ChromaKeys 1.0.2

ChromaKeys is a program which is used to quickly remove or mask portions of an image.

Chroma keys may be used for a variety of purposes including :

• background removal for photographs
• general purpose image masking
• icon generation
• cutting out portions of an image
• creating irregular shaped images

People often spend hours trying to remove a background from a photo, meticulously creating intricate shapes only to end with dissapointing results.

The movie industry solved this problem by developing blue screens (and later green) screens. Using this method, actors (in the foreground) are filmed against a uniform blue background. The blue background is later electronically replaced with either another image or video.

Using the same exact method with a standard photo can be problematic. The background is almost never "uniform" (unless the photo is taken in a studio or controlled environment - even blue skies tend to darken at the top and lighten towards the bottom). Very often we find colors similar the chroma key may be present in other sections of the image, resulting in undesired areas of the image being replaced.

Using ChromaKeys, instead of just selecting a single color to act as the chroma key, we can choose several colors (each with a tolerance). In fact, we can just select a region of the image, and obtain all the colors within that region to act as chroma keys.

We can also mark areas of the image as opaque, to ensure that the main image will remain intact in those areas. Conversely, we may also mark other areas as transparent.

Chroma keys makes image masking easy.