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Color Correction with Premiere Pro CS6: Is there any advantage to using Colorista II?
I am new to video editing and just beginning to learn how to use Premiere Pro CS6.
I played around with Premiere and other streamlined programs in the past, but after deciding that their color correction options just weren’t adequate for what I wanted to do, I finally got Premiere Pro.Now that I’ve watched a few tutorials discussing the color correction tools that are built into Premiere Pro CS6, I am wondering what additional benefits there would be to using a color correction/color grading plug-in like Colorista II. The features seem very, very similar. Or am I missing something?
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3 Replies
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Colorista has some not-quickly-apparent advantages to the tools in Premiere if you’re not use to color grading.
– Colorista has a bunch of adjustments in one preset, instead of 3-5 of Premiere’s being thrown on.
– Colorista is 32bit precision all the way through. Premiere’s effects are still of varying processing precision. Useful if you have to make wildly large corrections.
– Colorista has three stages
– Stage 1 (Primary)is pretty similar to the three way color corrector in Premiere. It has a hugely beneficial addition of a hue/saturation/lightness control for each of the primary and secondary color ranges, something that you don’t get in Premiere. Controlling the oranges for basic skin tone… worth the money alone spent on simple tweaks.– Stage 2 (Secondary)is more unique in comparison to Premiere’s tools. It allows you to mask another adjustment based on either a selected color range or a circular/rectangular mask. Try going through the trouble of creating a feathered mask for any effect in Premiere…. see what I mean? Brighten a face, add a vignette or whatever you need to do in a selective manner.
– Stage 3 (Master)is similar to the first stage with the addition of curve adjustments. It also adds another mask for a secondary masked effect.
I would say the biggest advantages are the masking features. If you don’t use selective adjustments, you may not find Colorista all that different. If you want to finesse your adjustments or give your work a real “look” then Colorista is the tool for it.
Colorista isn’t Speedgrade, but it’s a capable alternative if you can’t afford Speedgrade or are sticking to a lower version of the creative suite.
Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks -
The only disadvantage of Colorista II (and I use/own a copy) is that its not CUDA enabled and, depending on the project, the time we have to complete it can be a factor in deciding if we use it or not.
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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger -
When you apply Colorista II, go to the options drop down. It does use OpenGL to speed rendering.
Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
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