FS7: pipet grading like photoshop with slog3

P

Publimix

Veteran
(fast readers, find question in allinea 4)

For years I 'graded' pictures for books. The dynamic range of a old press differs from the dynamic range of bw-photographs. White is as white as the paper is, and black is never 100% black). Black is 90-95% black in book-printing because with 100% black it would take too long for the ink to dry. (When printing with a modern laserprinter the black is 100% black).

The trick with grading photo's for the book-printing process is similar to the slog grading, squeezing and stretching the blacks and whites. In photoshop this is done with 'curves'. (With the pipet you 'tell' the software what is white and what is black, and what is grey, works fine in photoshop as you allready probably know).

Is there a similar way of grading video (the photoshop way with pipet for taking black and white levels?) If so, which software? I can't find it in adobe or in resolve or catalyst browse. It would make the process easier I think.

Peter Bosman
Publisher, ex camembert professional, author etc.
 
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Peter

My advice would be to embrace the video way. I advise sticking with Resolve and learning it thoroughly, it's free and it's awesome.

To grade SLog I would first deLog it and apply a LUT to the footage to get it into the right sort of area for e.g. a rec709 LUT, then move the black point and white point to the right areas with the lift, gamma gain tools. If you aren't already become very familiar with reading the waveforms as these will inform your every move. Your first move is to get the scene into the right exposure if it isn't already, then build on top of that with creative grading.

n
 
Most of the time only the brighness and the contrast have to be changed, I use the waveforms, but a tool as used in photoshop would be nice. Resolve 11 keeps crashing on my pc so I'll wait for version 12.
I thought, in this world of dslr filmers, a way of working as in photoshop would be more commonly used.
 
Three-Way Colour corrector in Premiere Pro has a pipette tool for shadows, mids and highlights. Is that what you are referring to?
 
What does it mean "pipet" ? I'm lost on that.

But regardless, nearly any NLE or grading software has curves you can adjust for overall image or separately for RGB channels. By placing points on the curve you can create placeholders which will then let you make adjustments to the curve without affecting other parts of the curve. ie. you can affect the contrast or brightness of only the darker tones while the mid-tones and highlights remain untouched.

"Levels" is also pretty good in Photoshop, Premiere or After Effects which can allow you to set your white and black level for an image (stretch or compress).

cheers,
 
Thank you, now I know where to look.
And now I have to remove adobe cc 2014 from my computer (which is impossible) in order to install the upgraded adobe cc 2015, which is impossible because cc 2014 is already removed. (some catch 22 software joke). One of the reasons I had enough of Adobe, one time it behaves behaves like a computer virus, another time like spam (the inevitable daily update of adobe reader).
 
I urge you try get familiar with Davinci Resolve, after its strange learning curve I feel it is by far the best out there.

Too bad Davinci is crashing for you, I am using 10.x myself on both Mac and PC as I find them more stable for my hardware.
 
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