ChromaLight Cyclorama Green Topcoat Chroma Key Paint - Versatile Topcoat for All Surfaces, Optimal Over Basecoat - 1 Gallon

This really has to be used with its base coat but the two products together make an insanely versatile background that is one of the best I've ever used.Easy to use, apply, and better yet, it dries fast and evenly. Great coverage.

It's no secret this paint is a bit on the pricey side. Single purpose paint always is. So, at over a buck an ounce, as a customer I value every drop of this stuff. When it's almost empty, I'm scraping it with a spatula to get every last drop.So when it arrives open and leaking, even going so far as to have made it outside the box (there was a nice big spot of chroma green on the outside of the box), as a customer I see dollar signs lost. And I also see the potential for contamination ingress. Imagine having to pick chunks of whatever out of your buck plus an ounce paint.As you can see from the photo I included, they use a snap-lid with a tear-off "seal" and it's "protected" by 4 plastic clips. I'm thinking 1 of 2 things needs to happen, for this to not occur often enough from shipping as to become a real problem (customer complaints and returns): 1, either more clips might be needed...6 probably...or 2, and as a customer here is what I prefer...a screw-on lid.May I explain why? Dropped containers. A paint can with a press-on lid when accidentally dropped is an exploding paint bomb. A quality paint can with a quality screw-on lid when dropped is a minor inconvenience (provided it's closed, of course), and preserves your product (and your company's reputation) to a much higher degree when shipping.So my humble advice to ChromaLight is, abandon this press-on lid with the clips. It's a disaster waiting to happen with every gallon. Move to a stout screw-on lid. Cost ya a few more pennies...well worth it.Now that I've gotten my gripe about getting a can of very expensive leaking paint out of the way, how is the paint itself? Well, I'd like to offer my kind of learned opinion on it, being trained in auto body I know just a bit about paint.There are 4 components to paint.1: Solvent. This evaporates after spraying, but miniscule amounts remain for a long time. Some paints use a petroleum-based solvent (oil-based paints such as enamel) and some use water (water-based paints, such as latex and acrylic). Solvent is the cheapest part of paint.2: Binders. Binders are the physical polymers used to hold everything together. We often refer to what binder is used in the paint type (Latex, for instance). This is the 2nd cheapest part of paint.3: Pigments. What gives paint its color beyond "white". Pigments are very expensive. This is why custom car colors with very deep rich pigments are very expensive.4: Additives. This includes anything in the paint to give it additional qualities, such as resistance to ultraviolet radiation, flexibility, fluorescence, ect. Additives are the most expensive components to add to paint, and are typically a very small percentage of the actual paint.The surface luster or shine of dried paint is created by the ratio of pigment to binder.So, this paint, which is a water-based acrylic paint, btw, is made to be a very low-reflection paint, as reflective surfaces create "hot spots" from your lights, thus it would be formulated with a very high concentration of pigments (hence, its expense). And to that end, it is indeed a very flat "eggshell" surface. Having a high pigment content, it covers well and I really like how well it lays down.They recommend using their basecoat. You can do that, or you can use a flat / eggshell white primer. Personally, I've always shot my basecoats either white or silver, depending on what the topcoat is. I think for this I'd almost certainly choose a white basecoat. And if perfection was the goal, I'd do 2 basecoats followed by a good scotch-briteing to smooth it out before I laid two decent coats of chroma.You can brush this on, but...seriously, you will get WAY better results if you spray or airbrush with this. Smoothness is going to be a big help, you want your finishes to be smooth and uniform.To wrap it all up, as someone who's actually had a little training in paint, I like this paint. It seems like a very good quality paint which covers smoothly and uniformly. I definitely recommend it if you have some things you need to paint for "green screen" effect. But I seriously question their container choice. My advice to them is to move quickly to a screw-on lid, to reduce the potential for shipping and customer disasters.

We used the Chromalight basecoat and topcoat system on our cyc wall and are very pleased with the results. The color and sheen of the topcoat is really effective and it works perfectly with our Blackmagic Design keyer.The Chromalight basecoat goes on like ordinary latex paint but stays slightly tacky after drying. The topcoat adheres to the basecoat very well. It’s important to spend the money on a high quality roller for the topcoat and basecoat to avoid getting any fibers in the paint.For the topcoat, we used an 18-inch wide ⅜-inch mohair roller, which is a little thicker than recommended, but it worked well on our wall. In the bowl-shaped cove of the cyc wall corner, where the three corners converge, we used a thicker ½ inch roller, and that worked well, too. The topcoat has a very strong alcohol-like odor, so we had to wear an N95 masks and ventilate the area very well. We found that topcoat paint dries very fast, so you have about a minute and a half for rolling back over it. And be sure to clean up any drips immediately.The texture of the Chromalight topcoat is almost gel-like, not like typical latex paints. It takes a little while to get used to, but it’s worth the work to get it smooth and even. It’s important to get and edges or ridges of extra thickness rolled out quickly. Variations in thickness seem to give a slight difference in tone. This texture, though, seems to allow light to penetrate and diffuse better once it is dry, which gives it the flat finish with no sheen at all. The color is very intense, and with the flatness it can be be hard to sense depth when looking at it closeup.Even thought it's flat, the topcoat paint is seems to be very durable, too. We clean the floor of our cyc wall area with a Swiffer before every shoot, and the paint maintains its flat sheen and holds up well.We recommend the Chromalight topcoat and basecoat paint system for it's great keying performance, its super-flatness, and its durability. It takes some practice to apply it right, but it’s well worth the effort.