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Filed under: Motion Graphics •Post Production •

Getting Behind the Color Wheel

Hue and Cry

The Color Balance effect allows you to balance the Red, Green and Blue components of a clip. If you like that sort of thing, the Boris FX Color Balance has different Color Balance Modes (Photo Positive, Photo Negative, and Linear) for more creative choices. Additionally, Boris FX recreates many After Effects Image Control effects with the addition of a Mix with Original slider, and a feature called “Pixel Chooser”. Pixel Chooser allows you to select pixels to be effected based on either their location in the image (for simple “selections”) or their color value, with a Blend slider softening the transition.

The Color Balance (HLS) effect allows you to edit the Hue (base color), Lightness (add black or white), and Saturation (intensity of the color). The Hue control is your best friend. Imagine rendering a background of animated blue lights in 3D, then creating different color variations for each bumper by simply changing the Hue in After Effects. Tip: Hold down the Option key as you turn the angle control for a real-time update. Also, for fine-tuning, drag your mouse away from the dial to make smaller changes to the value. Also, Key Correct Pro Zone HLS offers separate HLS controls for the Shadow, Midtone, and Highlights.

Rose Tinted Effects

While it’s possible to reduce Saturation in the Color Balance (HLS) filter to create a black and white movie, you might try using a Tint effect. The default settings (“Map Black to: Black” and “Map White to: White”) create an image with more contrast than simple desaturation. I also find Tint useful for applying color to black Illustrator text: Select “Map Black to” and pick a color using the swatch or with the eyedropper.

Although you can animate the two Tint color parameters over time, you’ll find that the colors often go to gray during the animation. This is because Tint follows a straight line across the color wheel between keyframes (try animating from blue to red and you’ll see what I mean). If you want to animate the colors and maintain saturation values, set the starting color using Tint, then apply the Color Balance (HLS) effect and animate the Hue angle.

While Tint is useful for creating simple two-tone effects, it has a tendency to make video clips look a bit “flat” as the dark blacks and bright whites are lost. For day-to-day color tinting we prefer a Toner-style effect, which allows for mapping the Highlights, Midtones and Shadows to three different colors. Set the Midtones to the tint color of your choice, but leave the Shadows at black and the Highlights at white or off-white - the result is a tinted movie with lots of contrast. 

Boris FX Tritone has the same controls and result as the stock CCToner or After Effects Tritone effect with an added slider for adjusting the Midpoint plus their usual Pixel Chooser controls. Along similar lines, the Key Correct Pro Color Matcher has “Target Colors” for White, Mid and Black Points, but instead of “replacing” colors it “transforms” your colors by moving the image towards the target colors, while maintaining the relationship in colorspace of their Original colors. For compositors, this allows for easy color matching between different RGB images.

Throwing a Curve

For the ultimate in color correction you need the equivalent of Photoshop’s Curves. The closest we got back in After Effects back in 1998 was the old DigiEffects’ Cinelook effect. While its claim to fame was that it “makes video look like film”, it was also a powerful color corrector. Select the Normal preset (i.e., no grain), and use its custom “Curves” interface to adjust color using a 7-step curve for RGB or for each of the individual Red, Green, and Blue channels. You could also adjust HSL, or use the Chroma Match option that is akin to Photoshop’s Variations. There are other effects today that come close, such as Boris AE Multitone Mix, or (if you have the patience to master it) Colorama.

After the Tint effect reduces the comp to grayscale, the old DigiEffects Cinelook is used to apply a “quadtone” effect using the curves feature: black is still black, blue is pumped in the shadows, green emerges from the midtones, and red is prominent in the highlights.

Another useful After Effects filter is Change Color. Next time you have a character in a lime green dress, you can eyedropper the green color and change its hue or saturation without affecting the rest of the image. I have better luck with the Match Colors set to “Using Hue” rather than “Using RGB”, and Matching Softness helps smooth out hard edges.

Less useful but fun to explore is the Leave Color effect. Select a color to keep, and then “decolor” (or desaturate) all other colors. This would allow you to, say, keep the red in the Ferrari while turning the background to black and white.

Finally, don’t overlook the incredibly useful Blending Modes for blending colors together (at the bottom of the Time Layout window, change Switches to Transfer Controls and select from the Mode popup). For instance, selecting Luminosity for a video clip will retain its luminance but pick up the color from the underlying background. Be warned, Blending Modes are additive…

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