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color corectors
Color Correction. What is the best way to color correct film with low lighting?
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11 Replies
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Use levels. Bring up the whites by moving the whites slider to the left. Then balance out the gammas. Then add a hue/sat. Pull down the saturation you added by increasing the contrast.
Beware of banding in the gradients.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
if you are using adobe after effects 6.5 then try using
color finesse instead of using another individual color controls
it contains all of the controls in it it is all in onecanwal brar
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Thanks. I tried using color finesse, but there are so many differnt things. I have the total training for AE but color finesse still doesnt seem to make sense. All the graphs, color wheel, histograms.
If I am using color finesse, WHAT am I looking for in the color so that it can be perfect? Obviously the settings will differ but are there standards that people follow. Like, you never want more that … lgithness, or … blue in a shot. Hope that makes sense.
daveyg
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How to truly color correct is waaay beyond the scope of a thread. Plus it gets into subjective issues of whether there really is a “correct” way to correct. Some swear by the scopes till everything is perfect. Me I think scopes are essential to gauge limits, but I think correction is best done by “eye”. Meaning what you find looks best for your project. Not necessarily what is “Balanced”.
If you learn CF, you are using the best corrector available to AE IMHO. But it can be daunting. That’s why I suggested a simple levels/hueSat solution.
But basically in CF. I personally drop all the saturation in an image till it’s B&W. I then use the levels to balance the luminance in the image to what I find pleasing. Then I bring the saturation back up to taste. Then In the Shadows/Mids/Highlights, I first grab the mids and swing it around for a general tint. This can be to balance or to induce a color bias you like. Then I’ll often push the shadows to a mild tint. Although use sparingly. I usually keep the highlights white or push them so they seem “whiter”.
From this point on you can also use secondaries. But most color correction should be done with the primary controls.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
I now swear by Color Finesse for color correction in AE. But to answer the original question (low-light footage) I usually precomp the footage with a duplicated layer of itself. The top layer has “Screen” blending mode. This punches up the brightness, and seems to increase the detail so nothing is lost. Of course, this is my personal method. It’s worked for some REALLY dark miniDV shots. I then usually degrain the precom, and add Color Finesse to the mix to do my final color correction. I’m still learning techniques in Color Finesse, but my general workflow is to set the Luma Range so it’s balanced, slightly adjust the Levels so you are working with the full range, then use the HSL controls to adjust color, gamma, contrast, and saturation. I hope that helps. I would love to know if there is a solid book out there on color correcting using Color Finesse or similar tools.
-Robert
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when adjusting the luma rangings, what do you look to adjust? How much grey, how much black, how much white? What exaclty is a luma range?
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The luma ranges don’t actually have a direct effect on the image. What they do is define what is highlight, what is midtone, and what is shadow. You want to adjust the bezier curves until you have a good separation between those three areas of contrast. This will let you use the other controls to adjust these areas more efficiently.
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How do you drop the saturation. Through HSL RGB?
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So the white is highlight, the gray is midtone and the black is shadows. When adjusting the bezier curves, what does the graph mean, and what do the four lines that cross mean. I tried the first method with levels, hue staruation and I was in shock. It was an incredible difference. But I still want to figure out Color Finesse. I have it so lets take advantage. 🙂 I have learned so much in this forum.
daveyg
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You also said you have the AE Total Training disks. I found them to give a VERY helpful explanation of Color Finesse, although not very in-depth. But still a very good guide for getting started. Perhaps you should watch them again now that you have played with it a bit. I hate to state the obvious, but instead of asking what this does or what that does… simply play with it. As for the meanings of specific elements, that’s a whole other question. I don’t have Color Finesse open in front of me, but from what I remember the grid is a histogram. The bezier curves help split the luma levels and set their boundaries. If anyone else can define the specific areas of the grid, please speak up. As I said, I would love to find a GOOD book about color correction and what the various vector scopes mean. I’ve picked things up as I go along, and I’m sure there’s a lot of the technical aspects I’m unclear about.
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