How Do You Color Correct?

Gord.T

Gord.T

Still "Senior Member"
I would like to see here what everyone else's comments are on where to get tutorials, tips and tricks and such as everyone is doing correction, some better than others.

Do you use the chroma scope for correction, or over saturate and then correct, or balance out grey scale first(my way) then re-add the color?

What is your technique ?

(This thread is not host specific, please speak at will).
 
The way you do color correction is going to be somewhat dependent upon what software you're using. There's a lot of variation between NLEs (and other software, too).
 
Yes, but is there a general technique? Is there things to look for? For me, I have to grey scale balance first, before I can even think about adjusting color.
I mean, if the grey balance is off, so is color saturation and thus leads me into a losing battle.
 
I think Premiere Pro is the most commonly used NLE for prosumers, with Final Cut next in line. When I used to mess around in editing, I would use the following tools most commonly:

1. Levels
2. Color Balance
3. Gamma Correction
4. Brightness/Contrast
5. Hue/Saturation
 
Your cinematographer is going to play big in how you color correct. If you've got a good DP that knows what he's doing, he's going to get pretty damn close to the look you're going for in-camera. It may only take a little tweaking to get your clips in line with one another. If you don't have a DP that really knows what he's doing, then you may need to do more work in post. In the second case I would set my black levels, adjust the whites and then attempt to match scene to scene. In some cases I may have to work even harder by giving the scene a "look."
 
I have a suggestion that needs to happen before cc work. Try to underexpose your footage a little bit so you have more information to bring out of the shadows in post. Do this by using levels.

Levels: (RGB) White input levels
 
Kevin Briggs said:
I have a suggestion that needs to happen before cc work. Try to underexpose your footage a little bit so you have more information to bring out of the shadows in post. Do this by using levels.

Levels: (RGB) White input levels
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i would have to disagree with that.

i normally go for a stop or two above, making sure nothing is overexposd ( use zebras at 100% ), so that the iamge is bright, information is capture in all aspects of the frame therefor you have much more room for CC in post. Where as if you under expose, you lose alot of information that would make your color correcting process much more difficult, and may introduce more noise and artifacts.
 
PaPa said:
i would have to disagree with that.

i normally go for a stop or two above, making sure nothing is overexposd ( use zebras at 100% ), so that the iamge is bright, information is capture in all aspects of the frame therefor you have much more room for CC in post. Where as if you under expose, you lose alot of information that would make your color correcting process much more difficult, and may introduce more noise and artifacts.
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What he said.

"G Levels" and "G advanced levels" from nattress in FCP is where I usually do most of CC. Starting with color corrector 3-way...
 
General rules:

Always adjust luminance values before working on color. This includes setting white, black and (if necessary) neutral grey points. From there you can move on to adjusting color using HSL etc.
 
I color correct in After Effects. My effects stack looks like:

1. Levels
2. Curves
3. Hue/Saturation
4. Magic Bullet Look Suite

Levels is rarely used, just for shots that are drastically out of whack and need white/black level or gamma massively adjusted.

Curves is used on every shot, keyframed, and used to adjust each RGB channel separately to achieve the ideal grayscale. I try to shoot a gray card at the head of each setup to use as the reference for my curves correction. At other times, there may be a gray reference point in the scene as part of the costumes. This has saved me on a number of shoots, once where the lead wore a medium gray shirt, one where the lead wore a white shirt and black jacket.

Hue/Saturation I find myself using on a lot of projects these days. I have found interesting looks by getting a good saturation level overall, but lowering saturation on selected color ranges to emphasize others. In an jungle action/adventure I shot, the bright blue sky was distracting from the characters in the foreground. I bumped Green +20, Yellow + 10, but killed the Cyans and Blues -50 with a +100 Lightness to brighten the sky up. It was important to make sure through my Curves step that there were no heavy Blue shadows, or these would be brightened by this correction. The result was an immediate shift of focus to the characters in the foreground, and a subtle but ominous sky.

Look Suite is my final step to give the now perfectly corrected footage a signature look of some kind. You can get some very interesting results my pushing Gamma and/or Contrast one way in the Pre stage and then bringing it back to some degree in Post. I usually use a tough of Black Diffusion, and Warm/Cool to taste based on the scene.

Overall, what is important is to get your shots to match using Levels and Curves before applying more drastic overall looks using Hue/Sat, Look Suite and other tools.
 
I'm using PP2, and honestly, I haven't got a clue. I adjust this and adjust that until it looks good. If it starts looking like garbage, I have the history to go back to where it still looked good. Yep... I teached myself how to edit ;)
 
Shaw said:
General rules:

Always adjust luminance values before working on color. This includes setting white, black and (if necessary) neutral grey points. From there you can move on to adjusting color using HSL etc.
Click to expand...


hmm, curious, ive never adjusted the black, white and grey levels.

i noticed its there in premier pro 1.5, but i normally dont touch that and adjust everything with my contrast, gamma, pedestal, and RBG gain
 
InvisionProductions said:
I think Premiere Pro is the most commonly used NLE for prosumers, with Final Cut next in line.
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Not even remotely close. FCP and Avid are the 2 most commonly used prosumer editing applications.

I've been in over 100 production houses and never once did I ever see them running Premiere Pro. It was either Avid Mojo, Avid Xpress Pro, or Final Cut Pro.
 
In Vegas:

I use Color Curves as my main tool. I can do just about every major adjustment with it. I don't go for any huge stylized look (Matrix, Underworld, etc.). I just try to make it look natural.
 
cannon said:
I've been in over 100 production houses (...)
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What? So you work for UPS?

Sorry, I couldn´t resist hehehe
But I also doubt PP2.0 has that much impact, with AE it´s a whole different ballgame of course...
For CC: I jump systems a lot, but most of the time I end up desaturating the image and crushing the blacks... so levels first than take the colors down that annoy me the most...
 
cannon said:
Not even remotely close. FCP and Avid are the 2 most commonly used prosumer editing applications.

I've been in over 100 production houses and never once did I ever see them running Premiere Pro. It was either Avid Mojo, Avid Xpress Pro, or Final Cut Pro.
Click to expand...

That's why he said it is the most popular for prosumer editing. Not production house level.
 
PaPa said:
i would have to disagree with that.

i normally go for a stop or two above, making sure nothing is overexposd ( use zebras at 100% ), so that the iamge is bright, information is capture in all aspects of the frame therefor you have much more room for CC in post. Where as if you under expose, you lose alot of information that would make your color correcting process much more difficult, and may introduce more noise and artifacts.
Click to expand...

Well as long as you make sure nothing is overexposed your fine. When I say underexpose I mean by 1or2 f-stops because if you have anything overexposed there is no information in those areas to bring back, and with mini-dv we all know the dynamic range basically sucks.

I think your right about a bright image being much more flexible to more drastic cc work. I also agree that trying to pull information out of an underexposed image intoduces grain.

It's personal preference for me, and on most projects I would rather underexpose just a little to be safe than not have information to work with.

The most common blow outs happen in the sky during mid day sun where the color temp is so hot, so sometimes I will blow it out on purpose and just focus on my talent. Then in post I key out the white sky. To avoid blow outs I just shoot early or late in the day.

-Kevin
 
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