A series of as-they-come notes on news of assorted Premiere Pro tutorials, tips, and related tools continues. Here's a month of news for color-related Premiere resources.
The big news is the Premiere version 7.01 update. Details were rounded up in Premiere Pro CC: 25 new features + bug fixes. SpeedGrade CC also had a 7.0.1 update; details are at Moving Colors.
Note: there's an Adobe 'Ask A Video Pro Webinar' with Larry Jordan, Demystifying Audio- Adobe Audition for Video Editors, on Thursday, July 25h, 2013 |10:00 AM Pacific Time.
Larry Jordan Applying The Video Limiter in Adobe Premiere Pro CC,
In Turn Day Into Night with Adobe Premiere Pro Greg Olson uses simple editing techniques to take uncorrected day-for-night footage and finish the look in Premiere, as well as how to fix some of the common errors encountered in day-for-night footage.
Genius DV posted some advice on Adobe Premiere Pleasantville Effect. Previously, in Premiere Pro Tutorial: Using 'Leave Color' & 'Change to Color' to Create Highly Stylized Looks in Your NLE, Robert Hardy noted video tutorials by Andrew Devis on related effects.Changing a single color: Three approaches, Jeff Sengstack compared Change Color to similar approaches using the Paint Bucket effect and secondary color correction with the 3-Way Color Corrector.
An unfortunate reality of the expanding use of video is that many shooters do not attempt white balance and avoid auto modes, even after pleading. Photofocus recently had 2 related articles with reminders, Setting a Custom White Balance and Choosing the Right White Balance Preset. Aaron Williams had a few tips for editors, Video Color Correction: Fixing Bad White Balance Using Offset Controls and Color Grading Quick Tip: Non-Absolute White and Black Points, as did Andrew Devis in video in Premiere Pro CS6 Techniques: 51 Color FIVE: Color Cast.
at Creative Impatience released Temperature, a free AE/Premiere plug-in in Exploring Temperature and Tint. As part of the process, he looked at Camera Raw, SpeedGrade, and Nuke, with different results, and is building an accelerated plug-in. Here's a quick tip from Pamela Berry on How to Quickly fix white balance in Adobe Premiere CS6:
BartW at Creative Impatience has a Warning about using RGB and Luma Curves in Premiere Pro CC. The 7. 0.1 patch fixes some of the issues, although unfortunately not all of them, according to the follow-up article, A Storm Or A Spoon.
In Black and White Conversions: An Introduction to Luminosity, Nick Rains discusses Luminosity, which is not exactly Brightness or Lightness.
Triad Color Looks by Aaron Williams explores triad color schemes from Adobe Kuler for color grading.
Video Editing: Additive vs. Subtractive Color Correction, also by Aaron Williams, quickly compares additive 3-way color correctors built into Premiere Pro with Colorista Free by Red Giant Software, a subtractive color corrector which takes away the opposite color instead of adding the color you want into the shot. For more on Colorista Free (essentially Colorista 1.0), see Colorista mini tips from Stu Maschwitz and the best 1st stop tutorial on Colorista, a QuickTime movie in Free Primer on Color Correction by Eric Escobar.
As a mental note, some may want to (re)visit the Todd Miro reaction to Hollywood's Teal & Orange Blockbuster Abyss. Here's VinhSon Nguyen from Magic Bullet Colorista Free and Tony Reale from The Easy Guide to Color Grade & Correct Video.
Cross Process Colour (color) Grading, from Evan Abrams, is an After Effects tutorial. See also the AEP roundup Bleach bypass, cross-process, and other looks for After Effects: Some presets and tutorials. The tutorials can also be done with Premiere for the most part.
Color Correction with MB Looks by Jesse Rosten, aka Tiny Tuts, looks at Red Giant Magic Bullet in Premiere. But first is a quickie from Clay Asbury, Magic Bullet Looks 2 in Premiere Pro.
No long ago Clay Asbury collected some Free Color Grading Presets for Premiere Pro and After Effects. As mnetioned above, BartW at Creative Impatience has a Warning about using RGB and Luma Curves in Premiere Pro CC, including the 7. 0.1 patch, as noted in A Storm Or A Spoon:
“To me it means that most of my old projects will still have to be rendered out in CS6, and I will have to be careful with the new ones, especially when using Jarle Leirpoll’s [free] grading presets.”
Color reTooled, from Josh Weiss, is a low-cost collection of over 55 presets for Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Adobe SpeedGrade CC. If you think it might be useful, go ahead and buy it to encourage him to keep making all the free tutorial videos! Check out the intro, reTooled.net – Introducing Color reTooled – Color Correction Looks Presets for Premiere and Speed Grade:
Of course Premiere Pro CC includes some nice “look” presets from SpeedGrade, which can used use in combination by themselves. Jeff Sengstack has a quick look at the Lumetri Effects in his Learning Adobe Premiere Pro CC Training Video.
Andrew Devis went through Lumetri Looks earlier and discussed a way to create your own grades in SpeedGrade, save them as .Look files, and then apply those custom grades to your footage or to an adjustment layer in Premiere Pro CC (Help). Josh Weiss does the same in his tutorial Speed Grade Back & Forth. You also have the option to apply .Look (SpeedGrade) and standard LUT-type files in Premiere Pro, so you could use DaVinci Resolve too. DaVinci Resolve Lite is free for Mac & Windows (see Tao of Color training, ColorGradingCentral tutorials and the AEtuts+ Resolve series).
SpliceVine talks with Patrick Inhofer about SpeedGrade vs Resolve, Log vs RAW, color vs black and white, Resolve 10 and the growing trend of live grading, laundering XML with FCP 7, 4K, immersion & holography and society’s filter obsession.
There's a new version of Digital Anarchy Beauty Box Video, a skin retouching video plug-in (similar to Red Giant and Digital Film Tools products) for many apps. Here's an intro:
Later, Toolfarm posted In Depth: 9 Great Freebies for Color Grading After Effects & Premiere Pro. Note that AE plug-ins work inside Premiere, unless they have extensive custom UI.
Film Riot returns to color correction with
In Hollywood's History of Faking It | The Evolution of Greenscreen Compositing, FilmmakerIQ escorts you inside the history of the travelling mattes (chromakey) to learn the history of visual trickery. There's even more in The Masters of Compositing Series by Jeff Foster (who has more resources on greenscreen techniques). See Part 1: Petro Vlahos, Part 2: Paul Vlahos, Part 3: John Galt. Here's some of the video, including another nice one with practical tips FilmmakerIQ:
How to handle Bit Depth in Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects and Speedgrade was posted by Sareesh Sudhakaran. For more, see What is Color, Color Bit Depth and a Color Model? by Sareesh Sudhakaran and Understanding Color Processing: 8-bit, 10-bit, 32-bit, and more by Adobe's Karl Soule. Aaron Williams discusses aspects of 8 Bit Color vs. 32 Bit Color in Video Color Grading at PremiumBeat.
Prolost Presets for Lightroom, by Stu Maschwitz, found a big second wind. The version 1.5 set consists of over 400 presets for $19.99, available on Mac and Windows, and require Lightroom 4 or higher. A few things were tweaked and some new presets added, including 5 Color Treatment presets, the Prolost Technical group, and a Red Scale preset in Prolost Creative.
There are a number of related new articles, which can suck you into related color issues, like Why video color changes on different monitors and programs, Another test for Golden Eyes by Steve Hullfish, and Web-Based Color Tools | VizWorld.com.
A bit more fun comes from Steve Mould, who looks biology and color mixing to answer the question “Why doesn't magenta appear in the rainbow?” in Colour Mixing: The Mystery of Magenta:
Please note that this roundup is for quick review and comparison. There is almost always vital information from the originating authors at the links provided — and often free presets, plug-ins, or stock footage too.
Twitter: @aerich