Rumor on the street is that the evil empire, LifeTouch is going to stop taking team photos, and instead make a "team photo" with all of the individuals. Apparently, all of the athletes will be shot on a green-screen.
Has anyone else heard this, or seen the end result?
Aren't there a couple of guys on this board already doing this? I seem to remember someone posting a 'walk through' of the process and end result a couple of years ago. The final picture was a nice clean shot with any background you want.
James, Sammy I really like the composites. I imagine these are shot on green screen? I have never used a green screen, what kind of time do you put into these composites? I like them, but I couldnt imagine doing this for 30 teams, when I can pose a team in a couple minutes vs PS'ing an image for an hour per.
I have seen it - I am the yearbook and picture coordinator where I teach. It does not look that bad. They are not shot on a green screen, rather a grey background. The program they use is called X-1. They can digitally change the background. While great for school portraits, not sure about team photos.
RyanL wrote:
James, Sammy I really like the composites. I imagine these are shot on green screen? I have never used a green screen, what kind of time do you put into these composites? I like them, but I couldnt imagine doing this for 30 teams, when I can pose a team in a couple minutes vs PS'ing an image for an hour per.
Due to issues with the time involved, no, I don't use this technique with my 72-team baseball league. Tried it the first time I had that contract and it was just too much damn work.
I currently use it for this 5-division football organization and with larger high school teams. In all of the cases where I use it, it takes less time, not more.
Saw this at WPPI.... The lab that showed it was based out of memphis I believe... (I know there has got to be many that offer this). They said use any single color backdrop.... They charge something like $.25 for the knockout, crazy cheap! then for another $2.00 they'll compile a group for you any size group!.... Depending on what you want, they'll send you the group file and let you work your own image/template or pick one of theirs. They are hoping you'll pick one of their's and have it printed by them. I have to tell you there was some cool products done.... It was cool to see the team image and an organizational 250+ in the photo done from the same set of images....
IMO LT has a terrible time doing sports T&I.... Doing this way swings the ball in their favor, inside under the studio lights.....
i did mine on green screen and picked each one out on Elements. Goes pretty quick. Spend a lot of time picking background and layout for the first one. Additional teams go fast.
If you set up your lights correctly, Primatte makes quick work of producing good cutouts for assembly into a composite team photo. Just tweak the first one by hand to get the settings that work the best and then do the rest in a batch.
So far I've done all my T&I in the field/gym that the sport is played on.
I have heard some parents complain about other photogs lack of sport specific backgrounds
and props.
The standard team composite method doesn't really allow you to get creative with the individual shots.
I do love theme team composites though
