Advanced Spill Suppressor handles even tricky footage, such as blonde hair shot with lossy compression.
All week we have been exploring the launch of Adobe Creative Cloud 2014. Today I want to dig into some nice, subtle refinements in the Keying tools in Adobe After Effects CC 2014.
After Effects has always been a robust keying and compositing environment, and since the addition of the Keylight plugin in 2003, there has rarely been a reason to look much beyond the core tools.
However, even Keylight can only do so much if you are working with crummy footage. And with the explosion of h264-compressed clips from today’s low-to-medium range hardware, there can sometimes be a lot of compression noise in the transitional details, which will make a final key crunchy and unnatural, and cause the edge to chatter noticeably when in motion.
Adobe has tackled this problem with a new Key Cleaner tool designed to intelligently smooth out blocky, crunchy footage. And for good measure, they’ve added a much-improved Advanced Spill Suppressor to replace the aging, original Spill Suppressor plugin from 1995(!).
Both tools have a few quirks, which you will need to understand if you want to get the most out of them… so here’s a video that shows you what you need to know.
If you want to follow along, just download the project files below.
Check back for more cool demos in the next few days!
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