How do I blur edge of composite?

johnmeyer wrote on 7/6/2005, 12:27 PM

I have a still picture of a couple in a hammock. I have separated this into two images, the foreground, which includes the couple and hammock, and the background which is the ground underneath them and the trees to which the hammock is attached. I saved the couple and hammock as a PNG and set the transparency options so that the track below (which contains the background) shows through. I them use pan/crop to sway the hammock back and forth. It looks very realistic.

However, the edges of my cutout are very harsh. I would like to somehow get Vegas to blend these edges with the background. Is there a way to do this?

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 7/6/2005, 12:35 PM

Perhaps.... define a bezier mask on the track with the couple... and feather the edges a little?

Not sure if that will work... as you have likely already cropped the couple so a feather will not do what you need. You may need to re-crop the couple and leave an edge around... to give the bezier mask "feather" something to work with.

Spot|DSE wrote on 7/6/2005, 12:45 PM

Take the image as it's composited, make a duplicate track, and use the bezier or key tools to make a mask of the couple and their surroundings. Make the top image a parent, make the bottom image a child, and drop the Gaussian Blur on the mask track. This allows you to soften the edges without feathering, allows you to control the amount of exactly where the blur falls, and allows constant and consistent readjustment of the masked area for where/how the blur hits

You could also use various filters to turn the couple/area into a better mask, such as using curves/invert/b&w filters, but were it me, I'd either make a clean mask in p-shop or use a second track with Bezier/parenting/Gaussian
HTH

johnmeyer wrote on 7/6/2005, 2:00 PM

Thanks. I'll see if I can make it work.

winrockpost wrote on 7/6/2005, 2:26 PM

Or Feather the edges in photoshop
http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/feathering.html