So I am trying to create a "Pleasantville/Sin City" look where there is a shot that is all black and white except for the red tip of a lit cigarette. I found a guide for how to do this in FCP, but I use Vegas, so it was not very helpful. It recommended that you selectively desaturate all but the color of the thing you want to keep (a balloon in the example, I would put a link to it here, but i can't find it and search is disabled while servers upgrade....) but I could not figure out how to do this in Vegas. Is there some way to do it that I don't know? Is there some better way to get the effect in Vegas? I assume it has something to do with masks and parent/child relationships and all that Jazz, but I am pretty new to the program and haven't figured much of that stuff out yet. Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks!
Pleasantville Effect in Vegas
- Thread starter bc5431
- Start date
Norm Sanders
Script Wrangler
I RARELY use parent/child tracks myself.
Two ways to handle this, that I can think of:
Use your secondary color correction -- you'll select the color range you want to keep (i.e. tip of lit cigarette), invert your mask, then drop down the saturation, which will cut the colors of everything else BUT what you selected. However, if you have other colors on screen that are in the same range, they'll continue to show as well.
The other thing to do is to copy the clip, place it on the track above, do a bezier mask on that track RIGHT around the tip of the cigarette (play with size of mask & feathering for the blend/look you want). Do this as a positive mask, and the rest of that clip disappears ... though you probably can't see it as the track underneath will show through ... then, on the bottom track/clip, cut the saturation on it or add a B&W filter.
There's so much you can do in Vegas, it's mind numbing at times, but if you can do it in any other NLE, odds are you can do it in Vegas in a number of different ways.
Two ways to handle this, that I can think of:
Use your secondary color correction -- you'll select the color range you want to keep (i.e. tip of lit cigarette), invert your mask, then drop down the saturation, which will cut the colors of everything else BUT what you selected. However, if you have other colors on screen that are in the same range, they'll continue to show as well.
The other thing to do is to copy the clip, place it on the track above, do a bezier mask on that track RIGHT around the tip of the cigarette (play with size of mask & feathering for the blend/look you want). Do this as a positive mask, and the rest of that clip disappears ... though you probably can't see it as the track underneath will show through ... then, on the bottom track/clip, cut the saturation on it or add a B&W filter.
There's so much you can do in Vegas, it's mind numbing at times, but if you can do it in any other NLE, odds are you can do it in Vegas in a number of different ways.
There's an eyedropper button under the single color wheel which is labeled "Select effect range." Click it, and use the eyedropper to pick the color you want to keep. You can click and hold down the button to select an area of color, so that you're not limited to a single pixel sample -- you can pick multiple shades and even colors. But be careful, you're only trying to isolate the reds, etc. . . .
Then, click "Invert Mask." Once done, slide the "Saturation" slider all the way to the left.
Or, just use the "Desaturate All but Reds" preset, and if it doesn't desaturate all you want, use the eyedropper to re-select your color range.
Make sure you don't have other instances of the color in other parts of the picture, or you may get unexpected results. But if you do, you can still use a bezier mask to isolate only the cigarette tip, etc, but you'll have to use multiple tracks. Just be sure to apply the bezier mask before you apply the color effects.
Then, click "Invert Mask." Once done, slide the "Saturation" slider all the way to the left.
Or, just use the "Desaturate All but Reds" preset, and if it doesn't desaturate all you want, use the eyedropper to re-select your color range.
Make sure you don't have other instances of the color in other parts of the picture, or you may get unexpected results. But if you do, you can still use a bezier mask to isolate only the cigarette tip, etc, but you'll have to use multiple tracks. Just be sure to apply the bezier mask before you apply the color effects.