When creators shoot with green screens, they all face the same challenge: getting a clean separation between the subject and the background. Even well-lit sets struggle with shadows, color shifts, motion blur, and fine details like hair or translucent fabric. These issues make it difficult to produce the smooth, convincing composites audiences expect, often requiring hours of precise manual cleanup.
Debuted as Project Polarizer at Adobe MAX in 2022, PolarMatte, a technique developed by Adobe Research, tackles this long-standing problem in a completely new way. Instead of relying on color alone, it uses polarized light (light that vibrates in a single orientation) to capture clearer, more accurate mattes from just one shot.
The subject stands in front of an LCD screen, such as a computer monitor or TV, which naturally emits polarized light. A polarization-sensitive camera records how this light interacts differently with hair, skin, fabric, motion blur, and reflections. Because these subtle cues reveal what belongs to the subject versus the background, the system can extract a clean matte even in the most challenging areas.
Traditional green-screen methods often demand meticulous hand-masking or rigid studio setups to achieve similar results. PolarMatte avoids all of that. It’s a fully computational system that generates high-quality mattes directly from the polarized images it captures.
While the technique could one day inform creative workflows, its primary purpose today is research: PolarMatte produces exceptionally clean ground-truth mattes that can be used to train next-generation AI matting models. By learning from real footage with precise detail, these models can ultimately help deliver faster, more reliable tools to creators everywhere.
Watch the full video to hear from researchers TJ Rhodes and Kenji Enomoto about how polarized light could unlock cleaner, more consistent mattes for future creative tools. Then, check out the full paper here.
Curious about what’s new at Adobe Research? Browse our recent publications. You can also find our news and updates here.
