CC tips
- Thread starter USLatin
- Start date
Hey USAlatincontent, I'm not trying to take over your thread but it's about cc I thought I would post here. Here's a frame grab from a small project I'm working on... I want a natural rich film-look. Could you vegas experts please do some cc on the grabs if you have time and possibly share your settings with me. I suck at color correcting and yet I'm pressed on time for this project. Most of the shots are outdoors so I will just go with one look except some minor tweaking on individual clips.
Here's the grab!
Feel free bro, as long as it is Vegas CC it is on-topic.
The link you gave us was to an address in your hard drive... unless you let us log on to your personal computer it won't show
Click on "Member Upload Center" on the blue bar on the top of the page and then copy the text in the box that will appear below your picture after you are done uploading.
William, I'll upload mine now. Jinks, don't be confused by my links as I am not using the same method.
The main ones I'd like to tweak are the opening and closing shots. Especially the closing since we forgot to bounce it and it looks sooooo flat...
Opening Shot
www.earthandfireentertain.com/sharing/DVXuser/Opening.png
Closing Shot
www.earthandfireentertain.com/sharing/DVXuser/Closing.png
The originals are the .png files but here is a .jpg of the cosing after I matched but just with the white balance problem to remove the pink, it doesn't have my curves or sharpening on it.
Closing Shot no-pink
www.earthandfireentertain.com/sharing/DVXuser/Closing.jpg
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jinks
Well-known member
www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/12689/1190521198.jpg
That's the link to the grab, I hope it works. thanks in advance!!
That's the link to the grab, I hope it works. thanks in advance!!
yes it did
Here is my first attempt at using curves!
What I did was raise the RGB curve but a toutch from the bottom end (used the bottom bar but made it real long) but not much really... then I grabbed the red curve and bought it's top end down a bit as her face was getting orange... then I desaturated the whole thing by .9... Those curves are NIFTY you have SO much more control!!!! WOW!!! Man I need to CC my whole short again!!!
www.earthandfireentertain.com/sharing/DVXuser/Yours.png
David, William, what do you think?
I can't wait to see what you do to mine!!! Everyone else, please feel free to join on tweaking mine too. This can be not just about helping individuals with their projects, but also a small class about CCing in Vegas! I am like a little kid in a toy store!!!
Here is my first attempt at using curves!
What I did was raise the RGB curve but a toutch from the bottom end (used the bottom bar but made it real long) but not much really... then I grabbed the red curve and bought it's top end down a bit as her face was getting orange... then I desaturated the whole thing by .9... Those curves are NIFTY you have SO much more control!!!! WOW!!! Man I need to CC my whole short again!!!
www.earthandfireentertain.com/sharing/DVXuser/Yours.png
David, William, what do you think?
I can't wait to see what you do to mine!!! Everyone else, please feel free to join on tweaking mine too. This can be not just about helping individuals with their projects, but also a small class about CCing in Vegas! I am like a little kid in a toy store!!!
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jinks
Well-known member
Here's my own crack at the same grab, I thought the original was a little dark and too red in the face. coments please!
http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/12689/1190609107.jpg
http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/12689/1190609107.jpg
William_Robinette
Shallow Member
Wow, I got swamped this weekend with shoots. US, thanks for getting those grabs to me.
EDIT:
Ok, this is quick and dirty. All these are curves and first and last have a little Sony Glow. They were corrected on a calibrated CRT so on a computer monitor they don't look quite perfect. Curves is most powerful when you know some basic color theory ("if I take out green in the mid tones, they will shift towards magenta" type things). Know what you want to do with your image, but at the same time experiment. That is the best way to get to know your tools. Keep your vector scopes and waveforms open all the time and look at them. If you have saved the information when you were shooting, there is no reason to loose it because you want to increase the contrast of your image.
This is something I see a lot of. Know when it's OK to blow out our whites and when it isn't. The man's sleeve in the third grab shouldn't be blown out. There isn't a technical or aesthetically pleasing reason for it to be. The information is there, so lets not loose it. At the same time, I want to bring up the mid tones of the girls face and increase overall contrast a tiny bit. So instead of that classic "S" curve that everyone slaps on to "emulate film gama" (generally ends up looking like crap), add a bunch of nodes to your line. Add one where the general mid tones of her face fall, and a couple on either side to keep the curve unaffected in all other areas. now you have a lot of control over just what section of the luminescence range you want to alter.
I usually have at least two "curves" effects open. The first is for gama adjustment and the second is for color. I generally run with just three nodes for the color segment because I feel this gives more natural roll off points between the blacks, mids, and whites. Don't underestimate "power masks" either. If you want to brighten up just her face, duplicate the track and make adjustments so her face looks good (don't worry about the rest of the picture). Then, open the pan/crop tool and draw a mask around the area you want to effect and feather it. These should be pretty general and therefore they are easy to keyframe into position for a moving shot. This, I have found, can add the most ummph to an image. It helps direct the viewers attention precisely where you want it.
That's enough from me, I am still very much a novice as well, but love playing with these tools and learning how they all work. Just play, it's the best thing you can do.
EDIT:
Ok, this is quick and dirty. All these are curves and first and last have a little Sony Glow. They were corrected on a calibrated CRT so on a computer monitor they don't look quite perfect. Curves is most powerful when you know some basic color theory ("if I take out green in the mid tones, they will shift towards magenta" type things). Know what you want to do with your image, but at the same time experiment. That is the best way to get to know your tools. Keep your vector scopes and waveforms open all the time and look at them. If you have saved the information when you were shooting, there is no reason to loose it because you want to increase the contrast of your image.
This is something I see a lot of. Know when it's OK to blow out our whites and when it isn't. The man's sleeve in the third grab shouldn't be blown out. There isn't a technical or aesthetically pleasing reason for it to be. The information is there, so lets not loose it. At the same time, I want to bring up the mid tones of the girls face and increase overall contrast a tiny bit. So instead of that classic "S" curve that everyone slaps on to "emulate film gama" (generally ends up looking like crap), add a bunch of nodes to your line. Add one where the general mid tones of her face fall, and a couple on either side to keep the curve unaffected in all other areas. now you have a lot of control over just what section of the luminescence range you want to alter.
I usually have at least two "curves" effects open. The first is for gama adjustment and the second is for color. I generally run with just three nodes for the color segment because I feel this gives more natural roll off points between the blacks, mids, and whites. Don't underestimate "power masks" either. If you want to brighten up just her face, duplicate the track and make adjustments so her face looks good (don't worry about the rest of the picture). Then, open the pan/crop tool and draw a mask around the area you want to effect and feather it. These should be pretty general and therefore they are easy to keyframe into position for a moving shot. This, I have found, can add the most ummph to an image. It helps direct the viewers attention precisely where you want it.
That's enough from me, I am still very much a novice as well, but love playing with these tools and learning how they all work. Just play, it's the best thing you can do.
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Wow, man all of these are things I thought of but being that I was going through the trial and error to familiarize myself with the basica of the basic tools I never actually did complexx setups with levels and leves of CC on separate tracks... I LOVE the idea of keyframing something and say allowing it to stay in focus while you gaussian the rest out and to use that for crazy-level of control-CC... MAN! this is the big time! I LOVE IT!!!
I can't wait to get closer to your level William... I know how well CC'ed stuff looks on my LCD now (basically) so I can tell that those will look great on a TV... I see that you got her face's hot spots cranked up! Man! THAT's what I needed to do!!!
Get a steep curve on her face's range!!! And that's without maksing her face right? Otherwise you might have been able to crank her up a bit more!!! I am going to try to do just that! I am going to do what you suggested! Just for her Mediums and CUs on the car to begin with, and I hope I get it right as I am imagining it... but the opening shot is perfect, the closing is perfect too if you saw the original! I mean I don't feel the need to do more, but I see this as a great opportunity to apply the lesson learned while it is still fresh and like so add it to my repertoire...
The opening shot looks GREAT! Excellent job man... I did some curves today to these same grabs, and I was so proud I was going to show you but not after you got so much more out of them... not cause I feel bad about my job.. it was very nice, but you did push it significantly further... I started adding points to the line and saw I could do more, but I need more flight hours before I can really crank shots out at this level...
I am now worried about my CC display setup... I am waiting for prices to drop or software to develop to either get a second video card or Vista so I can hook up a 1080p LCD but what I am more exited about is this little like 15" CRT... hehehe... I am going to run through the HVX to it and I hope I will be able to calibrate it to a decent level so I can have that available whenever...
I asked elsewear and I asked David already, but not with the details layed out... the details being that the little CRT is what I am hoping to use... so... do you , and everyone else of course, think that is a decent solution to my LCD CC problem? (having only LCD computer monitors)
William_Robinette
Shallow Member
Thanks for the kind words US, but please , post the stuff you have been doing. It's the best way for us to learn from each other. Glad I was able to help a little.
David, that looks very nice.
David, that looks very nice.