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WalkerFX Color Composite
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WalkerFX Color Composite is part of WalkerFX Plug-ins
Description
Color Composite applies color to a layer with advanced features such as mattes, masking, composite modes, and alpha channel control. It is ideal for creating complex color corrections or precise control layers to use with other effects. Color Composite is a complete compositing solution for applying color and often replaces the need to precomp solid layers.
View Mode To help work with the various components of Color Composite, the View Mode offers isolation of specific features and helps you see what is happening at each stage. Each View Mode will enable all relevant effect controls, while others will become disabled temporarily. Only in the Composite View Mode will all controls be active.
- Matte Input Layer - This View Mode displays the Matte Input Layer unmodified. If the Matte is not enabled, then a red X will be rendered. The layer is specified by the Input Layer menu in the Matte group. If the layer is set to None, then the layer on which the effect is applied will be used.
- Matte Selection - This View Mode shows where the Color will be applied to the layer. How the Matte is created depends on the Selection Method: Match Color Key or Use Channel Matte. The Matte is always rendered in grayscale and represents the areas that the Color will be filled to. White is 100% and black is 0. In this View Mode you can adjust all of the Matte settings including Blur and Levels.
- Mask - Use this View Mode to see the Mask by itself. If the Mask is not valid then a red X will be rendered instead. The Mask will further affect where Color is applied.
- Mask & Matte - When you are using both a Matte and Mask this View Mode can be very helpful to see their combined result. The Mask is composited over the Matte using the Mask Mode and Opacity.
Composite The Composite View Mode outputs the final result of Color Composite. In this mode, all effect controls will be enabled and the Color will be applied to the source layer.
Color This is the Color that is composited onto the source layer. You can use the standard color picker, eye dropper, or the Color Sliders to set the color.
Color Sliders These sliders offer a fast and direct way of changing the Color. Unlike using the color picker, these sliders provide immediate feedback. There are also swatches for choosing common colors. The numerical color value is displayed at the right of each slider. Though numerical entry is not allowed in the Color Slider controls, you can use the standard color picker to do so.
Matte The Matte offers a way to control where Color is applied based on a channel from any layer. When the Matte is being used, the Matte group name will have the word 'On' next to it. And alternately the Matte group will be 'Off' when it is not being used. To help facilitate setup of the Matte Channel, use the View Mode to view the Matte Input Layer and Matte Channel.
Input Layer This specifies which layer to base the Matte on. If None is selected then Color Composite will use the layer on which it is applied.
Selection Method The Matte can be created using two methods: Match Color Key or Use Channel Matte. Using a color key allows you to select a specific range of colors based on the Match Color, Match Tolerance and Feather. Using a channel matte on the other hand is perfect when you need to apply color based on a layer's transparency or luminance.
Match Color This color specifies the keying color when the Selection Method is set to Match Color Key. All colors matching this color in the Input Layer will be added to the selection matte. Matching is based on RGB similarity.
Matching Tolerance This slider controls the plus or minus range for the Match Color. Increasing the tolerance will grow the matte to include more colors that resemble the match.
Matching Feather The Matching Feather also increases the plus or minus range of the Match Color, however it calculates the amount of difference. This helps soften the matte.
Channel This Channel is extracted from the Input Layer and determines where Color is applied. The grayscale levels of the channel stencil the color. White is opaque and black is transparent.
Invert If this checkbox is enabled, the Channel will be inverted. For example, to isolate the shadows of a layer, you could select the Luminance channel and Invert it.
Premultiply With Alpha When Premultiply With Alpha is on, the Channel will be multiplied with its alpha channel. This is useful when you want the transparency of the Input Layer to be included in the Channel. Otherwise, the full unaltered Channel value will be used.
Blur These controls provide blurring for the Matte channel. Blur is only rendered when the amount is greater than 0. Otherwise, the group name will read 'Blur Off' and will be disabled.
Blur Quality To help maximize rendering efficiency, this menu allows you to decide what type of blur is used. You can choose from Fast Blur or Gaussian. When set to Automatic, the effect will render the Gaussian Blur for best quality and Fast Blur for draft quality.
Uniform Blur This checkbox controls whether the blur is applied equally in the horizontal and vertical directions. If it is turned off, separate sliders for Blur X and Blur Y will become available.
Blur After Levels Applying blur before or after Levels can produce dramatically different results. This checkbox allows you to choose the rendering order to have maximum flexibility in using the blurring and levels features.
Levels The Matte can be further adjusted using the Levels controls. These controls work similarly to the standard Levels effect.
Input Black As the Input Black is increased, the channel becomes darker. Visually it appears as though the darker areas grow, eventually overtaking all pixels. The Input Black and Input White values can be moved closer together to create contrast.
Input White Opposite of Input Black, Input White increases the range of white pixels. As the value is decreased, the brightness of the image increases until the whole image becomes white. When the Input White value is less than the Input Black, the Channel will be inverted.
Gamma The grayscale levels between white and black can be biased towards either end of the spectrum using Gamma. At the default value of 1.0, the interpolation from black to white is even. Gamma values less than 1.0 bias the gray levels towards black, creating a darker image. When the Gamma value is greater than 1.0 the gray values are pushed towards white brightening the image.
Output Black The Output Black value clamps the Matte value at the specified level. For example, if the value is set to 45, then no pixel in the resulting Matte will be darker than 45 (measured in bits per pixel).
Output White The Output White level limits the maximum brightness of the Matte. For example, if Output White is set to 128, then no pixel in the resulting matte will be greater than 128.
Mask Layer masks can be used in this plug-in similarly to how they are used in the Timeline Window by After Effects. With Color Composite, the Mask is combined with the Matte to further control where color is applied. The Mask group is only active when a valid Path is chosen. Paths must be closed. Whether the Mask is active or not is indicated by the word 'On' or 'Off' next to the Mask group name. When Use All Paths is enabled, the name of the Mask group will change to reflect the current usage of paths (ie 'Mask On: Using [[1,2,3).
Important: Masks used by this plug-in should be turned off in the Timeline Window by setting their mode to None. Otherwise, the mask will be applied to the layer by After Effects as well. Furthermore, none of the mask controls in the Timeline Window are used. All settings regarding masks are controlled within the effect.
Path To specify a mask, select the desired path from this menu. You may instead choose to Use All Paths, in which case this control will become disabled.
Use All Paths With this option, it is not necessary to explicitly select a path. Instead, all available closed paths are used. Open paths will be ignored, while all closed paths are combined together as though they are one. The paths used are indicated by number in the name of the Mask group.
Uniform Feather Enabling this checkbox means that mask feathering will be equal in the horizontal and vertical directions. Only one Feather slider will be provided. When this checkbox is unchecked, there will be two sliders for feather: Feather X and Feather Y. Note that the feather controls in the Timeline Window are ignored by this effect, and when using multiple paths they are all given the same feather amount.
Feather This slider controls the size of the feathering in pixels. The feather is actually rendered by After Effects using the built-in masking tools, and will perfectly match results you get with standard masking. You can turn off Uniform Feather in order to control the feathering amount independently on the X and Y axis. In this case, to sliders will appear: Feather X and Feather Y.
Invert When invert is on, the Mask will be rendered inverted.
Mask Mode To control how the Mask interacts with the Channel you can specify the Mask Mode. The default Mask Mode is Multiply, which produces the most commonly expected result. However, you can use any other mode to subtract, add, or otherwise affect the Channel with the Mask.
Opacity The Opacity controls how much the Mask affects the Channel. With a value of 0, the Mask is not rendered, and at a value of 100 the Mask is fully applied. Note that Mask Opacity behaves differently than the mask opacity in the Timeline Window.
Alpha Sometimes when applying color to a layer you may also need to change the opacity of the layer. You can use the Alpha group controls to change the layer's transparency.
Use for Alpha Choose a channel to replace the current alpha channel. This new channel will become the transparency of the layer. The default channel is Alpha and will pass through the source alpha unchanged.
Invert Turn this checkbox on to invert the channel specified by Use for Alpha. Invert is processed before Premultiply With Alpha.
Premultiply With Alpha When this checkbox is on the channel in Use for Alpha will be multiplied with the source layer's original alpha channel. This may be helpful when you want the channel values to accommodate for the transparency of the layer. Note that Premultiply With Alpha does not premultiply the whole effect, but only modifies the Use for Alpha channel.
Composite Mode This is the final composite mode used to apply the color to the layer. Using composite modes when applying color greatly increases flexibility and ultimately allows you to create many different types of color effects. For example, Color Dodge can be used to create bright glowing colors that dynamically interact with the source layer.
Opacity The amount of color applied is controlled by the Opacity. At a value of 0, no color is applied to the image, while at 100 the color is fully applied. Note that Matte and Mask features first stencil the color and even at 100% Opacity, the color may not be fully opaque.
Preserve Transparency When the source layer has transparency, you can turn this checkbox on to keep it from being affected. Otherwise the alpha channel will be modified wherever color is applied.
Premultiply Output When Premultiply Output is enabled the rendered output of Color Composite will be opaque, matted over black. This is often useful when creating control mattes that do not need an alpha channel.
Blend With Original Use this slider to blend the result of the effect with the original input layer. If Blend With Original is set to 100, the effect will not render.
View Samples
- Color Composite applies color to specific areas of an image with support for layer mattes, masking, blurring and other advanced features.
- Specific regions of an image can be isolated using channels or the built-in color keyer. This makes it an ideal tool for color replacement, color corrections, applying colored masks and creating glows.
- This page was last modified 17:39, 2 August 2007.
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