Great greenscreen paint from Home Depot
 

I went to Home Depot today and picked up all the saturated green paint chips they had. I brought them home, and shot them under neutral lights, as well as the Lee 738 filter I described in this thread:
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=109135

The winner was Behr S-G-430 ("Sparkling Apple"). When shot with controlled lighting and perfect white balance (using a Macbeth ColorChecker as reference), it put out a bright Green signal with low and well-balanced Blue and Red components. The other chips all had uneven amounts of R&B, or low G output, etc.

If you check out the attached image, you'll see two shots, one taken with bare fluorescents, and one taken with them gelled with 738. You can see that in the white-light image, the chip reflects a nice healthy green. When shot under the Lee 738, it reflects a near-perfect green (unsurprising, since Lee 738 is such a great green filter that just about anything shot under it reflects pure green).

I also picked up a 8'9" x 11'9" canvas drop cloth while I was at Home Depot... Next time, I'm picking up some green-tinted primer and Sparkling Apple so I can paint my own DIY greenscreen background!

I was just about to post a thread about buying green-screen paint.
My roommate moved out so I decided to make their room a studio and what the heck, might as well make it have a green screen.

thanks for posting this, I will definitely check it out

Gahaha, that's such awesome logic! Who needs roommates helping to pay the bills?! What you need is a greenscreen room! ;)

Cheers and good luck ;)

C

Given what it can cost to rent a studio space, I'd say the logic is pretty sound! :)

Touche' ;)

C

well, long story short, I just got a years of rent back due to my dealing with a ridiculous bat infestation, so all the money I got back as already been put forth into next years rent. I wanted to invested into going HD, but my financial advisor (ma & pa benson) insisted I do the smart thing and put it to good use, like rent.

!!!

incredible...

I just copied that into Photoshop. In the green-lit image, I found a few spots that registered 0 red and blue, and 191 green. What is really cool, is even on the fingers, red and blue numbers are mostly below 50 while green numbers seem to be largely around 200!

Yeah, cool, huh? That's the magic of Lee 738! :)

Luckily, the Sparkling Apple gives pretty good numbers even under white light.

Cool, you live next to a baseball field?
I'd take a rediculous over a serious bat any day.

Sorry folks, it's been one of those days.

nope, live in a 3 bedroom apartment in downtown buffalo.
the building next to me is condemned and windowless. at dusk in the summer you can see hordes of bats coming out of there.

I picked up some samples at Benjamin Moore, and did a bit more testing...

It turns out that Sparkling Apple has very balanced R&B levels, but there are other greens that may key better under white light.

For example, Benjamin Moore 2032-10 ("Neon Green") gives a G level of 61% versus Sparkling Apple's 74%, but Neon Green absolutely demolished all the red (0%! vs 38%), and absorbed blue better as well (18% vs 30%).

That means that the color difference value between R&B and G for Neon Green is around 51%, versus 41% for Sparkling Apple. In fact, Behr S-G-440 ("Green Acres") gives 48% color difference, so it may be a better choice if you're buying Behr paint.

But I think Benjamin Moore's Neon Green and Traffic Light Green are the best bet. I couldn't believe that Neon Green was absorbing 100% of the red in white light!

Note that if you're mostly using green light, you'll want a lighter color like Sparkling Apple which reflects more green...

The next step is actually painting some canvas...

I used some Savage chroma-key paper on a shoot and we took a scrap to the store and matched it from that- $10 a gallon for matte finish acrylic latex on sale.

In my experience there is a range of greens that will all work fine for keying; getting the lighting even is really the tricky part.

Doing greenscreen is challenging, so you want to stack the deck in your favor wherever possible. That's why I'm in the process of searching out the best green paint commonly available, and the best green filtration for the screen lighting.

Getting your lighting even is really just the beginning of the story. There are plenty of backgrounds that will "work fine," but with a little extra effort, you can take your composites from "fine" to "flawless."

In my firsthand, on-set experience getting the lighting even is the beginning, middle and end of the story.

Even lighting won't help you much if you're photographing against a white wall. Screen color is the other half of the story. But hey, don't listen to me -- I just write the software. :)

Read through this thread for an explanation about why the color of the screen is important:
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=109135

When the dust settles on my tests, I'm going to make a VERY extensive series of podcasts about greenscreen. Probably in the 2-3 hour range...

You referred to your own thread! Kinda like that scene in "What About Bob" when Dr. Marvin recommends his own book to the patient.

Hey, if you write software then it makes sense to obsess over green-ness to Nth level. When you write the next killer chroma key app be sure to let us all know (and I'll use it with my $10 paint)

Make sure you post those podcast links when you make them. You can never know too much about greenscreening

Baby steps, Bob!

Baby steps to better composites... Baby steps to better background paint...

Ben's keyers are some of the best and fastest available and the research he's been involved with on both "whatever it takes" and "ghetto" budget studio setups has involved hundreds of people and probably thousands of hours.

I'm not affiliated with Ben and get no "kickback" of any kind from him or his products, but certainly hate to see his contributions belittled. (his software works FANTASTICLY on $10 paint BTW. :) )

That said ... the idea of testing paint chips is solid, but remember to also test with a foreground subject and a variety of camera and lighting configurations.

Background color, lighting, camera configuration and keying pipeline all work together to produce a key, and evaluating one element independent of the others is less than ideal.

Good luck
Have fun.

Thanks Nick! You rule.

I guess my point in testing chips independent of camera setups is to establish a few "objectively" better colors, assuming a camera perfectly white-balanced to the screen lights. I mean, there are literally infinite combinations of camera, screen lights and backing color, but by properly white balancing the camera against the screen lights, you effectively create an even playing field where the same backing should photograph more or less the same by any camera.

That said, the optimal green will be different for different subjects. The hue of the green won't change, but the brightness of the green will. For example, if you're shooting a shadowy subject to composite into a dark night scene, you don't want the screen to be screaming bright. You'll want it to be at about 50% green or even lower. The reason is that a huge contrast in brightness between the screen and your subject will aggravate the sharpening filter in your camera. You'll wind up with bright edges you can't get rid of. Same thing goes for a bright subject & background, but photographed against a dark screen -- you'll get ugly dark edges.

But trust me, I have seen my fair share of really, truly terrible greenscreen plates from users. My software is pretty forgiving when it comes to screen color, but I have to say... the better the screen, the better the composite. If I can get people even 10% closer to a good screen color, I'll be very happy!

Interesting info. Thanks for doing these basic tests.

I just recently went to Home Depot for some paint chips in an effort to find something that matches the green screen fabric from EEFX.com.

This fabric has been doing a great job of keying for me and I wanted to find a paint that might come in handy should hard set pieces need to be made to match the fabric.

With green screen every little bit helps. It has to be given a system approach: Camera setup, screen color, lighting, exposure, talent colors, placement and software.

Dean, that's a great way to describe it -- a system approach. It's like an audio chain -- the signal is only as good as the weakest component.

So whats the word on those Podcasts Ben?
Inquiring minds want to know! I mean, it's not like you have a real job too. LOL!

I'm ready to paint! Do I hit B&H, Home Depot, or Benjamin Moore?

:-)

Jim

so a big thanks for this tip. Rosco color is pea green. really helped on making the key extra easy on a shoot I did a few weeks ago. Not to say I don't shoot easy keys, but this was easier.

Will this work?
 

I was wondering if this method would work to find a decent green paint:

1. Get every green color chip I can from paint shop.
2. Put all chips on the wall, creating a chart, and light as evenly as possible.
3. White balance camera.
4. Shoot a few frames of the color chart with my camcorder.
5. Import footage into NLE and analyze colors with the color picker until I find one that is as close to pure green as possible.

In my twisted mind, this would allow me to select a green that is as close as possible to what the camera sees as pure green.

Or am I full of it?

already been done

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=109612

Makes sense to me.

Then again, maybe all of us have warped minds. :-)

Personally I'd want to find a paint that matches the green screen fabric I got from EEFX.com. That way set pieces and the fabric will key the same or close to the same.

Also, the software used to pull the key is key -- pun intended. Primatte has a nice way of being able to identify what's "green" and "not green". I actually was able to key someone wearing a shirt that contained green elements.

Doh! I read through 90% of the thread, but missed the part where they talked about analyzing the colors in photoshop. I thought some hi-tech analyzer was being used to measure green. Thanks.

I am working on a very low budjet project this spring, and from this thread have developed a plan for some green screen shooting to be done in my garage.

I bought a 12x15 piece of canvas for about $25 from Home Depot, and bought the Sparkling Apple paint. We will be keying with Ben's software.

I laid the canvas on the floor of my garage, and rolled paint on. I learned you need to thin it to get it on evenly and to allow it to soak in canvas. ( My garage floor now is green :))


The attached wide pic is the original set up I tried. I was lighting from above with two work lights mounted on garage ceiling. Since then I rigged flourescents work lights to light from the side, for softer light.

Comments and recommendation welcome to improve this set up.

And these questions:

1. Shooting everything with HV20, 1/48. Will there be issues with mix of flourescent and incadescent lighting ?

2. What lighting to use to get an evenly lit backround.

Lord knows I'm no expert (still futzing around "geting ready" and yet to actually shoot a greenscreen) but it seems like the lights are too close to the screen and are hotspotting - maybe move them back further and more off to the side and play with aiming them to get more even light.

sounds like an awsome sight...never got any footage of this??

For the table set up, I was only concerned about screen screen directly behind end of table, so lights are really pinched in. Genearlly, I would have the flourescents at edges pointed about 45 degrees. In shooting, it does come out fairly even looking.

green screen lighting
 

This thread has been very helpful. I'm unsure of the best way to get even lighting. Should it be florecents all the way around or a combo of florecents and halogen work lights. I'm using a Canon HG-10 and Vegas 7. Are there any known issues in use of lighting?

One more alternative:
 

If there is such a thing as the "perfect" shade of green for keying, it may not always be necessary to test various brands of paint and their respective color values and/or color names. (Paints, whether tinted or not, also have reflective (LRV) values that can be found in the "fanfold" of samples for each company).

If you can get a sample of "the perfect green" (isn't that called money :)...), then some stores (Home Depot for one) can scan the sample you provide and their computer will create a custom blend of paint tints that will reproduce the color almost exactly. I've done it a number of times for rooms in my home and it ends up being pretty darn close. Take your sample to the paint desk and ask the salesperson. Some brands of paint come out right on, while others can be off a little. In my experience, Ralph Lauren paint tinted to another company's color tends to be the most difficult to match. (It's also a bit more expensive).

Perhaps the hardest part of doing an entire room might be to apply the paint nice and evenly.

Also, if you'll be priming the walls prior to painting, get the primer tinted to the same color as the paint. It shouldn't cost any more money, but that may/may be possible, because there may not be enough room in the can of primer for the amount of tint(s) that are necessary.

Lastly, my hunch would be to use a flat or matte finish, not an eggshell, or anything shinier. Some brands (Behr, for one), have what they call a flat enamel. If you look closely, you'll see it's just a tiny bit more shiny than the plain flat finish. I'd only use that if you need resistance to water or moisture.

Good luck.