Color Correction Video Tutorial

This video tutorial on color correction shows how color contrast can be used to really transform an image. A large part of color correction is improving and manipulating the tonal contrast - the difference between the brightest and darkest parts of the image. But color contrast can be even more important in creating an interesting and arresting image. Contrasting warm tones with cool tones or playing colors against each other to create interest is something that sets the truly great colorists apart from the rest. The example in this video tutorial uses footage from Evan Nicholas’ short film, “Susannah,” which was shot with a RED camera, to show how tonal and color contrast can be used to improve the impact of a shot.

Avid Gems #7

I wasn’t sure if anyone was reading these, so I stopped for a few weeks. Then I got a very nice comment from Ra-ey Saleh who has been reading and learning from the tips, despite being an experienced Avid editor. He also asked if he could suggest a tip, so I’ll start this week with a great tip. Essentially, it’s nothing more than a common button, but it does perform hidden wonders, which is the whole point of some of these gems.

Color Correction - Secondaries Video Tutorial

Here is a video tutorial - one of a series based on my book “Color Correction for Video,” out in December from Focal Press - showing how to do secondary color correction on a typical image. This footage is from Artbeats. In it, I “qualify” (another term for “select”) the color of the baseball jerseys in the shot AND the color of the grass in the infield and change it without affecting the other colors in the footage.

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Color Correction Video Tutorial

Another in a series of color correction tutorials from the upcoming revised edition of “Color Correction for Video” coming out in December from Focal Press.

In this installment, I show you how to sample colors on the screen in Apple Color to get numeric readouts of specific pixels in your image. (These same methods can be used with Avid or FCP or Color Finesse in Premiere or After Effects.) Using these numeric readouts can assist you in making corrections, especially if you can sample something that should be white, black or some other neutral gray tone. Any neutral tone should have the same numeric readout across all three color channels. (They can be off by a little.)

The samples in Color will continuously update as you color correct, which is very helpful. So, for example, is you sample a black pixel from your image and it says that the red channel is .085, the green channel is .088 and the blue channel is .025, then that means that your blacks have either a deficiency of blue or too much yellow (the combination of even amounts of red and green). So you probably need to raise the set-up/pedestal/black level of your blue channel to remove the yellow cast in the blacks. This will actually help balance the overall level somewhat, especially if you can balance the whites/highlights/gain using the same method. Grays will either fall into place, or you can adjust your gammas/midtones “to taste” by eye.

Color Correction Tutorial

This is another in an ongoing series of color correction video tutorials taken from the upcoming revised edition of my book “Color Correction for Video” (originally released as “Color Correction for Digital Video” co-written by Jaime Fowler.)

This tutorial shows how you can use the Geometry Room (one of the tabs along the top of the Color interface) to analyze your colors more accurately using the internal or external scopes.

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Avid Gems 6

OK, this won’t be a sexy tips week, but it’ll be useful. Sometimes sexy sells, but in economic times like these, sometimes you’ve got to say “Damn! Workboots, a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans is just what I need today.”

Creating Custom-shaped Vignettes in Apple Color

This video tutorial is one of more than two dozen video tutorials I created for the revised edition of “Color Correction for Video” which I originally wrote with Jaime Fowler back in 2002. The revised edition will be out in December and is almost completely re-written. I’ll be posting one of these tutorials each week.

We’re not really going in any specific order with these tutorials. I did a series of Primary color correction tutorials. This is actually a tutorial about creating custom user shapes in Apple Color to do secondary color correction.

Subscribe to the RSS feed if you haven’t already. And if you have questions or specific video tutorials you’d like to see, let me know. Just add a comment below to the article.

Avid Gems #5

Many of you know me from various listserves, and hopefully I have a reputation as someone who’s willing to help out people with problems.
 
Today’s Gem #1 is something I learned when I tried to help someone with a problem that I THOUGHT was going to be pretty easy to solve, but it turned out that I needed to learn some new tricks before I could be on any help at all.

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