Despill
Removes green, blue, red, or custom key-color spill left on a subject after keying, while preserving the alpha channel.
Despill cleans up the color contamination a key leaves behind: green light bounced onto hair, skin, and reflective edges survives even a perfect matte. Despill suppresses that cast without touching the alpha, so it slots directly after Chroma Key on the keyed image.
Spill Color picks what to suppress: Green and Blue cover the standard screen colors, Red and Custom handle unusual setups, and Auto detects the dominant channel excess in the image for you. Amount sets the strength, and Balance steers what the spill is limited toward: the center default uses the average of the other two channels (the standard despill), while the extremes favor one channel to warm or cool the de-spilled areas.
Two algorithms are available. Neutralize reduces the spill channel toward the other channels and is the standard choice. Desaturate blends spill-dominant pixels toward luminance instead, a gentler option when Neutralize disturbs skin tones.
Parameters
Section titled “Parameters”Pins
Despill
Color cast to suppress. Auto chooses the most dominant red, green, or blue excess in the image
Custom spill color to suppress (only used when Spill Color is Custom)
Strength of spill removal
Which of the two non-spill channels the spill is limited toward. 0.5 (center) uses their average - the standard despill that cleans spill on the subject, not just the pure background. For green spill, 0 favors Red and 1 favors Blue
Usage Tips
Section titled “Usage Tips”- Wire Despill right after Chroma Key: the keyer cuts the background, Despill cleans what bounced onto the subject.
- Start with Auto if you are not sure which cast dominates; it picks the strongest red, green, or blue excess.
- Nudge Balance toward Red to re-warm skin tones that a green despill left looking gray.
- If edges still look tinted, raise Amount before reaching for Desaturate mode; Neutralize preserves more color detail.