best color grading option

[Walter Biscardi]

Colorista from Red Giant Software. $199 and we’re able to achieve looks very similar to our Final Touch HD software (which doesn’t work at the moment). I just CC’d 7 episodes of Good Eats in HD with it and they look fantastic. Can’t beat it for the price.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Steve Eisen]

Depends on how critical you want to be. The current Color Corrector inside FCP is very powerful in itself. It can be tricky to manipulate.

It will be interesting to see what Apple does with Final Touch. I am looking forward to NAB this year.

Nattress, Digital Film Tools’ 55mm and Joe’s Filters are a few plug-ins to look at.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Director-At-Large
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[John Pale]

Walter,

What do you feel that Colorista gives you that you don’t get with the built in FCP 3-way?
Do you use the Power Windows a lot?

I just downloaded the demo the other day and it didn’t immediately seem that much of an improvement over the existing CC, but that was just a first impression….what should I be checking out more closely?

Sorry if you have covered this elsewhere.

[Walter Biscardi]

[John Pale] ”
What do you feel that Colorista gives you that you don’t get with the built in FCP 3-way?
Do you use the Power Windows a lot?”

It’s much cleaner than the 3-way in that I can push colors and brightness much further without getting the weird solarization that sometimes happens with the 3Way. highlights, midtones and blacks all act “correctly” in that raising the highlights doesn’t overly affect the mids like it does in the 3-Way.

Colors are smoother and yes, I use a TON of masks and the Exposure control that Colorista has. Don’t get me wrong, the 3Way is a great tool and I’ve delivered broadcast masters using it, but Colorista just improves on it.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[John Pale]

Great. Thanks very much for the input. I’ll play around with it some more. The price is certainly right.

I would expect the next version of FCP will have an improved color corrector. Anyone who has used the more recent Avid CC or the Symphony certainly would love to see Curves brought over to FCP.

[Walter Biscardi]

[John Pale] “I would expect the next version of FCP will have an improved color corrector. Anyone who has used the more recent Avid CC or the Symphony certainly would love to see Curves brought over to FCP.”

I just want to see Final Touch HD work in April. Hate to see our $5,000 investment just sitting on the shelf.

But yes, I would expect the Silicon Color team will bring improvements to the 3 Way.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Shane Ross]

I concur with Walter. Pushing colors in the lows used to produce weird results. I have been using Colorista for a month now and it is a MARKED improvement. Power Windows a HUGE plus.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Mark Maness]

Walter,

Have you been able to use Colorista in realtime? Aren’t you supposed to be able to use at least one layer in realtime? It is an FXplug plugin. I’m confused because I seem to have to render everything I do using it.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com

[Shane Ross]

[Wayne Carey] ”
Have you been able to use Colorista in realtime? Aren’t you supposed to be able to use at least one layer in realtime?”

It isn’t a realtime plugin. But the render times aren’t horrible. I’ll take what this plugin can do while needing to render over what the 3-way does any day. You can always render over night if you have lots of rendering.

And if you want to see what it looks like with movement, you can press OPT-P and the timeline will move, slowly but it will move.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Mark Maness]

Yeah… I get it…

I guess you could say that I got used to the realtime of CC 3-way.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com