1

Tutorial

Adobe After Effects 6.5

Retouch footage using clone presets and

shortcuts-galore

Blue sky, fluffy clouds, trees swaying in the breeze, couples strolling on the boardwalk, and power lines hovering menacingly above; oops, ain’t it hard to avoid power lines in your footage nowadays? The newly outfitted clone stamp tool in Adobe® After Effects® 6.5 lets you replace those power lines with more blue sky and fluffy clouds, and faster than ever before.

You can download the footage that was used to create this tutorial.

1. Set up the project and composition.

Choose File > New > New Project. Drag the file you want to retouch and any other files you want to clone from to the project window (we used statue01.mov and leaves.mov). Drag the file that needs retouching (statue01.mov in our example) from the project window to the Create a New Composition button. In the Composition window, double-click the layer to display it in a Layer window.

2. Set up the clone stamp tool options.

Select the clone stamp tool in the Tools palette. If you’re using our project files, set up the Paint palette options as they appear in this step’s illustration. We chose Constant for the Duration option because the power lines we’ll remove are in the same position in all frames

of our footage. Constant makes each clone stroke appear on the current frame and all subsequent frames. If the details you want to remove appear on only a single frame or change position from frame to frame, choose Single Frame instead; if the details appear on more than one frame but not all frames, choose Constant, and then resize the brush stroke’s duration bar to the desired time frame. Choose the layer you want to clone from the Source menu. Deselect Aligned if you want each new stroke to begin from the same starting sample point, or select Aligned to sample from the layer at a fixed offset.

3. Clone desired areas to brush over undesired areas.

Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) where you want to start cloning from in the Layer window. (We sampled an unobstructed area of the sky close to a power line to ensure that the resulting clone stroke matches the surrounding tone and color.) To apply the clone stroke, drag over the detail you want to remove (in our footage, the power line). If your clone stroke isn’t quite right, you can clean it up in the next step.

2

ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS 6.5

Retouch footage using clone presets and shortcuts-galore

Tutorial

In this step’s illustration, point 1 marks our sampling point, point 2 marks the start of our stroke, and point 3 marks the end of our dragging. When we set the source position and created a clone stroke, After Effects automatically set up the first clone preset in the Paint palette, simply because the first clone preset button was active. Each clone preset saves the current Aligned, Lock Source Time, Source Time Shift, Offset/Source Point, and Source layer option settings. When we need to clone from an area above where we’re applying a clone stroke, we can quickly click the first clone preset button in the Paint palette and begin cloning.

4. Use a keyboard shortcut to erase portions of the last stroke.

Hold down Ctrl+Alt+Shift (Windows) or Command+Option+Shift (Mac OS) while dragging over unwanted areas in the clone stroke.

This keyboard shortcut switches the clone stamp tool to the eraser tool and uses the same option settings that were last used with the eraser tool. If those settings aren’t suitable, select the eraser tool from the Tools palette, and choose a brush from the brushes pop-up menu in the Paint palette.

Using this keyboard shortcut with the clone stamp tool lets you erase only the last clone stroke that you created. To erase any clone stroke in your layer, select the eraser tool, choose Paint Only from the Erase menu in the Paint palette, and use the eraser tool.

5. Remove a straight line with two clicks and no dragging.

Click the second clone preset button in the Paint palette to preserve the first clone preset and set a new preset. Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the area you want to start cloning from. To clone over a straight continuous area, click one end of the straight area, and then Shift-click the other end.

To remove a straight power line in our footage, we sampled an area of the sky very close to one end of the power line (point 1 in this step’s illustration). Next, we clicked the power line at the end that’s near where we sampled from (point 2), and Shift-clicked the power line’s opposite end (point 3).

6. Use clone preset shortcuts to remove remaining details.

Click a different clone preset button, and set the starting sample point when the clone presets you’ve already set don’t meet your cloning needs. To quickly switch to a different clone preset as you clone out remaining details, press a number key between 3 and 7; 3 selects the first preset, 4 selects the second preset, and so on.

3

ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS 6.5

Retouch footage using clone presets and shortcuts-galore

Adobe, the Adobe logo, and After Effects are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Windows is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Macin-tosh is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries. Flash is a trademark of Macromedia, Inc.©2004 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.

If you have difficulty keeping track of which clone preset has the offset you need, select Clone Source Overlay in the Paint palette, and then press 3 through 7 on the keyboard while the pointer is in the Layer window. The clone source overlay displays a translucent image of the layer you’re sampling from over the current layer; the current sampling point appears directly below the clone tool pointer.

7. Clone from a different layer and a different point in time.

Identify a file that you want to clone, and drag it from the project window to the Timeline window and below the layer you’ve been retouching. (We want to add some foliage to the upper right corner of our statue01 layer, so we dragged leaves.mov from the project window to the Timeline window.) Make the layer window active again. Select the clone stamp tool in the Tools palette. In the Paint palette, choose your new layer (leaves.mov in our project) from the Source menu, click the Reset Clone Source Offset to Zero button, and then select Clone Source Overlay in the Paint palette. Scrub the Source Time Shift value until you see the frame that you want to begin cloning from (frame 22 in our project); as you scrub the value, the clone source overlay displays each passing frame. Alt+Shift-drag (Windows) or Option+Shift-drag (Mac OS) from a point that you want to clone in the clone source overlay until the clone source overlay is in the desired position. Now drag over the clone source overlay to clone it into the current footage.

In our example, we want to clone in only the branches in the middle portion of the leaves.mov layer and position them in the upper right corner of the statue01.mov layer. So we dragged from the leftmost point of the branch to the right until it was in the desired position.

8. Change the blending mode of a clone stroke.

If you want to change the blending mode of a clone stroke, in the Timeline window expand the layer you’ve been reoutching, and expand its Effects group and the Paint group; then select the topmost clone stroke in the Timeline window. If you made multiple clone strokes to clone in areas from the other layer, Shift-click those strokes in the Timeline window. When you have all of the clone strokes selected, choose a blending mode from the Blending Modes pop-up menu adjacent to a selected clone stroke.

To eliminate any white areas of the sky in our footage, which we accidently cloned in from the leaves.mov layer, we could painstakingly erase those areas with a hard-edged brush, frame by frame. Instead, applying the Multiply blending mode to those clone strokes gives them the appearance we want.