Digital Compositing for Film and Video is a hands-on, practical, how-to guide that addresses the problems and difficult choices faced by the professional compositor in real-life situations. It presents techniques, tricks, and solutions for dealing with badly shot elements, coloration artifacts, and mismatched lighting that bedevil actual compositors working on real shots. Readers are offered in-depth practical methods for matte extraction, despill procedures, compositing operations, and color correction,the "meat and potatoes" of all digital effects. Compositing is the artistic blending of several disparate elements from a variety of sources into a single image while making all the component elements appear to be in the same light space and shot with the same camera. When confronted with a bad composite any observer will recognize that something is wrong,the artist will know what is causing the problem, and the technician will know how to fix it. A good compositor must be both an artist and a technician. Written by a senior compositor with over ten years' experience in both feature film and broadcast television, this book offers a broad range of alternative solutions that will save hours of fiddling with composites trying to get them to look right when the basic tool.