Hi everybody, I'm Joshua Davies, and I'm going to be talking about Imerge Pro which is FXhome's
new piece of imaging software.
Technically it's the world's first non-destructive RAW imaging compositing tool.
And you might say "what does that mean exactly?"
Well, it's a bit like a cross between say Lightroom and Photoshop in that it gives you
loads of cool tools to be able to process your images, but then what you can actually
do is start layering them up, green screening, masking them and compositing them to create
entirely new images.
So now in Imerge if we actually look at the image the perspective is not that realistic
but we were trying to create something a bit more dynamic, and make it look like there
was a lot of depth and some action going on in the image.
First of all if we look at the background, the clouds well this is two separate shots,
we were very lucky in Scotland it was extremely cloudy when we were shooting, so for this
part of the scene it was ideal.
Unfortunately for the next part which is the mountains, it was far from ideal.
We actually had to take a bunch of different safety shots, and in Imerge we put them all
together as you can see, layering these up, with different mountains from different areas
to create what was a more interesting background.
The other thing that we needed to add was some additional clouds, though you can barely
believe it from these photos, and some light as well.
So we brought in some light rays coming in from the right to the left, and then we added
some clouds up in the mountain just to make the composite a little bit more natural.
Now these are all different elements, some of them we took on the location, other ones
we actually just, you know, got off royalty free websites and things like that.
What Imerge also allows us to do is to have Grade layers.
These allow us to just apply a set of filters to all of the images below that layer.
And what we have here is the first of those shots, which is actually the nearest to the
shot that they used in the film.
We have a bunch of masks set on here so I'll just switch those off.
And you can see this final shot.
And while this shot is great, it doesn't really have the lements that we wanted for the sort
of dramatic ultra-widescreen composition.
So what we did is just mixed in other elements when we were there.
So let me just switch our masking back on, and then I'll switch on some of the other
layers.
So we also have this layer to the right, which again we've used a Gradient Mask and a Vector
Mask to kind of feather out the top.
Another photo taken in the same location but on the left, we just tilted the camera 20
or 30 degrees to the other side.
Again we're using a mask to kind of mask out what is effective and what doesn't work.
And then we've extended the road, this was a little trick, so the road was very narrow,
but also we wanted to shift the Aston Martin to one side a bit unrealistically just to
create the layout that we wanted.
So I've taken the road, I've duplicated it and that's going to sit underneath the Aston
Martin so you're not going to see this seam that we have on the edge here.
So we took the best mountains that we had and we started adding those in.
First of all here on the right, again we're using numerous masks, Imerge has fantastic
masking tools, whether they're Gradient Mask, Color Masks, Vector Masks.
And then on the left here we added these two as well.
These're a different location but I just thought they looked really cool.
Now the main thing we need to do after adding these in is try and blend them all together.
Part of that is done with actual filters on the layers, but what we also added is some
different elements to just tie this all together.
As you can see at the moment the mountains are kind of popping out against the background.
So first of all as I said before with the clouds we wanted the light to come in from
the right and sort of illuminate across to the left.
So first of all what we added is some light rays going across from the right of the image
across to the left to just sort of separate them so that the left side of the image is
generally darker than the right.
We added this image of light rays and then we just did a gradient mask on it, and a bit
of a blur, and now you can see that actually the mountain is blending more seamlessly with
the background.
But still on the left here, we have a few issues.
We actually added some clouds this was again stock footage, I believe it was from our great
friends at ActionVFX.
Just a frame of their brilliant stock put on the top here and we're using a bunch of
different things like Remove Color Matting, which is a great tool.
We're doing a Color Overlay on here, we're using a Luminance Key to extract it and then
we're doing some Curves on the Alpha channel just to boost it up a bit.
These are the great tools you have inside Imerge to do this kind of work and they're
all dynamic so you can alter them at any time, every decision is reversible, all of this
is live and can be edited at any time.
We then felt that maybe in the middle we needed a little bit of cloud as well so we added
another element, again from ActionVFX.
So the next thing was the car.
If we actually look at the car, it's cut out pretty cleanly here, doesn't have any shadows.
But the original image of the car, if I disable all of our masks, and I disable all of our
filters, well this is the image you can see.
We had a propped-up green screen.
I'm there behind holding it up.
But actually we have a bunch of green cast on the car, we have a bunch of color cast
on the car from the sky, and then we just have some horrible edges to work out with
masking as well.
So the first thing we need to do is get rid of the green background.
We have multiple ways of applying masks, just a general application of masks, which is the
Apply setting, so that we can retain those areas that were extracted by the Chroma Key.
So this is all well and good, and we've got our car in here, but it doesn't look great,
it's standing out like a sore thumb.
We then basically created a selection of different shadow effects to try and build this back
up.
The way that we did this is to look at the shadow on the actual car and then draw some
masks that basically recreated that shadow.
So firstly we have a very very diffused shadow, and then they become more and more sharp as
we go up these layers.
And you get what is a very realistic shadow because it's copied from the original shadow.
So we then have a couple of other tricks that we can play here, firstly we thought we would
add some tire marks where the car had come skidding to a halt.
So when we were shooting the car it actually ran over a studio floor which was very near
white.
So we took a photo of that tire mark and it's the actual tire mark of the car that we composited
on here.
And we're using our Quad Warp tools, we're using Curves tools and the Blending method
to create something that looks like it's actually applied to the ground.
Last of all, some of the windows kind of lost their reflections and you couldn't see them
so well from the keying.
It's done a very very good job, mind, but we actually have a whole window that wasn't
being chroma keyed at all, it had no green behind it so instead we added some of that
actual tint back into all the windows and a bit of the shine just manually using the
tools inside Imerge Pro.
So now we have the car in the background and the next thing we did is add another adjustment
layer where we can do just a little bit of a tweak of a grade before we add our models
in.
As you can see what we've actually tried to do is really vignette in the edges.
This is so as the models cross that line they're going to pop out that little bit more.
We've also just tweaked some of the exposure settings and the vibrance of the background,
it was maybe a little bit too vibrant in some areas.
So first we have dinner jacket guy, whose name was actually Steve.
Really nice guy, but we had to use a separate photo for him than we did for Laura because
we were creating this really distorted perspective.
So if I switch off the masks here on Steve, you can see they're kind of being used as
a garbage matte.
But you can see we had him directly up against green screen, I'll just switch off all of
these effects here.
So here's the green screen, it's good, solid green, but we're actually applying several
different effects here.
So firstly we have our Chroma Key , and then we Sharpen him up.
He was a little bit soft.
Then we did a White Balance, then a Curves, then an Exposure, and then the Saturation
Editor to take out some blue in the image.
So I'll just put those all back on.
Now this is the great power of Imerge, it allows you to have all of these dynamically
accessible, so if I wanted to, say, go into one of these and let's make it more vibrant.
Well we actually have Vibrance and Saturation, the difference between these two is that Vibrance
is gonna try and leave the skin tones alone.
But if we just stick up the Saturation you'll see that everything is being dynamically altered
on that layer.
And this doesn't matter if it's the layer at the top of your stack or at the bottom
of your stack.
I'll just undo that because I've made it look like he went on a terrible holiday.
There we go.
Next is secret agent, this was Laura, this is a separate shot and we've used the arm
as the transition point here.
So we got some fine flyaway hair which is always hard but we have the RAW capabilities
of Imerge bringing in all of that data and it makes all of our keying that much better.
We actually used some masking to add some light to her hair and this brings me to one
of the other great things about Imerge, is that all of your effects can have their own
masks.
So in other tools you might have to duplicate this layer, then cut out the bit that you
want to brighten up, then brighten up that area, just to have it sit on top of the other
layer.
All of the effects inside Imerge, however, can have their own masks.
So I could be altering her eye color, the color of her lips, the color of her dress,
and the color of her hair just using one layer, with different effects, with different types
of masking on them, and it's really really powerful.
We'll no doubt do a tutorial in the future which covers all the best settings for all
things green screen, but Imerge Pro does this job better than any other product I know.
Lastly, just to add a bit of sheen to the image we added some lens dirt and some sort
of small flecks, to make it look like maybe it was a bit misty out when we were taking
this image, or it was a bit rainy.
Again I think these elements are from our great friends over at ActionVFX so do go and
check them out they have some really amazing stock.
Whether you're into photography or video, there's still content there that's great for
you.
And then we have our final grade layer which is really about tying everything together,
this has some of my favorite tools in it.
So yeah, we just put a zoom blur over the edges, just to sort of fade them out a little
bit, and then we have the clarity tool.
Now the Clarity tool is one of my favorite tools in the whole product, it allows us to
add structure and also add sort of sharpness to the image so when you're adding these it's
going to be able to boost local contrast, or it's going to create sharpening without
creating horrible artifacts, and it just allows us to sort of make the image a little bit
more punchy that it would otherwise be.
Then we got Tone Coloring, this is a fantastic tool for all of you color graders out there.
It allows you to create hundreds of different looks, and the UI is really intuitive so we'll
be bringing this to our other products as soon as we possibly can.
But all I've done here is the highlights, which is the white dot, I've pulled them toward
the oranges.
The dark points, I've pulled towards the sort of cyans, and then I've also then just pulled
the entire color tonal range away, hence below the line, from the yellowy-greens to create
a sort of more bluey-tealy look to the image.
Then we've also taken the Saturation Editor here, this allows you to pick areas of saturation
and increase them or decrease them just by using a graph, it's much easier than most
other tools.
And here we're just boosting the reds up so this is particularly picking out the reds
of her dress, and around this necklace here.
Lastly, of course, a Vignette.
That was just a quick overview of how we created this image inside Imerge Pro.
Please comment down below about any tutorials or techniques you want us to cover, we're
going to have some pro photographers, including Simon Buck who took that photo, come on the
channel, tell you about their techniques, and also tell you how they use Imerge Pro
to make better images.
We're also going to have the guy that created the software, Rikki Loades, come and tell
you about it, straight from the source how this technology works.
If you like the sound of any of that please do subscribe to our channel, and make sure
you click that little bell icon otherwise you won't be updated when we put up new content.
Thank you for watching, and we really hope you enjoy Imerge Pro.