Color Correction – 11a light to 8am light

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

There’s really no way you can do that because you can’t change the shadows. You may use a Photo Filter or a grading filter like Colorista to play with the colors and add a golden hue and then bring some details in the blacks (if you have that information), but the shadows never lie.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Johnny Smith]

interesting.
i don’t have/know colorista. I got CS5 and mainly use FCP and AE.

i get that i need to play with colors just not sure what to add/subtract.
in terms of mids shadows and highs how would you color this?
also should i use “levels” to add details in the blacks?

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

There’s a free version of Colorista:
https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/downloads/free-products/
Also, since you have CS5, you have Color Finesse, a powerful tool for color correction and grading.
It’s a bit hard to give advice if I do not see a still. Post a still of the footage you need to grade and also, if you have a shot you need to match, post a still of that as well.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Johnny Smith]

lighting i’m going for ( shot at 8am ):

this image needs to match ( shot at 11am ):

[Johnny Smith]

Stills lowlight the problem. In motion pictures the vibes don’t match and it’s obvious. it’s a music video for a label and they are very picky.

[Jim Arco]

A bit hard to tell from the stills, it looks to me like the 8AM shot has slightly blue-er shadows, and maybe a bit more yellow in the highlights. This is pretty much what we would expect, BTW. The shadows might be crushed slightly in the 8AM shot.

Color matching shots from different time of the day is easier when you have the same or similar scenes. With different scenes, it usually turns out to be a matter of matching the “feel” rather than the color of objects. It sometimes helps to temporarily turn off the chroma and first match the luminance of the scenes. Then try turning the the saturation way up to exaggerate any differences in the coloring.

[Walter Soyka]

I’m not sure this is so much about matching the exact lighting as it is matching the mood of the shots. The object in the reference shot here is heavily restricting the palette, cooling it considerably.

I’ve attached a (very rough) version of the approach I might take to your shot. I desaturated and darkened the greens, cooled the shadows, and warmed the midtones and highlights. I added a bit of glow and treated the talent separately — though I have no idea from your reference shot what you need to do with the skintones.

Again, apologies for the rough shot, I only spent a few minutes on it. Hopefully it’s enough to help kickstart your coloring.

One last note — if I were coloring this for real, I’d probably work on the new shot to get the mood of the reference shot, then actually revisit the reference shot to get a better match with the new shot with talent.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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[Johnny Smith]

thanks boys.
Looks good, Walter.