Touching up videos. A quick tutorial.

Touch-ups are just as important in video as they are in photos. No matter how small the affected area is. Here's an example from an upcoming video. Most people probably wouldn't have noticed the lint or candy wrapper on the carpet, in a video clip that lasts just a couple of seconds. But it's important to get rid of any possible distractions that may avert your audience's eyes from where you want them to be.

Touch-ups in videos can be a little trickier than in photos, however. But with a little patience, and programs such as Adobe After Effects, it can be an easy job. If you're familiar with Photoshop, you probably know about the clone stamp tool, which is also in After Effects. The method I use more frequently though is masking.

In the screenshot below, you can see how I duplicated the video clip.

Next, I masked out the affected areas in the top clip, making sure the masks are set to 'Subtract'. Think of the top clip as now having holes where the lint and such used to be.

Then adjusted the bottom clip's position (moving it downwards to reveal cleaner carpet through the masks.) Basically doing what the clone stamp tool does, but instead fixing all the areas at once. Don't forget to feather those masks, though for clean and seamless mask edges.

Lastly, not all video clips are locked off shots on a tripod. Most of the time there's movement happening. This can disrupt any touch-ups made because they are really only going to stick to that one spot on the clip and not move with the shot. An easy way of combatting this is to set keyframes and move the masks around by hand, or motion tracking. Below, the 2 examples show the difference between keyframed masks, and non-keyframed masks.

Non-Keyframed masks^

Keyframed masks^

Thanks for checking out this small tutorial! If there are other tutorials you'd like to see, leave a comment below and let me know! Also, don't forget to watch out for this video, releasing on July 11th, 2014.