Color curves vs. Brightness & Contrast – which is better to brighten a clip up?

[Graham Bernard]

[Seth Kopchu] “The film I’m currently editing has some dark spots that need brightened up.”

I went straight to NewBlue’s Colofast. It comes with 3 adjustable Levels of Luminance masking:

Grazie

Video Content Creator and Potter
PC 7 64-bit 16gb * Intel® Core™i7-2600k Quad Core 3.40GHz * 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti
Cameras: Canon XF300 + PowerShot SX50HS Bridge

[Bob Peterson]

Since you want to brighten dark spots, I think you want to use color curves. Curves allow you to limit your adjustment to a particular tonal range. You can add nodes on a color curve simply by double clicking. A node will allow you to select a range of tones to be brightened or darkened. Additional nodes will allow you to reduce or eliminate the changes applied to other tones on the scale. The brightness/contrast control does not have this ability and tends to add grain very quickly.

[Seth Kopchu]

Yeah but look at how grained up that image is.

Is this something I’m going to have to deal with, no matter the route I take to brighten the image?

[Mike Kujbida]

Drop them on a timelime and look at the waveform monitor. The second and third images hardly have anything to work with. The way I see it your choices are to re-shoot with more light or put up with the noise. Sorry 🙁

[Graham Bernard]

Exactly Mike. I’d like to know the back-story of how our colleague here was “given” what appears to be well sourced and acted content. Interesting.

G

Video Content Creator and Potter
PC 7 64-bit 16gb * Intel® Core™i7-2600k Quad Core 3.40GHz * 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti
Cameras: Canon XF300 + PowerShot SX50HS Bridge

[Aaron Star]

google “power windows film grading” you can use a combination of blurs and cookie cutter tool to lighten areas while keeping the other dark areas from graining up to much. Then run the composite through something like Neat.

Mostly you should reshoot that footage, and hire a camera guy that uses lights, fast lens or understands high ISO shooting.

[Graham Bernard]

[Aaron Star] “Mostly you should reshoot that footage, and hire a camera guy that uses lights, fast lens or understands high ISO shooting.”

Yes. Well said Aaron.

Grazie

Video Content Creator and Potter
PC 7 64-bit 16gb * Intel® Core™i7-2600k Quad Core 3.40GHz * 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti
Cameras: Canon XF300 + PowerShot SX50HS Bridge

[Bob Peterson]

Not really. I think a cookie cutter is fixed in place unless you use a lot keyframes to keep it positioned over the area of the video that you want to effect.

[Seth Kopchu]

So do you guys suggest that I color correct first, then go in and adjust the brightness, or do them both at the same time?

[Aaron Star]

Color Correcting is the technical act of correcting colors that do not seem to be true for the lighting.

Color Grading is the artistic act of adjusting color and levels to achieve a specific look.

I would do color last, because you tend to impact saturation levels when you apply adjustments to your mids (gamma), highlights (Gain), and Blacks (Offset.) I used to use color curves mainly, then switched a long time ago to using only the Color Corrector plugin.

The Softcon plugin may help that dark flat footage, if you like the look and have time to tinker. you can stack your plugin and change the way Softcon operates by adjusting the color corrector plugin below it.

The cookie cutter windowing is a manual process, but what is wrong with key frames. The best art is not automated, it is a manual labor of passion. I will have 3-4 layers of windows to enhance contrast or improve latitude. If you are doing mainly handheld, you can use something like Blender to track the footage, then apply your window to a track point. There is no auto professional plugin. Plugins like magic bullet are just snake oil, being sold to people that have little creativity or patients to develop their own style.