Masking for stills - only in Composite (Toxik)?

[wannabeArtist]

Hi,

I'm slowly getting started with the new Composite (formerly Toxik) and one of the first questions is about masking.

When you're working with still composites does it still make sense to use only the masking tools available inside Composite, or you do actually take the images to Photoshop to do that?

Like I said, I'm just getting started, so I don't know much about the Composite's masking tools yet (watching the rotoscope course now), but from a beginners view it seems as if some basic selections (based on color, etc) for defining a mask would be faster to do in Photoshop than inside Toxik.

So how is it generally done?

Thanks :)

[chrisg]

Hi wannabeArtist,

For stills, with a still Mask/Alpha, you can use either one you want. Using Photoshop to create an Alpha to use in Composite is a common workflow, since as you say, Photoshop is more geared to stills.

For a moving or animating Mask/Alpha, you might need to do it in Composite. For simple movements, like position, rotation and scaling, you can use either. For a more complex animation, like attaching a point on your Mask to a tracker, that will have to be in Composite. So if you need the mask to move on a per-point basis, you probably want to do it in Composite. However, if you need to move the Mask/Alpha as a whole, you can do it in Photoshop.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

[wannabeArtist]

Thanks a lot!

That made it a lot clearer for me. No new questions at this point, although they are more than probable, once I get started with my own projects :)