Talk:Compositing

Comparison

Could we have a paragraph comparing the different software packages, where each of their strengths lies, which apps are used most often in professional applications etc., by somebody who knows this stuff? Thanks :-) Peter S. 15:47, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Two problems: software changes very rapidly in this application, and discussion is impossible without comparing or at least mentioning proprietary products. Besides, all software uses essentially the same approach: 1) identify a color within a certain range of luminance and chrominance values (usually very narrow) and 2) replace every pixel within the target range with a pixel from exactly the same pixel grid location in another, designated image. Jim Stinson 18:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

merging articles

In the discussion page of chroma key, I wrote:

"Wait a minute: all these terms, in both film and video, relate to systems of compositing. That article needs work, though it's generally OK as far as it goes. Also, the static or traveling matte pre-digital film technology also used blue (or other color) background screens for compositing. I don't think we've yet found the top of the subject hierarchy here.

"Come to think of it, front and rear screen projection are forms of compositing, as are the glass shots used to combine action with painted set extensions on the original camera negative (The long road up to Ashley Wilkes' plantation in Gone With the Wind is a classic glass shot.)"

I might add: lumakeying was a method of compositing used, at least in amateur setups, in the analog era of video editing. It could replace black letter titles with other images, though poorly. And to take my above idea further, 3-d models (especially ceilings and other set extensions) are, to this day, hung in the top of the frame, close enough to the camera so that the "register" with the full-size BG and appear as part of it.

Bottom line: Compositing is the combining of disparate elements into a single image, by one of several methods, physical, analog, and digital. I think this article needs to be the master entry, with blue screen and chroma key et cetera as satellites.

Comments, please??

Jim Stinson 19:24, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure about how to break up the content, but I definitely think luma key should be described. Spot (talk) 13:03, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Your proposal seems reasonable. This should be an umbrella article, with brief summaries of multiple exposures in negatives/prints, chroma key compositing, digital compositing, &c. &c., using “summary style”. –jacobolus (t) 09:57, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Brand new text

I completely replaced the existing article. If it is found acceptable, please

Edit it in the usual way.

Clean up the references (I am very weak on Wiki formatting).

For comparison, or in case my attempt is not acceptable, the original article is reproduced below the line. Jim Stinson 00:44, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

No need to put the prior version on this talk page. Anyone interested can look at it in the article history. –jacobolus (t) 10:00, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

More illustrations

The new illustrations add a great deal. Can we find more? The reference books I used are still in copyright. I did find a Buster Keaton shot elsewhere in Wikipedia, but I haven't the brains to reduce and format it properly. Please help. Also, thanks for the formatting help already provided. Jim Stinson 19:30, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Format fixes.

The sentence in the first paragraph:

    (For compositing in graphic design and still photography, see Photomontage.)

should be up in the "signpost" paragraph above it, but I don't know how to do this. Jim Stinson 20:10, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

minor edits.

I've made several nit-picking edits to my earlier text, to improve syntax and clarity. Aside from a reference to the matte lines in the Playhouse still, I made no content edits. Jim Stinson 01:14, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Images removed by betacommandbot

Image:Utv cso studio.jpg

Image:Utv cso studio.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BetacommandBot (talk) 05:13, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:Keaton Playhouse 1921.jpg

Image:Keaton Playhouse 1921.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BetacommandBot (talk) 23:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello??? This is a Wikipedia image, Image:Keaton Playhouse 1921.jpg

And announces flatly that it is public domain. Jim Stinson (talk) 18:38, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Image:Sky captain Angelina Jolie.jpg

Image:Sky captain Angelina Jolie.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BetacommandBot (talk) 05:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so we're out of illustrations except for the poor-quality shot of the guy in front of a blue screen and the drawings I made to illustrate analog matting. Can anybody supply anything useful here?Jim Stinson (talk) 00:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Non-chroma key?

There is already an article on chroma key. Shouldn't this article be on compositing in general? I'm no film major, but I'm pretty sure compositing can be done between shots that have nothing to do with bluescreen (especially now in the digital age). For example; when motion control is used to film the same shot twice with an actor doing two different performances (one on the left of the frame and one on the right), the cutting together of these shots is compositing, is it not? It has nothing to do with chroma key, though.... TheHYPO (talk) 12:41, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Um, no. Motion control cannot be used with live action backgrounds because the entire background is exposed in the first pass. That means that on the second pass, the actor, exposed on top of the already exposed bg, becomes a ghost.

As for the general question, notice that this article deals with several types of compositing, of which ChromaKey is only one subset. Whether or not ChromaKey deserves a separate entry is a good question Jim Stinson (talk) 18:13, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Compositing in the Printing industry ?

Was the page Compositor more to do with the print industry ? It now redirects here. I followed a link from Danse Macabre#Printing relating to a picture from 1499 AD showing an early print shop ! This page is now unrelated ! Has the original meaning of the word been totally deleted from this page ? The usage of the word is current, even in these days of digital printing : compositing is laying out eg a 4x5 array of business cards to pe printed on a larger sheet of paper, which will be cut up later ! The pages should probably be separate Compositing (Graphic Arts) and Compositing (Printing) --195.137.93.171 (talk) 23:20, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Partly I was confusing Compositing with Imposition. The latter is laying out many small pages on a large sheet: the former is basically Typesetting ! Could use some 'See Also' links -at top or bottom. The links from Danse Macabre#Printing and Composing_stick are still a bad thing.--87.194.174.252 (talk) 11:51, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

The role of compositor was indeed once commonly held in the printing industry, and was broadly similar to that of the typesetter. The compositor’s job was to turn the layout-artist’s work into a typeset page ready for printing, bringing together the metal type, illustration blocks, spacing metal, brass rules, etc. and locking them into a form ready to be printed or cast. This was once a skilled trade in it’s own right (and one in which I was trained), but has little place in the modern world of computerised layout and design. It should be mentioned here, perhaps linked to typesetting. --Coconino (talk) 15:15, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Still need illustrations

In March, 2008, I protested that the Keaton playhouse image was PD and included its URL to prove it. Since then, neither it nor any other image replacement has been added. Can anybody help here?Jim Stinson (talk) 02:24, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to put the Keaton image back on the page; it was a mix-up with a bot (who of course doesn’t check talk pages to respond). As for other images, do you have suggestions for what needs making? I'd be glad to try to make some illustrations. –jacobolus (t) 09:45, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Promotion to B status

The Powers That Be have decreed that this article fails three out of five tests, including "coverage and accuracy." Since I wrote the article in its present form, I'd appreciate learning whether it is incomplete, inaccurate, or both, and in what respects. Every article can be improved, and I'd be pleased to learn how to help out with this one.Jim Stinson (talk) 00:37, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Who are these “Powers That Be” and when/where did “they” decide this? I think anyone can just change “start” to “B”, and then wait for anyone who disagrees to change it back and come discuss. Realize that these quality scales are the mostly arbitrary judgments of members of some Wikiproject, and frankly don’t mean all that much (which is why they’re only listed on talk pages unlike featured article stars which show up on the main article pages). –jacobolus (t) 20:42, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

As an actual working digital compositor I agree that this article is very incomplete and is more an article about keying techniques and mattes than it is about compositing in general. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.137.168.66 (talk) 22:26, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Friend Unsigned, it would help if you listed some other principal areas needing coverage. We'll do the best we can with your list -- or maybe you could contribute yourself. It's how this ramshackle structure builds and self-fixes. Best! Jim Stinson (talk) 19:24, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Fixing a busted link

I replaced the broken external link with an active one, but, as usual, I'm too inexperienced to do it correctly. The article tile is "Lighting for Green Screen," and the author is (ahem) Jim Stinson. Can someone format this correctly? Thanks in advance.Jim Stinson (talk) 22:29, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Milky way image???

I'm not sure the milky way image was created by compositing, which we define as the complete replacement of some parts of an image with others. I'm not competent to discuss the process used to create the astronomical image, but it appears to be closer to the digital equivalent of multiple exposure. I lip-read my way through the explanation here: https://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/improc/ without really understanding it. Could a more knowledgeable someone help with this?Jim Stinson (talk) 22:43, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

After much slogging through technical articles on the subject, I'm now confident that the astronomical image is not a composite as defined in the article. I deleted the image.Jim Stinson (talk) 23:40, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Amending the Cary Grant statement

I belatedly realized that my own sentence made it seem as if the entire crop duster sequence used rear projection. Most of it was shot on location, with rear projection background plates made at the same time. Whether process shooting was used when the menacing plane had to seem too close to the actor for safety, or it was used for post-production pickup shots is unclear. Put it this way: if you can see Cary Grant's feet actually hitting the dirt ground, the shot was made on location; if not, the shot could be rear projection. Jim Stinson (talk) 22:54, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

1975-1989 In-Camera Composites in TV + Print Advertising

During the mid to late '70s TV networks like ABC-TV shot 35mm film on pin registered gimbles for TV graphics effects including the famous'79 Cleo Award Intro to "Roots-the next generation" mini series and later in '82-'89 a few "special effects' photographers(pre-digital era)copied the backlit pin registered multi composite film skills but shot on 4x5 and 8c10 Transparency format. This was cutting edge for a decade before Photoshop+computers were capable of producing accepable high quality work for Advertising. Especially difficult was emulating the skill of the airbrush artist. The 1984 Olympics Poster by Jamie Odgers was a huge 16x20 film composite print that was then heavily airbrushed. Total craftsmanship. Pin registration was also employed by the automobile industy at this time. Every new car photographed required skilled techs in the craft of "dye transfer' print making. These exquiste color dye 8x10 or larger prints were an Exact reproduction of the Color of the original new car. These works of art cost $10,000+each depending how much alteration was needed. Martinsage (talk) 19:40, 7 December 2019 (UTC)