Compositing - Advantages of Digital Mattes

Advantages of Digital Mattes

Digital matting has replaced the traditional approach for two reasons. In the old system, the five separate strips of film (foreground and background originals, positive and negative mattes, and copy stock) could drift slightly out of registration, resulting in halos and other edge artifacts in the result. Done correctly, digital matting is perfect, down to the single-pixel level. Also, the final dupe negative was a “third generation” copy, and film loses quality each time it is copied. Digital images can be copied without quality loss.

This means that multi-layer digital composites can easily be made. For example, models of a space station, a space ship, and a second space ship could be shot separately against blue screen, each "moving" differently. (In such shots, it is the camera that moves, not the model). The individual shots could then be composited with one another, and finally with a star background. With pre-digital matting, the several extra passes through the optical printer would degrade the film quality and increase the probability of edge artifacts. Elements crossing behind or before one another would pose additional problems.