Green Screen Keying with Keylight in After Effects CC

Learn how to key out green screen footage in After Effects, even if you don't have a full studio setup. We will start by creating a garbage matte around the figure to avoid having to key out all the areas with shadow. Then, we will use the Keylight plugin to fine-tune the key and remove any remaining green tinge. Finally, we will show you how to check your key by adding a solid layer below the footage.

This tutorial is perfect for beginners who want to learn how to use green screen footage. No prior experience with After Effects is necessary.

Quickly key out a green screen even if the screen is not perfectly lit. Learn how to make a garbage matte around the screen. Then use a matte choker to quickly apply a 100 pixel garbage matte around the figure so you do not have to key out all of the green screen. This will allow you to have much more subtle and accurate keys very fast.

Transcript:
It is very easy to key out green screen footage with After Effects. The first thing we need to do is take our green screen footage and drag it to the comp icon. This will precompose our green screen footage into its own composition.

This tutorial will show you how to use green screen footage from when you're just starting out, where you don't have a full studio setup and you have lots of extra background to get rid of. To get rid of the extra background we use the pen tool. Then we quickly select on the footage what we want to keep. Now, we need to make a quick garbage matte around the figure so we don't have to key out all these areas with shadow. To do this, we type in key and we bring in one instance of the Keylight plugin. With the Keylight plugin we select a color very close to the figure. Then we go to screen matte, twirl out screen matte. And because we are not using this for the final key we can be very aggressive. Clip the black levels so there is no more black. Clip the white levels. The go back to Intermediate Result. Go back to Effects and Presets. Type in choker. Drag Simple Choker on. Negatively choke the matte. We can even type in negative 100. And this will bring out a garbage matte that follows our figure very fast. Right click in the timeline on our clip and precompose. Make sure you move all attributes into the new composition. We can call this composition Garbage Screen.

Now on Garbage Screen, go to Effects and Presets. Type in key. This time we want to drag in Keylight, Key-Cleaner and Advanced Spill Suppressor from the Animation Presets. Since we made a garbage matte around our figure we only have to deal with the pixels right here. Select the eye dropper. Click near the figure. So, that does a good job. What we want to do now is select Combined Matte. This way it combines both the mattes from different precomps. Then twirl out screen matte. We still have to get rid of this area down here. This grey section. So we will clip the black levels until that goes away. We want to use the clip black as little as possible. Here we still need to clip the whites just a little bit. We want to try to keep the clip black level and the clip white level as far apart as possible.

We can go back to Intermediate Result. And now we will use the Key Cleaner. The Key Cleaner brings back all these details in the hair. We can also bring up the alpha contrast just a bit. And then finally we need to get rid of this green tinge around the figure. That's as simple as clicking Advanced Spill Suppressor. Now we have a very nice key. To check this, we can make a new solid layer. Make it red by clicking all the way up in the top right hand corner. Drag the solid below and that is a very nice key.

In the next video, I will show you how to integrate your video with a background.

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[BeakFoundry]

Dude, stellar tutorial. Nothing worse than a 5 minute long intro discussing what you'll learn - this is perfect!

[Danumals]

I've come back to this video dozens of times because I always forget the steps, but this is the best green screen results I've been able to achieve with my videos. thanks.

[JelloApocalypse]

Thank you! That Choker effect was exactly what I was looking for to get rid of the green edge on an animation effect.

[fordfilomeno]

One of the best and easiest keying out tutorials there is! This is a lifesaver, thank you!

[tia_draws]

Well done for the tutorial. Fast, clear and precise explanation. Wish you all the best!

[davidharveyvideo]

This is the only tutorial out of many that helped me with my green screen. I tried the latest BCC & Red Giant plugins and it didn’t look nearly as good as basic Keylight. Thanks!

[boomshadows]

Yes, so many tutorials and I have been at this a long time but not so much with AE and this just hits the nail on the head. Great succinct tutorial.

[RadicalMoves]

You taught me how to properly key footage! You're the man.

[martiinarolon]

This is the best tutorial Ive wathced so far! Thank u so much, it really helped.

[saveldan]

This is absolutely incredible. I can't believe I'm just now finding this video

[AshenReverie]

You're the best dude! This save my job after years lol

[pjamateus]

thanks, helped me a lot. saved my footage 🙃

[SidaliYahiaBoukhetala]

very easy yes,
after seeing this video thanks

[olga]

Was desperately trying to use that Keylight effect by itself, but it just wouldn't work. This video is such a blessing, thank you!

[nahidaelhage]

Why when I use the keylight After selecting the green screen, all the videos become black like negative?

[thatsthewayitis]

It is very EASY to Key out some friggin GREEN from a video, something thats been around since green screens were use.d.... just do these 17 Steps, and BOOM

EVERY OTHER PROGRAM is literally ONE friggin step.

[jamesbondaygee]

It's crashing now in windows 10, CS6. How is it in the new version?

[alexei.alexeevich]

Вот, по нормальному все объяснил, а не для детей!