garbage matte used to remove unwanted objects (lighting rigs, and so on) from the foreground.

The background, or screen, image to replace the blue/green screen in the foreground.

An optional clean plate input.

Sets the primary color on which the screen extraction is based. Choose an area on the blue/green screen near important subject detail that is not obscured in any way.

When enabled, the controls on the Film tab are activated.

When enabled, the controls on the Screen Correct tab are activated.

When enabled, the controls on the Shadow tab are activated.

When enabled, the controls on the Spill tab are activated.

When enabled, the controls on the Cleanup tab are activated.

When enabled, the controls on the Color tab are activated.

Select overlay rendering mode:

• off - do not display an overlay.

• screen - leave the subject unchanged and display the preliminary matte area blended with the overlay color.

• subject - view the subject blended with overlay color, and leave the preliminary matte area unchanged.

• Use the add and remove overlay tools to select pixels that should be included in, or excluded from, the screen correct region.

• Note: The add and remove overlay tools accumulate scrubbed pixels in keep and remove lists. If the lists contain equivalent values, a conflict may occur, resulting in no visible change to the overlay when picking. To correct this, try using Undo to revert recent selections or the Reset button on the ScreenCorrect tab.

When overlay is set to screen or subject, enable this control to make the input image grayscale so that the overlay areas are more easily distinguishable.

When overlay is set to screen or subject, sets the overlay color. Adjust the alpha channel to modify the opacity of the overlay.

Sets the type of output to produce:

• composite - displays a composite of the screen and subject output.

• premultiplied - displays the premultiplied screen and subject.

• unpremultiplied - displays the unpremultiplied screen and subject.

Density Tab

Adjusts the matte density in bright foreground areas. Low values are more transparent, high values are more opaque.

NOTE:  Hard, dark edges may occur around foreground subjects if this control is set too high.

Adjusts the matte density in black glossy or dark foreground objects. Low values are more transparent, high values are more opaque.

Sets the number of pixels to use as a kernel to reduce dark edges that may exist in transition areas due to an over-dense matte.

NOTE:  Settings this control too high may cause excessive print-through from the background at the edges of the matte.

Adjusts the matte density in warm colors (like flesh tones). Low values are more transparent, high values are more opaque.

NOTE:  Print-through may occur in red-hued foreground objects if this control is set too low.

Adjusts the matte density in cool colors. Low values are more transparent, high values are more opaque.

NOTE:  Print-through may occur in blue-hued foreground objects if this control is set too low.

When enabled, the overlay Screen Correction controls are activated.

There are a few cases where you can get better results by disabling screen correction:

• When there is no clear view of the screen. For instance it is entirely covered by smoke, or is shot through a window with lots of reflections.

• When you happen to have a combination of noise/grain and screen color that make it impractical or impossible to find settings for the controls that produce a usable result.

The screen correct algorithm generates a synthetic clean plate internally, but for best results, also provide a clean plate as input if you have one.

NOTE:  It is important to pre-crop out any non-image areas, such as letterbox blanking areas, so that they are not interpolated into the screen area.

Adjusts the color range, or tolerance, per channel to be included or excluded from the screen overlay.

Adjusts the screen overlay. Increasing the shrink value erodes the overlay and decreasing it dilates the overlay.

Excludes or includes dark areas from the screen overlay. This control only affects areas where the blue value (when using green screen) is greater than the red value in the foreground image.

Excludes or includes dark areas from the screen overlay. This control only affects areas where the red value (when using green screen) is greater than the blue value in the foreground image.

Excludes or includes bright areas from the screen overlay. This control only affects areas where the blue value (when using green screen) is greater than the red value in the foreground image.

Excludes or includes bright areas from the screen overlay. This control only affects areas where the red value (when using green screen) is greater than the blue value in the foreground image.

Controls the level at which rogue orphan pixels are excluded from the screen overlay:

• off - no orphan pixels are removed automatically.

• coarse - low level exclusion.

• medium - medium level exclusion.

• fine - high level exclusion.

Click to reset the ScreenCorrect settings to their default values.

Shadows Tab

When enabled, the Shadows controls are activated.

These are used to adjust the opacity, sharpness, and color of shadows with minimal effect on the foreground subject. Shadow processing relies on the internal synthetic clean plate and thus is only active if screen correct is also enabled.

The effects of the Shadows controls can be seen in both the matte and the color channels.

Reduces or eliminates unwanted shadows that are lighter than those that are retained.

Note: All retained shadows are lightened by this process.

Restores the density of the darkest part of retained shadows.

Adjusts the density of retained shadows. Higher values increase and lower values decrease the density.

Blurs any retained shadows.

Tints the color of any retained shadows.

When enabled, the Spill controls are activated.

The Ultimatte algorithms automatically suppresses spill if spill suppression processing is enabled. Use the Spill controls to eliminate excessive spill and to restore color similar to the backing that has been inappropriately removed from the foreground.

The effects of the Spill controls can be seen in the processed foreground, but are best judged using the composite output mode.

Adjusts the amount of spill in cool colored foreground objects. Used to reproduce blue, green, or cyan colors that changed through the spill suppression algorithms.

Adjusts the amount of spill in warm colored foreground objects. Used to reproduce pink, purple, and magenta colors for bluescreen, or yellow and orange colors for greenscreen that changed through the spill suppression algorithms.

Adjusts the amount of spill on midrange foreground objects.

Adjusts the amount of spill on bright foreground objects.

Adjusts the amount of spill on dark foreground objects.

Sets a color to subtly influence the foreground objects in areas that may have contained spill.

Adjusts the intensity of the ambient color.

Sets the background veiling color used to override the automatic suppression of the backing color, which attempts to suppress the backing color to black.

Increasing the value increases the amount of veiling (residue) left in the backing area. Decreasing the value increases suppression of that color in the screen area and can cause foreground edges and transparencies to shift color towards the channel's complementary color (cyan for red, magenta for green, and yellow for blue).

NOTE:  In most cases this control can be left at the default value.

Click to reset all Spill settings to their default values.

When enabled, the Cleanup controls are activated.

These controls adjust the black and gray areas of the matte. This dramatically affects the foreground edges, the opacity of transparent objects, and the noise in the foreground image. They result in loss of foreground detail, so use sparingly, and whenever possible solve the problem using the ScreenCorrect controls instead.

The effects of the Cleanup controls can be seen in both the matte and the color channels.

Reduces imperfections or small amounts of noise in the screen area. Lower values are sharper, higher values reduce more noise.

NOTE:  Raising this setting too high results in a cut and paste look with a hard, unnatural edge.

Reduces the size of the cleaned-up matte.

Softens the cleaned-up matte.

Sets a threshold below which the Cleanup controls have no effect.

When enabled, the Color controls are activated.

These controls apply a color correction to the processed foreground to better match the background. Use the Viewer toolbar match pickers to choose colors that should match and, if necessary, adjust the overall correction with the Color controls. The effects of the Color controls are best judged using the composite output mode.

Adjusts the darkest parts of the image. This is a global control, affecting the entire image, but the greatest effects are seen in the darkest areas.

Adjusts the midtones parts of the image. This is a global control, affecting the entire image, but the greatest effects are seen in the midtone areas.

Adjusts the brightest parts of the image. This is a global control, affecting the entire image, but the greatest effects are seen in the lightest areas.

Adjusts the color contents of the image without changing its brightness or color intensity (purity) values. At default setting (0), the image hue is not altered.

The range of the control extends from -300 to +300.

Adjusts the color intensity or purity values of the image without altering its color contents or brightness values. At default setting (0), the image saturation is not altered.

At the minimum setting (-200), the color intensity is reduced to zero and the image is monochrome, or shades of gray.

Adjusts the overall intensity of the image. There is no change at the default setting of 0.

When enabled, the Film controls are activated.

These controls attempt to reduce the effects of cyan undercutting, a phenomenon the occurs due to the nature of film's emulsion layers. Cyan undercutting is typically not a problem until bluescreen keying techniques are applied.

Adjusts the amount of film correction in partially transparent foreground areas (such as hair detail).

Transparency is most easily judged using the composite output mode.

Adjusts the amount of correction per-channel in the foreground image.

Corrections are most easily judged using the composite output mode.

Adjusts the overall amount of film correction applied to the foreground image.

Erodes or dilates the subject overlay.

Includes or eliminates bright areas from the subject overlay.