GH2 Premiere color correction: best method to learn for a non-pro? Magic Bullet?

[peripatew]

I'm new to the world of color correction, but I see the need for it. However, I'm mostly doing video as an add-on to my job, and so the faster I can get results the better. I'm fine taking my time to learn something new though, rather than just throwing a pre-made setting at something. But in crunch time, pre-made settings would be nice.

What are some options, what's your opinion on the best, and what do you use?

 

[Ben_B]

Magic Bullet Looks is useful because you can start with a preset and tweak it, or build your own from scratch.

 

[JackBayer]

Ben_B is right. Magic Bullet gives you a fast start to making your footage look nice and a lot of options on top.

I only use Colorista II which gives me more power that I need. But I do my color grading in After Effects with Curves and Hue/Saturation in addition to Colorista.

 

[DrDave]

I like the Cineform looks as well, and they play in real time.

 

[dan.carter]

For speed, learn to make your camera produce the color you desire. Then little to no correction is needed.

 

[nyvz]

If you just want to learn and play around, see how you like the three-way color effect that is built into Premiere first. Colorista II is more powerful, but the built in one has 90% of the features youd use on a regular basis and it looks pretty similar to every other standard three-way color interface youd want to familiarize yourself with.

Otherwise, I can recommend Colorista II for Premiere. I get realtime GPU-accelerated 1080p playback with multiple effects including Colorista II on my i7-860 nvidia 9800gt computer. I havent thrown GH2 footage at it yet, but it works great for native 7D, EX1, and RED footage so far.

I never really liked the way MB LOOKS (I've only used it for AE) has its own big bulky standalone app that loads from the plugin, not very efficient for making quick changes. LOOKS is great if you like extreme "look" effects like if you want bleach bypass with a couple clicks, but I found it to be quite clunky for actual grading. I'm a little biased against LOOKS since I tend to feel like I can usually tell when someone used it since it seems to make people think drastic look effects are the way to go but so many things that go through LOOKS end up looking the same with that high contrast and some diffusion and shadows that are too blue and skintones that are too orange...