Blue Screen Vs Green Screen

So you've decided to take the plunge and get a green screen...or a blue screen. You're sick of lugging huge backdrops around in a variety of shades and patterns, and have realised that high-key white is not the new black, it's old hat and boring! Event Photographers argue endlessly over this, but there's really no need!

What's the difference in blue and green screens then? Why not yellow or pink?

It really doesn't matter what colour your backdrop is if you want to use chromakey software to replace the background with a digital backdrop. As long as it's uniform in colour and uniformly lit. And it's different from what your subjects are wearing!

If you are using a dedicated piece of Chromakey software like greenscreen wizard or Photokey, then you will need blue or green as that's what the software is looking for. If you are doing it by hand in photoshop then it can be pink, yellow, fluorescent orange, even white or black. If like us you are using a Mitsubishi Click System then you can select any colour to be chromakey just by clicking on a part of a sample photo.

Bear in mind at an event if it's going to be busy you may get people wanting quick photos who don't care about the background. That's great as it's much quicker to just shoot and print, without the extra work that chromakeying involves. In that case Blue looks nicer set up and also as a background, it's more natural than green.

We tend to find more women wear blue dresses at an event than green! And there are more blue-eyed people around than green! Men tend to wear blue shirts and ties more often than green. Hence the popularity of green screens. So be ready for that to happen. We take both colours in case, and can swap quickly. In fact the event organiser at one event turned up wearing a green dress, shoes and jacket and had big green eyes! We tried to shoot as the backdrop was a different colour green, but in the group shots her body totally disappeared, so we had to swap backdrops!

The downside to Green screen event photography is people with very blonde or silver hair. The green tends to be reflected into the hair and this is tricky to fix. The best way to avoid this is to have a separation light shining from above only on the hair, not on the backdrop. The experts say to move the subject 6-12 feet from the cloth, but that's not always possible due to space, and is impossible with groups. Good software helps, but great lighting is better.

If you want a real green or blue screen just like a certain George Lucas uses, we can help. A dyed muslin background will work, but isn't ideal. Proper chromakey screens are a much lighter shade of green or blue and are almost fluorescent in colour. They have a white backing with special loops in the material that diffuses the light rather than reflecting it back into the hair. We get ours made at the film studios by the same people who make the ones used on set. We also have rings inset down both sides so it can be tensioned with bungees to the stand, avoiding creasing. They aren't cheap, but the difference in use is amazing!

Email me if you are interested, we can get these made to any size, and I mean ANY size!

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