Color Correction Help

Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee

Veteran
I'll be doing another football video this year, and had some issues with color correction. The raw footage here looks too saturated to me. Makes the reds a bit fuzzy.

Raw.jpg



I desaturated it a bit. Actually with one of Andrew Kramers epic presets, took his blue color out, and this looked pretty good with the red anyway. What do you think?

Corrected.jpg
 
Hey Kdawg - the original is not that bad. The reds are flaring a bit, but as you know, reds are often a problem in dv. The colors are crisp and vibrant, and honestly, I would not go in a direction towards the second grab.

The desaturation might make the reds a little easier on the eyes, but draining out the other colors kills what was nice about the grab in the first place. The sky is nice and blue, the trees and field are a nice green. I would not apply a "look" to this footage if I were you. It's kind of a catch-22 but unless you can target the red channel and tone it down a bit I would cut your losses and leave it alone.

Again, the original is not half bad. For live event coverage of a football game, the colors pop and it works. Desaturation or any other "Look" will call way more attention to the colors and any correction or lack thereof, IMO.

My two cents.
 
I agree. I like the first one better. I'd do a secondary color correction on the reds and tone them down just a little but I wouldn't want to lose the saturation on everything else.

The second one looks like something out of the 70s.
 
I agree with the comments on which CC direction you should take, but as an aside i realise that your footage seems a bit sharp and the lines look really edgy...kinda videoish..did you shoot 24p or did you have the detail cranked up?
 
you're original image is over exposed about a stop. This is most likely why you're having a difficult time getting something good out of it.
 
I have detail down a bit I think is -3 and taped it in 30P.

Thanks for the info guys. I did have my polarizer filter on to help with the reds, but it must be in my settings.
 
Try a chroma blur and see if that improves the reds any. One thing to keep in mind is, since you're probably editing on a DV timeline, the chroma blur will look good until you hit render, then you'll be back in pretty much the same place. So you will need to render into a different codec that doesn't have such problems with saturated reds.

I edit on a Mac with FCP, and I used to use Animation or 10-bit Uncompressed, but lately ProRes 422 is really useful for a high quality render without requiring so much space. You can still export it to Compressor for DVD authoring and keep the good quality.
 
even slightly adjusting the greens a bit in the mids might sink your reds a little. Don't over do it or your grass will look like candy. cheers!
 
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