So do you fancy adding a little bit of Hollywood into your photography? Well, just with a simple little green screen like this, behind me we can change some very plain boring background into basically anything we like. The use of green screens has been around in movies for years, but it's not that commonly used in photography and one of the main reasons, well two reasons in particular. One is that alongside the use of it you'd normally have to have a lot of understanding about Photoshop and it'd be quite confident in using editing software. The second reason why is that some photographers don't like using Photoshop to kind of compose it in backgrounds. They feel it takes away from the genuine atmosphere of the image whereas photography is meant to be a bit of a pure bit of a genuine medium of art which on the whole it is and we made a video about that a while ago. Using things like green screens and Photoshop takes away a little bit of the truth and the realness in the actual image. But if for example you are in new to photography if you're fairly new to Photoshop and you don't really know kind of where to go to create some of these kind of conceptual or surreal types of photographs that have got some kind of quite fantasy style backgrounds but it's something you want to learn. Stick around, watch this video and we'll show you how to actually convert a really cool portrait into something even more magnificent. So green screens can really be made from most materials and we've got one here that's just basically a thick cloth and the thick of the better really because the one thing you don't want is any light to be lost from either coming through from behind or any light kind of passing through the actual material itself. So you could use cardboard anything that's just one solid block of colour. So the next question you may ask is does it have to be green? Technically yes and technically no. Greens green should really only be green or blue. More so for when you're taking portraits. Reason being for this is that from the point of view of a digital camera the sensor in your camera actually makes every photograph based upon different values of red, green and blue pixels. So different values of these pixels kind of create different colours that you'll actually see. When it comes to taking a portrait skin tone is made up of values of red pixels. Different values so you get like pinks darker reds just depending upon the actual make up of the skin tone to begin with. So the one absence of colour is green because obviously the opposite of red is green on a colour wheel. So using something different like green you couldn't use blue otherwise it's really really good for portrait. So basically the simple rule is make sure that your background colour is not represented in any way in your foreground subject. For today's experiment what we're actually going to try out is a few portraits just to show you how the green screen works in line with portraits. So to do with that I'm actually going to grab Harriet who's standing behind our camera. They are lovely model and we'll show you how it's done. Let's get started. So we've got our model in with us now and all I want to try and do is just go through a few little set up tips as to how to kind of get the best from your green screen. The first thing being is the lighting it's really important. We've got two lights set up either side here pointing straight on towards Harriet and on the background itself. So all you need to make sure is that this light is goal going in one direction. What you're not trying to achieve is to get like a gradient of colour. You really want this green background or whatever colour you're using it's just to be that one solid colour. Obviously again you need to make sure that your actual model is or your subject or whatever you're working with in front of your green screen isn't wearing the same colour as the background because like kind of weathermen on those charts they sometimes just blend into the background because they're wearing blue or green themselves. So another point to think about is that when you get a little bit more advanced if you can actually think about your finished kind of composite background that you're going to use. Have a look at the angle that the actual image is taking out and see if you can actually mimic the same angle into your portrait. It's going to make it a lot easier to composite the two things together. What we'll try and do now is take a few shots and then we'll show you how the editing process works. So now we've got all our photographs. What we're actually going to do is take one of our best ones in the and actually take it into the computer and I'll run you through an editing process to actually show you how to kind of take your portrait and actually composite it into a really kind of interesting background. So if this is your first time editing a green screen effect then let's go through this step by step together. Firstly we need to select all the areas of green on our portrait. There are a number of ways of selecting something in Photoshop but this time we just want to focus on making a selection solely based on colour. So with our portrait file active select the magic one tool on your vertical toolbar. Along the options bar at the top make sure you untick the contiguous option. Now simply press once on the green screen and see how it selects large part of your background. Now one click may simply be enough for you and if so brilliant just hold five for a minute because if it's not then we need to show you what otherwise to do because your photo and my photo are obviously different the selections aren't going to be the exact same. So if you need to select more an area an area wider of green then you basically need to increase your tolerance levels. You can find that option at the bar on the top again. Now it's default setting is 32 which means whichever pixel of colour that you click on then the magic one will select pixels that are 32 levels brighter and darker of that original value. So if your selection that you've made already is too big and it's picking up part of your subject for example then reduce the tolerance but otherwise if your if your selection is too small then we need to increase that tolerance. Once you've nailed it then keep that selection active now get your background file and follow these steps. Go to select and all then edit and then copy. Now it's important that you press back on your subject photo with the magic one selection still active so make sure you've got your portrait selected not your background file. Then next go to edit, paste and paste into. Hey presto, things have worked out and you can continue from here to add in lighting effects, colour overlays and blend other elements together that's totally up to you but if you're happier with the results then you can just stop here and save your work. So there we go there is our finished version and I hope you liked it. I hope you enjoyed it. This really was a tutorial that is kind of quite useful for people that aren't able to get out much you know they've got a computer and a camera indoors and thinking how they can be creative. This is just one simple way you don't necessarily need to go to lengths of buying a big green screen like we've got like a dedicated one. Though they are fairly cheap and you can get them in most kind of photography shops or online stores you could just simply kind of paint a wall green get a big piece of cardboard and do the same or just you know some cloth or material that you've got in your house. There is lots of different ways to do it but either way I hope you enjoyed the video if you did obviously please kick the subscribe button and turn the notifications on if you want to see more. We're all over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest as you'd expect. So if you've taken any photographs using a screen screen effect we'd love to see them so please just tag us in them. So until the next time we'll see you soon.