(Page 3 of 4 pages for this article  <  1 2 3 4 >)

Filed under: Motion Graphics •NAB 2010 •NAB 2010 Post •Post Production •Visual Effects •

After Effects CS5

Color Finesse 3

Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse has long been a valued part of the After Effects install; AE CS5 includes Color Finesse LE 3. There are many enhancements inside, including a Vibrance control (a tamer way of boosting or removing saturation), a Highlight Recovery tool (especially important for 32-bpc sources and projects), HSL curves (pictured below), and the ability to export Color Look-Up Tables (LUTs) to a wide variety of formats. This makes it possible to create color treatments inside Color Finesse and After Effects, and export them for use on other systems - or back in After Effects itself (more on that next).

The new HSL Curves section in Color Finesse 3. Footage courtesy Adobe Systems.

Apply Color LUT

A few effects in AE CS5 will appear obscure to many, but absolutely essential to some: Apply Color LUT (Look-Up Table). Color LUTs are an alternative to using standard ICC color profiles (which also contain LUTs); ICC profiles often represent specific devices, while LUTs are used to accomplish specific tasks. Some of those tasks include:
* You have created a color treatement in Color Finesse (bundled with After Effects), and you wish to either share this treatment with another user on a different system. Or, you might prefer to apply just the resulting LUT to other clips inside After Effects rather than re-apply the entire Color Finesse effect.
* Someone has created a specific color treatment or “look” in another system, and you wish to apply this treatment to footage in After Effects.
* Someone has created a LUT that represents how a particular display device or film stock will change the colors of sources you output to it, and you want to preview the resulting transformations in After Effects.
The Apply Color LUT effect allows you to apply a LUT directly to a piece of footage, or to an adjustment layer. The latter is the preferred approach if you want the same color treatment applied to a composite or edit of several clips, or if you are simulating playback through a particular device.

When simulating a particular display environment, use Apply Color LUT on an Adjustment Layer for proofing, and set it to be a Guide Layer so the treatment will not render.

RED R3D Support

Remember the RED plug-in offered as a beta for After Effects CS4 version 9.0.2? This has now been integrated into the Interpret Footage dialog of After Effects CS5, and supports the most recent RED color science. It’s great having these adjustments inside After Effects, although there are two caveats I’ve discovered so far.
One is that, like the Camera Raw dialog, even though your source may be raw (with full-range and beyond colors), any overrange or underrange values get cut off upon exiting the dialog. Therefore, I have found it occasionally prudent to reduce the exposure inside the RED R3D Settings dialog, and boost it back up using the After Effects Exposure effect, giving me access to some of those overbrights to manipulate as I see fit (for example, by using the HDR Highlight Compression effect). However, RED’s exposure works differently than AE’s Exposure, so additional work with Levels and/or Curves will be necessary to regain the original look.
Speaking of original look, we would love to hear your stories on what settings for Color Space and Gamma Curve you feel to be most true to “as shot.” The conventional wisdom we’ve heard so far is that REDSpace matches the LCD viewfinder and is an acceptable “one light” quick color correction, whereas Rec.709 may be more accurate (for example, that was Alex Lindsay’s opinion on the image his Pixel Corps here). As we don’t have our own RED camera (we’re 5D people), we can’t run our own tests to verify.

Color Management Improvements

One subtle improvement under the hood of After Effects CS5 is that it has taken over both encoding and decoding of most YUV-based QuickTime codecs, as well as some RGB codecs (did you know the Canon 5D shoots in Rec.601 color space, and saves it as an RGB - not YUV - file when compressing to H.264?). A very positive result of this that far more codecs now round-trip accurately in and out of After Effects, including a loop through Final Cut Pro - even with Match Legacy Gamma turned off (although you should still not rely on QuickTime Player - 7 or X - as an accurate way to proof colors). A small negative side effect of this is that you have less control over changing the color profile assigned to many types of footage; hopefully that will be altered in a not-too-distant update.
There are still a couple of issues with round-tripping codecs like ProRes 4444 (when you render, you need to go into Format Options > Codec Settings and set Gamma Correction to None); regularly check Todd Kopriva’s most excellent After Effects blog for the latest answers and recommended workflows. (For example, it was Todd who posted how to handle ProRes 422 and ProRes 4444 footage in AE CS4.)

last page: new effects, new blending modes, and more

(Page 3 of 4 pages for this article  <  1 2 3 4 >)

Divide mode is a real sleeper of a new feature. It got one of the biggest reactions out of the new features I showed at NAB Post|Production World. Shows the importance of fast, simple solutions…

- Chris

Posted by Chris Meyer  on  04/16  at  03:25 PM

---

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below: