Tutorial 5: Spill Supression Made Easy

Tweaking the color suppression is easy and simple to do with ULTRA. By taking less than a minute in most cases, you can correct for any green or blue spill in an image, and make your shot more believable.

This first shot is an example of the default suppression settings, using the stock shot of Suzy in a wedding dress over one of the background images. I chose this particular background because of the colors – it makes the green stand out more. You will notice that the veil and the edge of the wedding dress still has some green in it.

Fig 1: stock suppression settings

Start by taking the Spill Suppression slider, and crank it all of the way to the right. Your image will be mostly magenta but that’s all right at this stage.

fig 2 & 3: everything’s magenta!

Next, adjust the color curve slider and the Desaturation sliders until the magenta just appears in the areas that were green in the first image. These are usually small adjustments to the sliders, so use a soft touch.In this example, I’ve adjusted both sliders down a little, so that the center of the wedding dress is pure white, but the edges of the gown have more magenta.

fig 4 & 5: getting magenta in only the areas that need it

Finally, dial down the Spill Suppression until the magenta isn’t noticeable anymore. It should be set just enough to cancel the green without adding magenta.