Product Profile: Photokey 4

Television broadcasts—especially TV news shows—have been using Chromakey Greenscreen backgrounds with images superimposed behind the anchor or reporter for years. For still digital photographers, shooting a subject in front of a green screen gives you a chance to replace the green with the background of your choice.

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Greenscreen photography is a good way to maximize your backgrounds when you don’t have too many actual backdrops. If you use a green backdrop and specialized Greenscreen software such as FXhome’s Photokey 4 , you can have an infinite number of backdrops for your studio portrait work, all for the cost of one or two muslin backdrops.

While you could select the green in a green screen in Photoshop and replace it with the background of your choice, doing it that way can be time-consuming. A specialized program will quickly and accurately detect and compensate for irregularities, such as bits of green screen showing through the hair on someone’s head.
 
Compositing using green screen can be fun and profitable if you’re a pro shooter. With Photokey 4, you can add text for faux magazine covers, as well as captions, vignetting, tints and other effects.  The software costs approximately $150 and is available for both Windows and Mac operating systems.