How to selectively highlight colors?

T

tomperson

Active member
Hi all,
I have a pretty simple question this time (my posts tend to be biiiiig). I'd like to know what techniques are used for highlighting particular colors.

Look at this video:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=19356767

There are parts of it that look quite desaturated, maybe even toned like sepia film, clearly visible at the beginning, but there are sectors (the colorful clothes, the red parts of a chicken) that have very intense colors.

How do you do that? Can it be done in Vegas?

THANKS!
 
Not positive but you can do this to photos in photoshop, so maybe after effects is capable of it?

For future reference, the Canon XH A1 enables you two enhance two colors at a time in-camera, and I hear it's a pretty quality feature.
 
Yeah, I've seen that done to pictures in Photoshop. They first desaturate the picture, and then use the history brush to make the saturated (hence, colored ) image "appear" where they need to. They do this manually in the affected zones.

But I wonder how to do this in video. I mean doing this kind of treatment for a 4 minute video at 25 frames per second sounds like many, many, many, maaaany days of editing.

Any other suggestions?

PS: For those who didn't watch the clip, the idea is reminiscent of the girl in a red dress in Schindler's list. The scene is mostly desaturated, but a few chosen colours are...in colour.
 
Hey! yeah! I think that's quite close!
I haven't seen pleasantville, but I guess this is it! Did you watch the video I linked?

I'm gonna check if I can replicate the steps in Vegas, then I'll come back to you!

Thanks a lot. :bath:
 
Yes you can do this in vegas, search the web there are tutorials out there that explain it, but since this is in the cinematography board you can do this in camera with color enhancing filters.
 
In After Effects it's easiest if the object is a different color than the other colors in the scene. Then you can just use the hue/saturation control and "dial in" or "dial out" the other colors on the colorwheel. Human flesh is generally red so it's tough to do it with a red object.
If you need to isolate an object from other objects, you have to do it with mattes/roto.
 
n8ture said:
Isn't this pretty much the Pleasantville effect?

Here's how to do it in FCP
http://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_pleasantville_look.html
Click to expand...

Just tried this. I don't know if this was for an older version of FCP, but I had better luck isolating a color in the 3 way color corrector than the regular one, which is what the tutorial recommends. WOrks well though, especially since you can pick a single color, desaturate it and then reverse the image so only that color is visible. Saves time. Just FYI
 
After reading the tutorial you linked, i found some others (a video tutorial in youtube and another in sony's site) regarding color pass. If the colors you want to isolate are well defined, it's quite easy to do, checking the mask the secondary color corrector creates.

Thanks again for your help!
 
I actually ended up doing this on Vegas before. I can't view the clip (slow internet) so I can't tell if it's what I am thinking.

But I did desaturation of one specific color spectrum. I would assume you could still do it the other way. I know Vegas doesn't offer that great of a compositing platform, or even a matting platform for that matter.

I can tell you it can be done, it's been three years so I can't give you a tutorial. I would if I could.

But to highlight specific sections, you are going to need to do a lot of roto work
 
Ahahahahaha. It's a POP artist from down here. He's quite known for his crazy performances, and his last disc was kind of electropop-kitsch...
 
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