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590Final Cut Pro User Guide
This type of keying is accomplished using one of two keyer effects in Final Cut Pro:
• Keyer: This general-purpose chroma-keying effect is optimized for blue- or green-
screen keying but can key any range of color you choose. See Use chroma keys in
Final Cut Pro.
• Luma Keyer: This effect is designed to generate mattes based on the image’s
lightness—you choose to remove the white or black areas and whether the gray areas
should be partially transparent. See
Use luma keys in Final Cut Pro.
In addition to using these keying effects, you may need to use a matte, a positioning effect,
and color correction to ensure that the foreground video looks natural when keyed over the
background. See
Finalize a key in Final Cut Pro and Intro to masking in Final Cut Pro.
Use chroma keys in Final Cut Pro
A challenging part of creating a good chroma key is shooting the chroma key video and,
in particular, using a good, well-lit background that provides a uniform color to remove. A
wide variety of specialized chroma key background options are available, from chroma key
paint that includes highly reflective additives to chroma key cloth or paper sheets. It’s also
important to use the best camera you can and to avoid using a highly compressed video
format such as DV or MPEG-2. In the following examples, an image of a person is keyed
over a scene in an empty subway station. The light stands are removed in Finalize a key in
Final Cut Pro.