Make it look like sunlight.

[Brandon Rice]

So, I shot the other night, and I need my light's to be a blueish color, so they register as sunlight from a window in the house. What would I need to do in the Avid color correction tool to do that?

 

[sean90291]

I know that sunlight is in the 'blue spectrum' and you'd use blue gels when lighting to balance with true sunlight...but frankly, when color correcting, I find that the computer-generated orange spectrum simulates sunlight better than a blue color correction. In fact, blue looks cold and night-like, even faintly. I think a very very light white-orange is a better color correction for sunlight. But I'm curious what more experienced folks have to say on the subject. And in addition to that...is there a way (i.e., a plug-in) to make it look like the sunlight is coming from one side/a window as opposed to being ambient?

 

[krestofre]

I would have adjused the white balance on the DVX to shift towards the spectrum I wanted. That's a tip for next time.

As far as fixing it in post, Sean has some good suggestions. If you have an FX program (After Effects, Combustion, etc) they sometimes have color temperature controls instead of just curves and wheels that can help.

 

[Dmitry Kichenko]

For "selective" colour correction you would just use the usual tools you use to adjust colour (levels, curves, or whichever one you prefer) with a simple mask. I have never attempted to colour correct that way in Avid but it is quite simple to achieve in any compositing package.

However, for me, this is where one of the drawbacks of Avid lies. Since I don't have Mojo it becomes difficult to colour correct/apply FX outside of Avid, because it re-encodes everything with the Avid DV codec every time you import footage. One way around is to use the DVCPRO50 codec when importing, but it is still lossy. Does anyone know a workaround for this, apart from the obvious "use final cut pro"?