Choose a keying background for contrast

- Once you've created a good basic Alpha channel…from a color key,…the next step is to refine the matte…to correct for things like color spill,…matte lines, noise in the background,…and holes in the foreground.…Before we get into that process,…I want to just focus on how you even look at your footage…in the (comp) window.…Now, so far we've been working with…the black background that is the default in after effects,…or occasionally against the checkerboard.…

You can see that there is a big difference…between those two.…In this case, the checkerboard is actually hidding…a lot of the things that I can more clearly see…going on against black.…Black in turn hides some things that…would be more apparent with a different background view.…One thing I can do is just change the background color.…Something that's common to do in visual effects…is to use a contrasting background.…That's usually some bright garish color…that, to be honest, you don't want to look at all the time.…

So, you're sort of punishing yourself to do this.…