Eye Training: Paint-Over Part 3
For the next study in my eye training series I wanted to take a green screen shot below from my fav show (Once Upon A Time) and figure out how to make it look more photoreal.
KEY/FILL RATIO
One of the biggest indicators that the shot on the left is not actually outside is the key/fill ratio. The rim light on the characters is very dim compared to their fill light. On the right I have PLATE reference from the same episode on location for how bright/dark the key/fill ratio should be in reality.
Beyond key/fill ratio, notice how the PLATE on the right feels more outside because of the hints of blue sky lighting Emma’s face and hair contrasting the warmth of the sun backlighting her.
SKY BRIGHTNESS
To judge what the sky should feel like I found 3 PLATE references from the same show showing how bright the sky should be for a real rimlit shot with an ambiently lit face in an exterior shot. The image on the top left has a much darker sky than what would really be photographed with that lighting setup. Although a couple of the skies in the PLATE references seem to be pushed around in the grade and slightly flattened and posterized, one feature that seems true is that rim-lit hair blends into a sky at a similar brightness.
Below, I found a google image with a sky at a similar exposure. The sky would be that exposure for those characters if the sun is off to the side of the cam.
SUN REFLECTION
Through more google image research, one thing I found missing was the sun reflecting off of the ocean for this rim lighting setup:
For fun, I also wanted to test DALL-E to see if it could give a little help with this problem. So I generated images with the prompt: “two people standing on a ship at sea, rim lighting, blue sky, wide angle photograph“. And each time it generated the sun’s reflection directly beneath the sun.
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
This first paintover is to put the image in the same world as the PLATE reference. If it was shot on the same day with the same lighting conditions on locations, what would the shot look like with that sun ratio and sky exposure? To get that look I did the following:
boosted overall brightness of the bg to PLATE ref levels when hair blended slightly into sky
boosted rim light brightness to PLATE ref levels
added sun reflection based off google ref
(before and after)
An alt with keeping the sky exposure as-is and darkening the foreground and the ocean:
(before and after)
COMPARISON
Luckily as I watched more of the show after doing my initial study, there was an on-set scene shot on the ship in real daylight I could compare my results to:
