Hawaiki Keyer - Manual

Index

Overview New in 2.0 F.A.Q. Keying Technique View Menu Screen Advanced Matte

Secondary Mattes Despill Spill Map Edge Light Wrap External Matte Color Correction Presets Color Space

Overview

Hawaiki Keyer is a high quality but competitively priced keying solution for Apple's Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5, as well as Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, combining ease of use with a powerful set of features for achieving really great results.


• Hawaiki Keyer features advanced GPU acceleration for blazingly-fast performance both for real-time playback and rendering speed.


• In addition to powerful matte extraction tools that provide exceptionally fine edge detail, Hawaiki Keyer offers an outstanding feature set for spill suppression, a powerful and unique edge control system, and a great-looking lightwrap option.


• Optional "hard mattes" for both the Core and the Outer regions facilitate pulling a great solid matte without sacrificing the edges of your key.


• An extensive set of view modes includes a precise Analysis mode make it easy to extract the perfect matte, while the unique SpillMap view makes for really precise and detailed spill suppression.


• Finally, Hawaiki Keyer offers a full color correction section to provide high quality, accurate grading of the final key.


• And add to the finishing touch to a really great composite with Hawaiki AutoMatch, the best colour matching plug-in you can buy.

New Features in Hawaiki Keyer 2.0

• General:

Optimisation of Matte Extraction Algorithm for truly outstanding mattes

• New Modes:

New enhanced Auto Mode;
New Pick Color Mode

• Interface:

Three new view buttons (Source, Analysis & Combined Matte) for quick comparisons;
New dual view mode allows for side by side comparison of any two views

• New Matte Controls:

New Screen Calibration control adds advanced fine-tuning option for optimising matte extraction;
New extremely powerful Matte Cleaner option that addresses many matte tidying requirements;
Clip Black and Clip White controls added to Matte section

• Despill

New auto correction option to automatically balance the brightness of the despill to match the original source;
New despill saturation option;

RGB color controls for manual adjustment of the despill color

• Advanced Compositing Tools:

RGB color controls for Edge Color option (for both A & B sides);
New Edge Transparency option;
New Edge Blend option

• View Options:

Invert Key switch;
External Matte;
Background

• External Matte:

Option to input external matte with three compositing methods

• The plug-in comes complete with two separate modules, Hawaiki Keyer Green and Hawaiki Keyer Blue. Select whichever is appropriate for your background color: so for greenscreens select Hawaiki Keyer Green and for bluescreens choose Hawaiki Keyer Blue. The operation of both versions is identical but each has been optimised for its respective screen color. For this reason not all the controls work precisely the same between the two modules.

Frequently Asked Questions

• ”I am having issues when using 4K footage in a 1080 timeline in FCP X.” - We strongly recommend that if you are using this workflow, you create a compound clip of your 4K shot (on the timeline), before you add Hawaii Keyer.


• "I'm having a hard time getting the background to go fully transparent, what can I do?" - If you have udpated to 2.0, all you should need to do is increase the Auto Balance value as necessary - this creates an automatic compensation for desaturated or dark screens. If you are still in 1.0, all you need to do is enable the Auto switch right at the top of the SCREEN section.


• "My lightwrap background (or my edge blend, or my external matte) doesn't seem to fit the foreground, what can I do?" - Unless your chosen background or external matte is the same size and aspect ratio as your timeline, you will need to pre-format it so that the plug-in sees the correct dimensions. You can do this easily from within your host application - see below. It's also important to make sure that you preformat your foreground in the same way if you are applying any spatial transforms to it (i.e. cropping, scaling, positioning, rotation). For example, if you are working with a 4K source in a 1080 timeline, you will have scaled the source by 50% to make it fit, and will need to preformat in order to make everything work correctly within the keyer.


• HELP - Note that clicking on the Hawaiki button at the top of the Inspector is a shortcut to take you to the manual at any time.

Keying Technique

• Keying is not a process that lends itself to total automation, which is why the keyers that try to sell you this will never get you a really great-looking key. Hawaiki Keyer uses a robust and innovative matte extraction algorithm and we've done everything we can to make the process really easy and adjustable, and more importantly offer you a wide range of different but complementary strategies that you can use depending on the source material, but you may well find cases where you can't work out the best approach. If you need help, we are always happy to look at a test frame and consult on the best way of getting a good result - and of course we are always looking to refine the algorithm further.


• SHOOTING TIP: We've seen a lot of examples of users who have shot using extremely faded, desaturated backing materials, paints, cloths or drapes, and we'd offer a word of caution about this. Obviously a desaturated backing is less likely to create nasty spill problems, especially if your talent is very close to it, but you do need to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of this approach. And remember that Hawaiki Keyer's despill tools are incredibly powerful and should be able to get you out of almost any problem.
  
  The greater the difference between your foreground colors and the colors of your backing, the more easily you will be able to pull the key and hence the better your all-important edges will be. A saturated backing helps to maximise that difference. A desaturated backing means the keyer has to work harder and process the initial result more aggressively, and it's heavy processing that is going to kill your edges. So throw out that faded greenscreen and buy or hire yourself a new one - you won't regret it!


• As with any keying software, remember to proceed carefully when adjusting the manual controls. Use the relevant view mode as you work, making only gradual, fine adjustments until you've only just got the result you need. The key thing to bear in mind is that more is not better - just enough and no more is what you should always be aiming for.


• Another general point to be aware of is that even the best keyers in the world sometimes can't give you the perfect key for all areas of your shot in one go - you might find that you are compromising one area (especially, for example your hair detail) in order to get the required result in another area and it can get very frustrating very quickly.
  
  This is why it's always a good idea to try and make the process as easy as possible. Use a rough mask, crop or garbage matte to remove areas of the background that are hard to key out. Hawaiki Keyer can help a lot by offering you the option of the Outer Matte which can take care of things like unevenly-lit screens, but it's not going to be the solution in all cases.


• The other trick to bear in mind is that you don't have to do everything with just one keyer - you can always use a second instance and mask between the two. This is especially advisable for preserving hair detail which is usually the first thing to suffer when you try to make one key do all the work in tricky situations. In this instance, use a separate, softer key for the hair to keep as much detail as possible and use your solid, punchy key for the other areas, and simply mask between the two versions.
  
  You will save a lot more time breaking up the key like this than you would waste trying and failing to get a decent compromise with a single instance of the keyer. And remember, professional visual effects artists are always using this strategy, so take a tip from them!

View Menu

• Hawaiki Keyer provides a comprehensive set of view modes to make it easy to set up your key and refine the spill suppression. And now in 2.0 there's a new Dual View mode which allows you to compare any two views side-by-side, as well as three quick view buttons that enable to access the most common views at the flick of a switch. Finally we've added a new Invert button that allows you to invert many of the views, including: On Black, Final Key, Analysis, Main Matte, and Combined Matte.
  
  Enable the Source, Analysis or Combined Matte button to quickly see that view and over-ride the mani menu selection.


• Enabling the Dual View switch brings up the dual view in the Canvas and activates View 2 menu options for selecting the image displayed in the right hand view. The left hand view is selected from the main view menu, or if any of the quick view buttons are activated, these will take precedence.
  
  Note that if you have not already supplied a background image for use by the keyer, the Final Key views will show a prompt that says "Select Background". In order to see the Final Key view composited over the background in the reduced format Dual View mode, the keyer requires the background to be supplied via the Background source well which can be found at the bottom of the interface.
  
  
  If no background is supplied, the prompt will remain active and the final keyed result will be seen composited over the grey dual view background color.



• Note also that in FCP X and Motion, but not After Effects or Premiere, all the View buttons and menus are duplicated in the form of onscreen controls for added convenience.


• So let's look at the View menus in more detail:


• The Source view mode, as the name implies, lets you view your untreated original source image.


• The On Black mode shows you the final key composited over a black background (with correct premultiplication) - this can be very useful for checking your key. Don't worry that your edges look a bit bright though - unless of course your final background will itself be very dark. You can if necessary correct the brightness of your edges with both the Spill Brightness and the very powerful Edge Color option - see below. The Invert button inverst this view.


• The default mode is Final Key which shows you the keyed image with spill suppression. Make sure to select this view when you have finished work on your key because this is the view that will get rendered. The Invert button inverst this view.


• The powerful Analysis view shows you the current state of the matte, with orange representing the solid foreground pixels, blue representing the semi-transparent pixels (typically your edges), and black representing the fully transparent background. Note that using the Invert switch with the Analysis view is a great way of making sure you have eliminated all stray pixels from the backing, which are otherwise less easy to spot.


• The Main Matte view shows you the black and white matte without the addition of either the Core Matte or the Outer Matte (see below). Use this view if you need to send the black and white matte out to another compositing operation, unless you are using either the Core or Outer Matte, in which case you need to use the Combined Matte view. The Invert button inverst this view.


• The Core Matte view shows you the optional hard matte for the Core, with orange representing the solid core, blue representing the edge pixels and black the transparent background.


• The Outer Matte shows you the hard matte for the outer regions of the background, with red for the full transparent background pixels, overlaid over the full colour original source image.


• The Combined Matte View shows you the result of combining the optional Core Matte and Outer Matte with the Main Matte, and the External Matte if used. Like the Main Matte this is a grayscale view. Use this view if you need to send the black and white matte out to another compositing operation, if you are using either the Core or Outer Matte. The Invert button inverst this view.


• The SpillMap view shows you a grayscale representation of the pixels that will be affected by the spill suppression.


• The Despill view shows you the unmatted source image after the spill suppression has been applied.


• The Edge Color Matte view shows you the fine edge matte that is used by the Edge Color feature for adjusting the brightness, saturation and/or RGB balance of your edges. What this view shows you is the matte itself and not the result. In the default Edge Color mode, the matte is grayscale, but if you turn on Gradient Qualify, the colors will change to purple for the Value A slider, and yellow for the Value B slider (see below for more details).


• The Light Wrap view allows you to monitor the Lightwrap component on its own - in this case what you are seeing is the full color lightwrap and not just its matte, which makes it easy to assess the depth, brightness and saturation of the lightwrap before applying it to the final key.

• The External Matte view allows you to examine the external matte (if any) as it is being supplied to the keyer. This view is useful for checking any formatting issues to may affect the alignment of the external matte with the matte generated by the keyer. Unless your external matte is formatted identically to your foreground, you will see registration issues, which you need to correct by preformatting the external matte.

• The Background view allows you to examine the background (if any) as it is being supplied to the keyer. This view is useful for checking any formatting issues to may affect the alignment of the background with the keyed foreground. Unless your background is formatted identically to your foreground, you will see registration issues, which you need to correct by preformatting the background. Note that the Background source well (see below) now supplies the background image for use by the Lightwrap, the Edge Blend operation, and the Dual View mode.

• Note that the Invert Matte view in 1.0 has been removed in 2.0 and its function is replaced by the Invert button (see above).

Screen

• When you first apply the keyer to your clip, you will notice that the background is not fully transparent. The reason for this is to allow you to adjust the matte only as much as is necessary to achieve a solid foreground and a fully transparent background. Some automatic keyers, such as Apple's Keyer (available in FCP X and Motion 5), give you a solid matte straight out of the gate, but make it that much harder to restore missing detail. Hawaiki Keyer has made this a manual process for a very good reason - and that's because your eyes will be a much better judge of this than any automatic process can be. However, with 2.0 we've introduced a new Pick Color option which is much more like the keying process you may be used to, and which is an easy and efficient way to work if you are looking for a quick result. Before looking at that we'll look at the new default method, which will generally yield the best results.



• The best way of working on creating a great-looking matte is to use the View menu and select the Analysis view mode which gives a color representation of the state of the matte. Solid foreground pixels will be orange and the transparent edge pixels will be blue. To begin with, most if not all of your background will be washed blue because it is not yet fully transparent. Note that using the Invert button with the Analysis view is a great way of picking up stray background pixels that are otherwise tricky to spot, so you may want to try that at the final the final clean-up stage of your matte.


• Note that in 2.0 we've made some major changes to the way the Screen section works. The new AUTO Mode menu allows you to select from three different options as to how you work, but we'll look first at the powerful new default Auto Balance method. Note that in 1.0, we had an Auto switch for use with problematic, underlit or under-saturated screens. This Auto switch has been removed in 2.0 and has been replaced with an Auto Balance slider.


• Auto Balance - The first step in setting up your key is to make an overall decision about the Auto Balance - the default of 6.0 should work well for most cases, but if your screen is of poor quality then you will want to experiment with higher settings, whereas for very good screens you can reduce the setting all the way down to 1.0. Of course, you can come back and revisit your Auto Balance setting at any time, either to try and get more edge detail into your matte or conversely to help clear the background fully to black if you're not quite getting there with the other controls. Generally, you want to aim for as low a setting as you can get away with as this will always give you the best edges and the most detail. An unnecessarily high setting with throw away detail that you could be capturing.


• SCREEN DENSITY - The next step is usually to advance the SCREEN DENSITY slider very slowly and gently until those blue pixels in the Analysis View have all gone black, but be sure to do this only as much as is necessary. If you go too far you will lose precious edge detail and that's something you really want to avoid.


• IMPORTANT NOTE: Sometimes you'll find that it's best to leave the SCREEN DENSITY slider alone (or in some cases even reduce the value!) and instead make adjustments to the Mid, Hi and Low Density sliders - because every shot is different it's not possible to give you precise guidelines about this, so make sure you experiment to discover the best combination of options. If you are having any problems at all with getting a result using just the SCREEN DENSITY slider, make sure you experiment with the other three, either singly or in combination. Because these controls allow you to target the lows, mids and highs of your backing color independently, you should be able to get results that most other keyers simply can't achieve.


• Screen Calibration - Also new in 2.0 is the extremely powerful and versatile Screen Calibration option. The effect of this control is to recalibrate the relationship between the red, green and blue channels as they are being fed into the keyer algorithm. Depending on the color composition of your background and your foreground, you can often achieve great results from using this control. The best thing to do is experiment and see if it helps the matte or if it doesn't. Because every shot is different, it's not possible to make recommendations about the specific use of this feature - sometimes it will perform brilliantly as a major problem-solver, sometimes it will work very well as just a finishing clean-up tool, and sometimes it won't make a useful improvement in which case it's best left at the default setting.


• AUTO Mode - The new AUTO Mode menu allows you to select from three different options as to how you work. The default is Auto Balance which will usually give the best results. The Off mode represents the default behavior of 1.0 (without the option of the Auto switch) and is effectively the "fully manual" mode for the keyer. Note that the Auto Balance control is both hidden and disabled whenever you switch to Off mode. While this mode will give great results for many different kinds of shots, there are some extreme cases where it will not be sufficient, in which case it is best to use one of the other options, preferably Auto Balance. The final option is Pick Color, which we'll look at next.


• Pick Color. Enabling this mode from the AUTO Mode menu will hide and disable the Auto Balance slider and will enable the Color Swatch. In FCP X click on the swatch to bring up the Mac Color Picker and use the magnifying glass to select an average value from your green or bluescreen. In other host applications, simply use the eyedropper to make the selection. you can then use the Density and Screen Calibration tools (see above) to refine the result as necessary.
  
  
  
  Note that depending on the quality (saturation) of your screen, you may find that you can improve the result by reducing the SCREEN DENSITY value rather than increasing it in the usual way. As mentioned above, automated screen color selection operations are a less subtle method of extracting a matte and can often over-compensate and lose detail in the process. While you can get great results very quickly with this method, we don't recommend it for all cases, so if you think you might be losing detail that you'd really like to keep, then make sure you try Auto Balance instead.
  
  
• Denoise - Introduced in version 1.0.1, the denoise control gives the user a sophisticated method for reducing edge noise in the matte. It can also help to clear up stray backing pixels caused by noisy source footage. This option is always the preferred method for dealing with "jaggies" or steppiness on the edges of the matte. Unlike a conventional matte blur, Hawaiki Keyer's denoise does a much smoother job of cleaning the edges, while retaining as much of the detail as possible.
  
  Enable the Denoise checkbox and adjust the Amount as required - try to use only as much as is needed to resolve your edge problem. By default, the denoise process works on the UV channels in YUV colorspace. If you open the Advanced controls, you will find the option to adjust the relative noise reduction in each of these two channels. Or you can choose to denoise in RGB colorspace, by selecting this option from the dropdown menu. When RGB is enabled, the UV sliders are replaced by RGB sliders and you can again adjust the relative noise reduction in each of these.
  
  
• So at this point you will ideally have cleared your backing to black and you'll have some great-looking edges - so your next step is to proceed directly to the MATTE DENSITY slider - see below.

Matte

• Matte Density - The MATTE DENSITY slider is what controls the density of the foreground image - you've made your background transparent, but you need to make sure that your foreground doesn't have any "holes" or transparent areas where there shouldn't be any.
  
  Advance the MATTE DENSITY very gradually until your foreground just goes solid - again, the easiest way of making sure you are doing the right thing is to use the Analysis view. Wherever a pixel has turned orange, you know that it is fully opaque - any that are still blue will be semi-transparent. Note that you want to make sure that your edges stay blue - the one thing you don't want is a hard edge to your matte as this will look very ugly and unrealistic.


• Matte Cleaner - A really powerful new feature in 2.0 is the Matte Cleaner option, which is designed to help you deal with problem areas in your foreground that refuse to go solid. At extreme settings you can use Matte Cleaner to force fill "holes" in your foreground caused by reflections or foreground colors that too closely match the background screen color. Check the Matte Cleaner switch to enable this option, and adjust the Amount slider as necessary. For advanced hole filling operations you will probably also want to use the Refine slider which helps to force the filler into more of the holes.
  
  Note that while Matte Cleaner is a really powerful tool, like any keying control you want to make sure that you only use as much as you actually need and no more - at extreme settings you can risk compromising your edges, so keep an eye on them to make sure you're doing enough but no more.
  
  COMPOSITING TIP: If your foreground holes are caused by reflections, it's worth knowing that filling them in is not always the best-looking option. Being reflections they should ideally be reflecting your environment, and in your final composite that environment isn't the flat color of your despilled green/bluescreen (which is what it will be if you fill them in), but rather it ought to be the color of the new background and any detail it may contain. Hence leaving your holes see-through will often have the effect of making them look more like real reflections and your composite will look better as a result.


• Contrast - The Contrast slider, as the name implies, can be used to increase the contrast of the matte, once you have adjusted the density. This will make the black areas blacker and the white areas whiter, in other words, it can help to make sure that the backing goes completely transparent and that the foreground is nice and solid. Again don't over-adjust the contrast as too much will start to destroy your edges - the one thing you want to avoid doing. That said, you will find this an extremely useful and powerful control.


• Gamma - The Gamma slider performs the magic trick of making your transparent edges either more opaque or more transparent - increase the value for greater transparency and reduce it for increased opacity. This is a great control for making your edges look more realistic, but, as always, be sure to use it gently and don't overcook the results.


• Matte Blur - In general, you want to avoid blurring your matte wherever you can to preserve as much fine detail as possible, but sometimes if your green/bluescreen is not as good as it should be, you'll have unwanted "stepping" or aliasing of your edges, or some of the processing you have applied may have made them look a bit too sharp. If this is the case, your first step should be to make sure you have enabled Denoise (see above) which is specifically designed to deal with this type of issue and will handle it really beautifully and smoothly without compromising your matte. If your footage is really poor and Denoise doesn't get you far enough only then should you consider using Matte Blur - after having first fired your cameraman and/or thrown away your camera!
  
  To use Matte Blur, enable the Matte Blur checkbox and then adjust the Amount - only as much as you need and absolutely no more!
  
  If you are encountering serious aliasing problems, it usually means that you've over-processed the matte somewhere or other. Make sure you go back and review your previous decisions to see if you can improve on them before trying Matte Blur. Hawaiki Keyer gives you more options for refining your matte than any other keyer so you should usually be able to find a good way of treating the problem without having to resort to blur.


• Matte Shrink - You shouldn't ever really need to shrink your matte, as Hawaiki keyer gives you so many great tools for creating a great-looking edge, but if you do need to shrink it for any reason, then use the Matte Shrink slider. Again, try to ration yourself as much as possible - a matte that has been visibly shrunk is not a professional-looking matte! If you facing the kind of desperate situation where Matte Shrink is needed, you may nned to use it in conjunction with a small amount of Matte Blur.

Advanced

• The Advanced options give you extra control over the screen and/or matte density and really the best way to use them is to experiment with small amounts and see if they improve the initial result.
  
  The options include RGB Screen Density (the same basic idea as the main screen density controls above but split into three channels for even more precise control), RGB Clamp, and RGB Screen Contrast.
  
  Also included in this section are the advanced options for Denoise - see above. The default mode is to denoise the U and V channels in YUV colorspace. The U and V controls give you the option to adjust the relative noise reduction in each of these two channels. Or if you select RGB from the Denoise Type dropdown menu, you can choose to denoise in RGB colorspace, by selecting this option from the dropdown menu. When RGB is enabled, the UV sliders are replaced by RGB sliders and you can again adjust the relative noise reduction in each of these.

Secondary Mattes

• The Secondary Mattes provide a very handy way of garbage matting the background (Outer Matte), or avoiding holes in the foreground (Core Matte).
  
  Note that with the introduction of Matte Cleaner in 2.0, you shouldn't now really need to use the Core Matte option, which is a less effective and more processing-intensive process, but we have left it in here for legacy users.



• Core Matte - The Core Matte is a super-solid version of the matte you have already created that allows you to kill off any tricky holes in your foreground. The Core Matte doesn't reach to the extreme edges of your main matte so as to avoid interfering with the all-important edge detail. You can reduce its size still further if necesary using the Core Shrink slider, but you shouldn't normally need to adjust this.
  
  Note that the Core Matte is disabled by default - use the checkbox to turn it on.
  
  Do make sure you check what the Core Matte is doing by verifying with the Core Matte view - sometimes it might not be doing exactly what you expect so it's always best to check and adjust as necessary.


• Outer Matte - The opposite of the Core Matte, the Outer Matte helps take care of the outer regions of the background and makes them fully transparent. Like the Core Matte, the Outer Matte is disabled by default - use the checkbox to turn it on.


• The Outer Matte keeps clear of the edges of the main matte so as not to lose any detail, but you can increase the clearance if necessary using the Outer Expand slider.


• Note that the Outer Matte is usually large enough (or can be expanded enough) to keep well out of the way of the Main Matte in most cases. However, if you have lots of large areas of transparency that you need to keep, it's best to leave the Outer Matte turned off to avoid fighting with those areas.

Despill

• The spill suppression provided in Hawaiki Keyer is very powerful with a lot of fine control of the results - more than you'll find in most keyers at any level. Spill suppresssion works by isolating the areas of your foreground that are contaminated with excess amounts of the background screen color and replacing it with something less offensive.



• Enable or disable the spill suppression using the Despill checkbox - useful to make a quick check of the untreated source image. Note that in 2.0 disabling the Despill checkbox will now update the Despill view to show the uncorrected source image - this offers a quick and easy way of checking the despilled image against the original without having to use the main View menu.


• Note that the Unspill option in 1.0 has now been removed to give you a simpler and more intuitive set of controls.


• Auto - New in 2.0 is the Auto switch which enables automatic brightness correction for the despilled result. In 1.0 you need to make this adjustment manually but nthis new Auto mode (the default) automatically adjusts the despilled result so that it matches the original brightness of the source shot. This avoids any of the darker fringing that you might sometimes see with a purely manual operation.


• Brightness - The Brightness control lets you make manual adjustments to the Auto result if you need to fine tune it, or provides fully manual control if you have disable the Auto switch.


• Saturation - The Saturation control lets you fine tune the saturation of the despilled areas, either to reduce it or increase it as required.


• RGB Control - The three RGB sliders let you adjust the color of the despilled areas directly and intuitively for really fine-grained control of the result.


• Amount - use the Amount slider to increase or decrease the degree of spill suppression being applied - a value of zero will give you the original image with no despill applied.


• We will discuss the four remaining controls in the next section.

Spill Map

• When setting up the spill suppression operation it's a good idea to use the SpillMap view mode which allows you to see exactly what's going on and fine tune it to the demands of your particular shot. The SpillMap is a grayscale image that defines the areas that will be de-contaminated and with Hawaiki Keyer, unlike most keyers on the market, you have total control over how this works.


• Despill works by referencing the red, green and blue channels and removing any green (or blue, as the case may be) that exceeds the value of either (or both) of the other two.


• Use the SpillMap Depth control to increase the intensity of the spillmap as necessary.


• The SpillMap Balance adjusts the degree to which the Red or Blue are referenced (in the case of greenscreen, or Red and Green in the case of bluescreen).


• Use the Spillmap Red and Blue sliders to make precise adjustments to the areas that will be despilled (or the Red and Green in the case of a bluescreen).
  
  In the case of a greenscreen, the SpillMap Green slider is not available as it is a constant, and the same applies to the Blue slider in the case of the bluescreen.


• With the SpillMap view enabled, increase or decrease the values to include more or less of the spill contaminated image. For example if you want to include more of the skin tones in the image, increase the red value, or if you want to protect more of the blues from the despill, increase the blue value.

Edge

• The Edge options give you superb control over the edges of the final key, and in 2.0 there are even more advanced ways of fine-tuning the edges of your composite for a truly professional finish. In addition to Edge Color, which now has much more control), we now have Edge Transparency and Edge Blend.
  
  Each of these methods uses a very thin matte which only encompasses the very edges of your foreground, or the join between foreground and background in the case of Edge Blend. Using this matte you can make detailed adjustments to the edge as required to help the foreground sit better into the background, compensate for edges that have been over-lit, or create special effects. The really powerful and unique feature of Edge Color in Hawaiki Keyer is that you can divide the edge in two and affect either side independently, using the Gradient Qualify option.



• EDGE COLOR - Enable the Edge Color checkbox and adjust the Width slider to taste - it's a very good idea to do this while looking at the Edge Color Matte view so you know exactly what you are doing. Normally the default edge width should be enough, but you may need to increase the value for problematic foregrounds. Note that the Edge Color Matte view only shows you the matte for Edge Color - the mattes for Edge Transparency and Edge Blend are different, and they cannot be viewed.


• Note that unless Gradient Qualify is enabled, the A sliders are the master controls for various the edge corrections and the B sliders have no effect.


• Brightness - Use the Brightness slider to adjust the brightness up or down as required.


• Saturation - Use the Saturation slider to adjust the saturation of the edge as required.


• RGB Control - Use the RGB sliders to make precise color adjustments to the edge as required.


• Gradient Qualify - If you enable Gradient Qualify, you will see the Edge Color Matte view change with purple on the left hand side and yellow on the right, representing the two halves of the gradient. The Value A slider will now control the areas that are purple and the Value B slider the edges that are yellow. Note that Gradient Qualify only applies to Edge Color, and not to Edge Transparency or Edge Blend which both have separate mattes of their own.
  
  You can adjust the Angle of the gradient any way you like - so for example you could have Value A at the top and Value B at the bottom by entering an Angle of -90 degrees. You can adjust the center of the gradient with the Center slider - negative values move the center closer to Value A and vice versa. Finally, the Spread slider allows you to adjust the spread of values across the gradient and hence the softness of the mix between the A and B values - a lower Spread value will make for a more abrupt transition between the two sides and a larger value will spread it out further.


• EDGE TRANSPARENCY - Edge Transparency is a great way to soften any hard edges in your matte and give you a smoother-looking composite. It works by pulling a thin but smooth matte of your inside edge and reducing the opacity of the foreground in that small area. Enable the checkbox, and adjust the Transparency slider to increase the amount of transparency, and the Depth slider to determine how far into the foreground you will be applying the transparency.


• EDGE BLEND - Edge Blend is a really sophisticated compositing technique used by visual effects artists to put the finishing touches to a great composite. It works by taking another very thin matte that encompasses the composited foreground and background, and then creates a subtle blend of foreground and background justis that small area. It's a great way of making your keys look more photorealistic and less artificial.
  
  IMPORTANT NOTE: - It's important to note that in order to use this feature, you need to add your background image to the Background source well (see below under Lightwrap for instructions on how to do this). Without a background image being fed to the plug-in, you won't get the desired result.
  
  In general, the only control you will need to adjust for Edge Blend is the Amount slider, which determines the intensity of the effect. The Blend slider adjusts the blend of foreground and background, but in almost all cases you will find that the default value of 4.0 is the right blend amount for your needs.

Light Wrap

• Lightwrap simulates the indirect illumination of the scene, which is where the background colors wrap themselves around the edges of the foreground. This can be very useful in helping the match between the keyed foreground and the new background.
  
  
  Toggle the Lightwrap switch to enable this feature, and adjust the amount, depth (the distance that the lightwrap overlaps the foreground), the brightness and the saturation.


• You will need to add the background image (or footage) to the Background image well. In FCP X you need to click on the source well to bring up the image selection dialogue, then pick your background image and hit "Apply". In the case of Motion 5, all you need to do is drag the background image into the source well. In Premiere Pro and After Effects, all you have to do is select the layer you want from the dropdown menu.



• IMPORTANT NOTE: For Lightwrap to function correctly, it's really important that your background image is formatted correctly - if for any reason it's not the exact same size and aspect ratio as your timeline, please make sure to create a compound clip of it (FCP X), put it in a flattened group (Motion), nest it (Premiere), or precompose it (After Effects). The plug-in is expecting to see an image that is the same aspect ratio as your timeline - the host application has no way of telling the plug-in that you have used something different. If you have applied any kind of spatial transform (position, crop, scale or rotate) to your background image the same thing applies and you will need to preformat it in the same way. And the same thing applies if you have applied a spatial transform to the shot that you are trying to key. In each case, preformatting will give you the correct result, while failure to do this will mean that the images are out of register with each other.


• Just remember that a little of this effect goes a long way, so it's best not to overdo it - gauge the amount you need depending on the illumination level of the new background.
  
  

External Matte

• A new feature of 2.0 is the ablity to bring in an external matte for use by the keyer.



• In FCP X you need to click on the source well to bring up the image selection dialogue, then pick your background image and hit "Apply". In the case of Motion 5, all you need to do is drag the background image into the source well. In Premiere Pro and After Effects, all you have to do is select the layer you want from the dropdown menu.


• Note that Hawaiki Keyer will expect to see a black & white image as the source for the external matte. Transparent alpha will be treated as black.



• Use the dropdown menu to select how the External Matte is combined with the matte generated by the keyer. The default is Off which means the external matte has no effect. The Add option will add the white values of the external matte to the keyer's own matte. The Subtract option will subtract the black values of the external matte from the keyer's own matte. And the Replace option will entirely replace the keyer's own matte with the external matte.


• There are many uses for this option, but an obvious use for Add is to create a hold-out matte, and for Subtract to create a garbage matte. Replace is useful if you simply want to use the spill suppression and other finishing options of Hawaiki Keyer but the matte from another instance of Hawaiki Keyer or another keyer.


• IMPORTANT NOTE: For External Matte to function correctly, it's really important that your external image is formatted correctly - if for any reason it's not the exact same size and aspect ratio as your timeline, please make sure to create a compound clip of it (FCP X), put it in a flattened group (Motion), nest it (Premiere), or precompose it (After Effects). The plug-in is expecting to see an image that is the same aspect ratio as your timeline - the host application has no way of telling the plug-in that you have used something different. If you have applied any kind of spatial transform (position, crop, scale or rotate) to your external matte, the same thing applies and you will need to preformat it in the same way. And the same thing applies if you have applied a spatial transform to the shot that you are trying to key. In each case, preformatting will give you the correct result, while failure to do this will mean that the images are out of register with each other.

Color Correction

• Finally, Hawaiki Keyer gives you an entire color correction suite so you can polish your composite all from within the one plug-in.



• Click the Color Correction checkbox to enable the suite and reveal the extensive controls.


• Adjust the Global Saturation, the saturation for shadows, midtones and highlights (Low, Mid, and High), the global shadows, midtones and highlights (Low, Mid, and High), or if need be, you can even fine tune the shadows, midtones and highlights (Low, Mid, and High) and RGB balance for each of the Red, Green and Blue channels independently.

PRESETS

• The built-in presets allow you to save any of your keys for future use, or you can customise a default layout of the plug-in.

COLOR SPACE

• The Color Space option tells Hawaiki Keyer which type of conversion it should perform by default. When “Linear” is selected, Hawaiki Keyer will do its best to convert any color values coming from the host to an RGB Linear color space. When the “Uncorrected” option is selected, Hawaiki Keyer will feed the values coming from the host to the composition “as they are”. Depending on the host and current project settings, the uncorrected color values may be linear or gamma-encoded.