Bright light from windows

[Nicolas Hanson]

I have a complicated shot where I would like to reduce a natural bright light from a window behind the subjects back. When the subject move closer to the camera (away from the window), the 'halo' is reduced and it's easier to get a cleaner separation. I have tried the curves in a number of combinations and the soft clip controls without getting to any satisfiying result, but you might have some other inputs?

[Stig Olsen]

The halo around subjects is often introduced by lenses and could be tricky to reduce if the front light is weak. My experience is that un-ganging the curves and changing only the y-values could help in those cases. Even thought I try to avoid keys, a luminance key with a lot of blur could also help if you use garbage mattes to focus the key. I find it especially useful when trying to retain hair details as in the example below.

[Bruno Mansi]

It may be with this sort of situation, that the only way to get the control you need is with a matte that completely cuts away the subject from the background. This type of articulated matte is probably beyond what you can realistically achieve with the software you're currently grading on (Resolve, Baselight?) so you'll need to use other software for your rotoscoping work. In my opinion, the best at doing this sort of work is Mocha Pro, but other software like After Effects and Silhouette should suffice.

[Jussi Rovanperä]

1 hour ago, Nicolas Hanson said:

I have a complicated shot where I would like to reduce a natural bright light from a window behind the subjects back. When the subject move closer to the camera (away from the window), the 'halo' is reduced and it's easier to get a cleaner separation. I have tried the curves in a number of combinations and the soft clip controls without getting to any satisfiying result, but you might have some other inputs?

You're in Resolve? Are you using the "Highlights"?

[Nicolas Hanson]

Thank you guys, and yes I'm in Resolve @Jussi Rovanperä

[Thomas Singh]

Remember that your eyes react differently to object standing far away from and close to bright light sources as well. It could look too clean when removing all the "artifacts" caused by the consequences of the light conditions og object behavour. Some of them are perfectly natural in real life.

[Marc Wielage]

Highlight control is very valuable in situations like this, and if you use it as part of a tracked window (and/or a key), you can pin point problems like this fairly surgically.