Matte Settings

Tuesday, October 09, 2007 Filed in: Weekly Tip

If you’re using glows, drop shadows, or soft edges, you’ll likely have a soft edge in your alpha channel. To get the best key possible, you want a clean glow or shadow. But this is difficult if you don’t dig deeper into your import graphic settings.

09-11Matte

By default, Adobe Photoshop creates a premultiplied alpha channel (an alpha channel that follows the edge exactly). This causes problems, however, because the background color will be visible around the edges of your graphic. If you do nothing, this will be a problem, because your glows will look “dirty,” and partially transparent drop shadows will come through too strong.

In Final Cut Pro, it’s important to identify what the graphic was on top of when the alpha channel was created. If you had a black background, choose Black. If you had a white background or the transparency grid, choose White.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.