Color matching between cameras workflow?

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dishan

Well-known member
I just "upgraded" to CS 5.5, mostly because I like the idea behind the mercury playback engine.

But I'm noticing that "Color Match" effect is now missing, and has been as of version 5 apparently. That sucks, I used to use that when using two different cameras on a shoot!

I'm admittedly not a very good colorist, and have a hard time using levels/curves to match cameras in Premiere.

I found this tutorial from CreativeCOW http://library.creativecow.net/devis_andrew/Premiere-Pro-Matching-Cameras-2/1 but found it extremely cumbersome to work like that, not to mention I'm not happy with the results as he shows them there.
Is there some secret to easily matching cameras in post here?

I mean, I have Sony Vegas as well, and use that for smaller projects. Color correcting is a breeze with some third party plugins there, but I'd rather use the GPU enhanced rendering of PPro. What's the secret?!
 
Vegas Pro 11's GPU acceleration is much more powerful and extensive than MPE. Performance for Vegas' in-built color correction effects is fantastic - GPU acceleration has turned Vegas into a proper real-time color corrector. Unfortunately, I don't know of an easy secret to matching footage.
 
Premiere used to have some sort of color matching effect. Last seen in CS4, i think.
Try the fast color corrector or the three way color corrector.
Does the footage have a color cast or or are the red or blues quite different per camera.
BTW Premiere does most of the coloring effects realtime (with a dedicated Cuda card) and one does not need third party plugins.
 
Funny, from what I've read, Vegas rendering with GPU was actually SLOWER than using the CPU renderer, because I think it doesn't know how to use them both in tandem (as opposed to Premiere, which uses GPU power to suppliment the CPU or something, right?). Either way, I'm not clear on the science behind it, but the reported rendering times with CUDA are significantly lower in PPro, where as GPU rendering with Vegas in most cases was actually slower than using CPU rendering.

Meanwhile, none of this really matters in my case because I don't have Vegas 11. I've heard real Sony die-hard fanboys say it is the buggiest edition yet. Since you can no longer purchase a license for 10, I'm sticking with version 9 until I hear a new version of Vegas is out that at least rivals the stability of the older versions. But in that version 9, I'm finding that the free AAV colorlab plugin works wonders for color correction, and is easier/faster than any tool I can find in Premiere Pro at the moment. Its a shame, because MPE does render very quickly on my system. Oh well, guess I'll deal for now.

But thanks for verifying I'm not crazy- there used to be a color match plugin for CS4, right? Why would Adobe opt to get rid of such a powerful tool?!
 
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