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Why are colour grading programs so different to everything else?
Speedgrade and color both make me feel like I’m peeling a banana lefthanded with a big glove on.
Is there a reason color grading programs seem to have their own conventions that go completely against almost every other bit of software I have ever used?
Also – to anyone trying out speedgrade – is there any reason why I can drag clips or grading clips to the right, but NOT BACK AGAIN? You see what I mean?
Part rant, part honest question
Thanks
http://www.paulstroudmusic.co.uk
http://www.stroudandcroft.co.uk
myspace/paulstroudmusic -
7 Replies
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I think part of the reason is that both Color and Speedgrade were purchased from other software developers. In both cases, Adobe and Apple didn’t have the time (or plans) before release to incorporate many GUI changes into their suites. For Apple, they abandoned the FCP Suite, so Color won’t ever be developed into Apple’s GIU designs. I think Adobe will slowly change some of the elements on further releases of Speedgrade.
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A ha – I didn’t realize the same were true for Apple Color but I got that about speedgrade. I just thought there was something inherent with colour grading programs
I mean with speedgrade, when editing text (i.e. naming a look) – you can’t even do a CMD+Ato select all the text.
Like I say banana – lefthand – glove
Thanks
http://www.paulstroudmusic.co.uk
http://www.stroudandcroft.co.uk
myspace/paulstroudmusic -
I know what you mean, if I need to do some more advanced colour correcting I go to after effects, even though I have had access to Color over the years and now Speedgrade, it just seems a little crazy to me and overly complicated for what I need to do… but then again so does node-based compositing and looking at the interface for avid after years of FCP(and now PP). Workflow-wise they seem to be geared more towards film and drama work, which I don’t really do. Interface-wise they seem to be like avid in that they follow a lot of paradigms that have been around since the 90s and not so much modern media & OS interface ideas.
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I bet in time, Speedgrade will receive a bit more of the look/feel of the Adobe suite, and also gain Dynamic Linking. When that happens, it will be a no-brainer to send over clips or sequences to be graded in Speedgrade. It looks like a pretty powerful program (despite not having curve adjustments?!) but the workflow at this point seems to not be ideal.
For now Dynamic Link to AE with Colorista 2 is a good solution.
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Bear in mind that a lot of stand-alone CC applications, especially on the high end, are designed to be used with a control surface that has a dedicated button or knob for every little thing. This is something you can’t replicate with just a mouse and keyboard.
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Thanks for the CMD+A suggestion. This is a great little missing thing we should have taken care of a long time ago 🙂
As for the rest – I think the other commenters are spot on with their replies.
Lin
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Lin Sebastian Kayser | Engineering Director | Adobe SpeedGrade | Founder of IRIDAS
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[Paul Stroud] “Is there a reason color grading programs seem to have their own conventions”
Because its a different task. All modern colorgrade applications owe their legacy to film timing, Hazeltine, Pogle, daVinci (note the lower-case d) et al, and telecine — the celluloid-to-video variety. Then somebody got the bright idea that a color corrector should be able to do tape-to-tape and then it became file/server -based and the rest, as they say…
Grade is supposed to happen, supposed being the key word, with locked finals. God help you if you sent a less-than-completely signed-off workprint to a neg cutter. Of course, that process was irreversible, but currently a project is never locked, ever. So colorists are expected to be editors, and in a growing way, fx compositors. Not necessarily a bad thing — being a one-trick pony is the recipe for disaster in today’s marketplace, but the reality is that the core function of grade uses a different set of skills, a different mindset, requires different hardware – calibrated, for example – and a very different time budget.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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