Before and After color correction

thartley

thartley

Veteran
I just dl'd Vegas 5 trial and am playing with color correction. I think I am a bit heavy handed, please let me know what you think. Any advice/comments are welcome. Also, for those of you who post grabs right into your thread without having to post a link for others to view them...how are you doing that? Sorry if that's an elementary question, but I am trying to get to the beginning of my learning curve. :)

298180725.jpg



306070606.jpg
 
Re: Before and After color correction

I like the original more - but that's just me. I prefer muted tones (must have something to do with my drab communist upbringing ;) ).

It's a great shot, BTW.
 
Re: Before and After color correction

I don't like the Blue hotspots in the sky. Saturation on overexposed qareas never look too good, IMHO. Are you going for a day for night? The first image is nicer. If I didn't like the yellowish tone (which I do) I'd consider blueying up the darks, and trying to mantain the highlights fairly in the same tone.
 
Re: Before and After color correction

I am trying to go for a night/moonlight look. I see what you mean by the hot spots. This landscape is what I see everyday, so the first shot just looks so ordinary to me. I want to give it something, a punch. I dont know. The first one seems like what I see thru my dirty windshield. haha! ;D
 
Re: Before and After color correction

Okey...here's my attempt at correcting the first grab...

nightshot.jpg


The only way I could find to get that shot to look something like night was to find a way to eliminate the spotty cloud cover. If you watch closely, you can see that the sky is almost never included in a day-for-night shot. Illumination from above is a sure sign that the sun is up.

Anyway, I did this in photoshop, but I only used methods that could be repeted in any other editing platform.

I applied a levels correction to the base layer containing the shot, bringing up the black level to meet the black on the histogram, then I limited the output to 200.

Above that layer, I put in a solid color layer of blue @ 0/21/177. I set that layer to "overlay" and set the opacity at 41%.

Finally, on top of all that, I put a grad layer, black to transparent oriented -90 degrees where transparent is at the grass. Compositing mode set to normal, opacity at 100%.

I'd say next time you've got to wait for FULL cloud cover, or frame the sky out of the shot (in which case the reflections on the water might still give it away as a day-for-night).
 
Re: Before and After color correction

J_Barnes,

Nice job, that looks really nice and you were able to retain most of the detail of the original and the new sky looks very good.

I was messing around with white diffusion which made the sky a lot softer and then applied a cool blue overlay which gave the whole vibe more of a night look but there's something about yours that I really like. It kind of emits a twilight feel.

Nice job.
 
Re: Before and After color correction

J_Barnes-

Yes! That is just what I was trying to do. Actually, it is better than what I had in mind! I am not sure you were speaking english in your reply, but I will read it again very slowly and employ the assistance of a linguist if need be. ;D

Thanks so much...
 
Re: Before and After color correction

Nice, Barnes...

Good thinking with the layer of Black, and cool black gradient. Mixed up with the yellow of the clouds it made a perfect night look, as if there was a city nearby...

Hope you voted well!!! ;D
 
Re: Before and After color correction

Okay, here's how you'd do it in your trial version of Vegas 5.  (I had to use different values to get this to look like my photoshop version)

Open the frame or clip and place it in the timeline on a video track.  Right click and insert two new video tracks above your footage.

Click the VIEW menu, make sure VIDEO SCOPES is checked.  Put your scope window somewhere where you can see it.  Click the dropdown menu in the scopes window and select HISTOGRAM.  You should see something like a mountain range in your scopes.  Make sure the word LUMINANCE is showing at the top of the scopes frame...if you're seeing something different, click the menu and choose LUMINANCE.

Now, open your effects and drop LEVELS on your footage layer.  Orient your effects window and your histogram window so you can see both.  Drag the INPUT START slider until the histogram shifts towards the left.  Stop when the first big mountain range is begining.  You're basically just cutting off the dead space at the beginning of your histogram.

Next you want to drag your OUTPUT END slider down to somewhere about 0.781

This is simply just compressing the top end of the picture.  If you slide your mouse over the histogram, you'll see that it gives you a numerical value relating to the position of your mouse.  If you position your mouse where your histogram ends, you'll find that it's somewhere around 200 when the OUTPUT END is set to 0.781.  This means you're limiting the maximum luminance of that layer to 200 out of 255 levels of brightness.

You can then close that box and move on to the next layer.  

Go to your Media Generator tab and select SOLID COLOR from the list.  Pick any color, for example blue, and drop it on the layer right above your video.  THis will open the dialogue box to set the color values of that layer.  R/G/B...set each at 0, 21 and 212.  Leave A (alpha) at 255.

Close the box.  CLick on the compositing box next to the big slider on that track (it looks like a little frame of film with a box on top of it).  Select OVERLAY from the drop down menu that appears.  

Already it should start looking cool, if very blue.  Adjust the level slider down to around 66% by dragging it to the left.

Finally, go back to your MEDIA GENERATOR and select COLOR GRADIENT.  From that menu, pick the LINEAR BLACK TO TRANSPARENT and drop it on the track above your color layer.  This should open the dialogue box to change it's settings.  

In the little window showing the grad, there are three objects.  One is a number 1, one is a number 2 and one is a + sign.  Click first on the "1".

Set the ASPECT RARIO ANGLE to 90...this will orient the grad so the transparency is at the bottom.  Then Set the DISTANCE to about -0.346.

Next, click on the "+" sign.

Set the ASPECT RATIO ANGLE at 90 again, and set the CONTROL POINT PROPERTIES at X: 0.491 and Y: 0.462

Finally, click on the "2" number.

Set the ASPECT RATIO ANGLE at 90 again, and set the DISTANCE at 0.181


That should get approximately close to the same thing in vegas.

Now, this wouldn't work if you've got a moving camera or a subject in frame anywhere near the grad.  Essentially this is the same thing as putting a strong blue filter and a bunch of ND grads on your lens at the time of shooting.  Any subject that moves in and out of the "grad" section is going to look very odd in the scene.

Good luck.


EDIT: I viewed this setup on a monitor and it didn't look quite right, as all of the definition in the grass was lost to darkness so I upped the gamma in the LEVELS filter to around 1.5. I then dropped the blue level back down to 40%, the grad level down to 90% and I played with the orientation of the gradation points.

The idea being that this is just a starting point to try and get a nice look from this particular shot.
 
Re: Before and After color correction

Okay, first of all, thanks for the english how-to for Vegas. :) Secondly, I still like your version of the shot WAY better. But here is my eventual rendition...

backyardbarnes.jpg


(woohoo!!! I got the pic to post instead of a link!) <--I'm so lame...

Here is another shot from the same day, just earlier. Again, a before and after my heavy hand.

shrimpboat2bestfull-vegas.jpg


and after...

shrimpboat2ccvegas.jpg
 
Re: Before and After color correction

I like what you did with the blacks on the second one but I like the colours better on the 1st.
 
Re: Before and After color correction

I think there's people living on those boats?


shrimp.jpg


see what happens when you teach me how to place an image disjecta
 
Re: Before and After color correction

I don't know why you pulled the blacks and let your whites so low. The image seems dark to me. From the saturation you gained from your levels adjustment, you made me think it is meant to be a sunny day. If so, please pump up the whites, let your image shine. If not, yo still have some room to go with the overall brightness.
 
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