Any Vegas Users Interested In Color Correction Tutorials?

My settings:

I used color curves to give both clips an "S" curve about like this:
curve.jpg


Six-way color corrector (Interior)
Red: Saturation 24
Yellow: Saturation 100

all other values at zero

Exterior
Red: Saturation 28
Green: Saturation 64
Blue: Saturation 21
Yellow: Saturation 37

all other values at zero

It was a really simple, quick adjustment.
 
I'm still impressed with how your yellows came out on those pillows... I'm struggling with the pillows in that interior shot, so I'm going to play with it when I get home (might just load your settings). Still, great job Horse.

-Jeremy
 
Thanks, Jeremy. That free CC plugin makes some things really easy. If people don't have that, they need to get it. It's free.
 
JaronE,

I'd say her face has a little purple in it (Is it cold?). Maybe for overcast, go towards a black and white look (or more gray). Colors are a lot more muted without a strong light source (as on an overcast day).

Real nice though, compared to the HorseFilms, which has a nice warm look. This one has a cool/cold look. It's wonderful how the 'mood' of the scene can be affected by the color.
 
Here's a cooler version of the interior shot (more of a night look, actually).
interiornight.jpg

Filters applied in this order:
I use my standard color curves adjustment (illustrated earlier).

50% Black and White filter

Color Corrector:
Low: Angle - 326.3 Magnitude - 0.224
Mid: Angle - 319.6 Magnitude - 0.407
High: Angle - 318.8 Magnitude - 0.330

Saturation - 1.00 Gain - 1.00 Gamma - 1.00 Offsett - 0.00
 
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Horse, that looks really good. I tried a couple of day for night transitions yesterday and they just didn't come out the way I wanted them too. It is that damned shadow underneath her head. I even tried to bezier mask it out and it just didn't come together well.

I will post the one exterior I did tonight. I went for a complete 'What Dreams May Come' look using 6 secondary color corrector filters. I spent like 2 hours on it and am still not done. I'll post the results tonight.

-Jeremy
 
Simple Color Correction:

Step - Plug In - Adjustments
1 - Brightness and Contrast - Bright .11, Contrast .54, Contrast Center .53
2 - Color Corrector - Low 90.0 .002, Mid 201.8 0.417, High 135.0 0.417, Gamma 1.203

Results:
RobertE-DVXCC_Split.jpg


I 'split' the screen for an easy comparison. Original on the left, Color corrected on the right.

There's a little bit of green in her hair and near her face. I'm not too satisfied with that.
 
Jeremy, the shadow doesn't really bother me. I just see it as being cast by the moonlight coming in through a window. Or maybe I'm just lazy and will accept something less than perfect?:)
 
Horse,

You could be right and I could have just been way too anal regarding trying to come up with the perfect image. I think yours looks really good, though. I just kept trying to get that one shadow out, ended up cranking the gamma way up and just kept messing around with it, but I didn't have any luck with anything and ultimately the image looked like crap.

When I first started editing I thought that just adding a filter would give me the results I was looking for, but after making the pictures neutral and then adding something (like MB) you can see stark differences in quality and film like results.

I will post two or three grabs when I leave work today. I had one I was almost happy with, very warm and summer morning like.

The one thing this thread has taught me above everything else is that the color curves plugin is the most valuable thing in Vegas.

-Jeremy
 
I would like to know more about the color curves plugin. Right now, I can use it and see the results, but I don't understand 'why' or 'how' it is changing the image?

Something else I'd like to know (I saw this once somewhere), is when you have an image that hasn't been white balanced, there is a way to identify a 'white' portion of the image and then tell the plugin 'this is white' and it balances in post?
 
TheYankee said:
The one thing this thread has taught me above everything else is that the color curves plugin is the most valuable thing in Vegas.
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more. Nothing improves the look of my footage faster than using color curves to boost my contrast. It's a night and day difference.
 
Thanks HorseFilms, that's what I was looking for. It looks like the 'complementary-color eyedropper' is the ticket.
 
Robert,

I don't really know how the color curves does what it does, I just use the RGB setting rather than the individual Red, Green, Blue curves available, but I'm telling you this single plugin instantly changes the look to my footage. Combining it with the brightness and contrast is great also, because for a while I was just increasing the brightness to crank down on the contrast. That made my footage really moody and nasty where I wasn't happy with the results.

That color correction tutorial is really good as is this one: http://www.wideopenwest.com/~wvg/tutorial-menu.htm (which I think I stole from Horse in another thread posted a long time ago).

One thing that I want to also throw out a plug for real quick is the Ultimate S stuff... I downloaded the demo and once the footage is neutral and you add in the film looks you get some amazing results.

-Jeremy
 
What's the difference between Ultimate S and Magic Bullet? IYHO?

I'm sure this question has already been answered elsewhere.

(Hey, this post made me a Senior Member! Although, I've always been a 'senior' member).

(Edit - I just had another thought. If Hudson is the number 1 poster, does that mean that he is the #1 DVXUser Poster boy?)
 
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Ultimate S (or if you don't need all of those features, Celluloid will give you some great film looks) and Magic Bullet are different in that Magic Bullet takes forever to render. It's really a pig. I use Celluloid far more than MB.
 
MB gives you looks that you can customize though, whereas Celluloid is just looks. I still end up using Celluloid a lot because it is quick and works well and I like the looks

Jeremy
 
This is my first time color correcting in vegas or using video stills. All my previous work has been done in photoshop on shots from my digital rebel. I used the curve tool and did a little experimenting with the color corrector tool as well, oh and a little sharpening.

FullInteriorMod1.jpg

FullExteriorMod1.jpg


Another thing I always think about when color correcting is, arent all our monitors calibrated differently?
Seems like some kind of standard needs to be set so what I create on my monitor is properly represented on yours and vice versa...
 
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