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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Help Color Correcting Day/Night

  • Help Color Correcting Day/Night

    Posted by Kyle Meehan on November 21, 2006 at 2:24 am

    Hey guys, I’m fairly new to AE and my experience never dealt with color correction…until now. I shot some footage on DV and needless to say, it didn’t come out all that well. When we began shooting one particular scene, it was about 3 in the afternoon; when we finished it was about 5 o’clock. As a result, the footage progressively gets darker and darker.

    So my question is, how can I match the look of the darker footage with that of the footage shot in better light? Here are links to two pictures, one is how the footage looks in the beginning, and the other how the footage looks towards the end of our shooting:

    https://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a60/kyle803/Day.jpg
    https://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a60/kyle803/Night.jpg

    If anyone can help me out and tell me how I could go about correcting the footage to make the clips look similar in regards to time of day, I’d greatly appreciate it. The scene takes place during the late afternoon or early evening, so I’m for either jst lightening up the darker shots, or slightly darkening the lighter shot as well as lightening the darker shots to achieve a middle-ground, so to speak….I want to do whatever looks best and avoid having the footage look fake and washed out.

    Let the schooling begin! Thanks.

    – Kyle

    Chris Smith replied 19 years, 5 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Kyle Meehan

    November 21, 2006 at 2:28 am

    Oops, I forgot to mention I have AE6.5. Also, the rest of this piece is going to be edited in Final Cut Pro 5, so if there’s a way to correct the footage in FCP with results equal to or better than AE, that would be nice because it would save me some rendering.

    – Kyle

  • Justin Productions

    November 21, 2006 at 2:33 am

    Ouch!

    So, reshooting would be impossible? Maybe by duplicating the clips, then playing with the blending modes, and tweaking the Levels and Curves..arr, I thought the “Night” shot was just going to be a little bit darker, but this is a definitive night shot my friend.

    So, if no one else can help you (but I’m sure there will), I’d reconsider reshooting right away.

    Good luck!

    Justin Productions
    Tangerin01@hotmail.com
    Adobe After Effects 6.5 Professional

  • Chris Smith

    November 21, 2006 at 6:51 pm

    You’re SOL in my opinion. Everything about those shots is different. The contrast, the highlits, exposure. You would need massive amounts of work and it would still look way off. Your best bet is to darken your daytime stuff, but you still have a white sky all over the place. You can try luma keying the white sky and using garbage masks to isolate the key area to the sky, but luma keys have rough edges and it will end up looking like a nuclear looking mess.

    From looking at the footage, I would think reshoot it. It doesn’t appear you had a crew or lighting involved. If it’s just a DV cam, Available light, a crash helmet and bike, a re-shoot would clearly be the best looking and most affordable (in terms of time) option.

    Chris Smith
    https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

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