Using the overlay track to mask grafitti
Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 3:09 am
Yes I recently used the overlay track to mask some bad grafitti which I had not noticed when I 'shot' a particular scene while in Wales (at Three Cliffs Bay on the Gower peninsula) and I thought that I would share how I did that.
Firstly this method will only work if the camera was held completely still when the scene is shot (I was using a tripod).
The scene was of my wife walking through the 'doorway' of the ruins of Pennard castle.
The following is a frame from that clip suitably modified to cover the (offensive) grafitti.

Using this same frame and Paint Shop Pro I selected a small part of the brick wall which was similar to the part containing the grafitti and turned the remainder of the image to a single color . The result is as follows -

I then placed the original clip on the timeline and the image I created using Paint Shop Pro onto the overlay track moved the image so that the bricks covered the grafitti and set the 'transparent' colour to the purple color and voila the grafitti is gone see below -

Remember that this will only work if the camera was NOT moved when the scene was taken.
Firstly this method will only work if the camera was held completely still when the scene is shot (I was using a tripod).
The scene was of my wife walking through the 'doorway' of the ruins of Pennard castle.
The following is a frame from that clip suitably modified to cover the (offensive) grafitti.

Using this same frame and Paint Shop Pro I selected a small part of the brick wall which was similar to the part containing the grafitti and turned the remainder of the image to a single color . The result is as follows -

I then placed the original clip on the timeline and the image I created using Paint Shop Pro onto the overlay track moved the image so that the bricks covered the grafitti and set the 'transparent' colour to the purple color and voila the grafitti is gone see below -

Remember that this will only work if the camera was NOT moved when the scene was taken.