Crop unwanted background areas

Crop unwanted background areas using a garbage mask

After you apply a key, you may need to crop unwanted background elements that can’t be keyed, such as the edge of a blue screen stage, lighting rigs, or tape that appears in the background. Using the Mask tool, you can create a garbage mask that removes unwanted elements.

Canvas comparing unmodified clip and a keyed clip

You can also use a garbage mask to conceal parts of the background too difficult to key without the loss of foreground detail.

Create a garbage mask

  • Select a keyed layer and use a mask-drawing tool to draw a mask around the foreground subject.

    Note: If the subject is moving, the garbage mask must be animated.

    By default, the Mask Blend Mode is set to Add, and crops out everything outside the mask, while leaving the transparent areas in the mask alone. To crop out areas within masks, as shown in the following image, choose Subtract from the Mask Blend Mode pop-up menu.

    Canvas showing garbage mask applied to keyed clip

    For more information about creating masks, see Masks and transparency overview.