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Colorista or Color?
I’ve used Colorista (and Looks) for quite some time within After Effects and just recently started using FCP. It seems like I can easily avoid round-tripping to Color by using Colorista as a filter. I get the impression that many here prefer Color. Other than the fact that it is included and there is no additional cash outlay, why is Color your preference?
Lee
SAMDOG Digital Post
Calgary, Alberta
Mac Pro 2.66 12-core 16gb ram • FSI LM1760W Monitor • Matrox MX02 • Caldigit HD One 8tb Raid • Euphonix MC Transport • Final Cut Studio 3 • Premiere Pro CS5 -
6 Replies
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As someone who grades and onlines for a living, the choice of using Color was simple. Before upgrading the FCS3 however, I did a lot of grading with the 3 Way CC and a combination of Nattress gamma filters. I did download a demo of Colorista and did see an advantage of using it over the 3 Way CC.
Since Color 1.5, I have not had any issues with round tripping. Apart from the fact that Color is a fully featured grading tool which lets me see my grades playing before rendering, I love having a Tangent Wave as a controller and avoiding mouse or tablet controllers in a grading environment.
I also take advantage of the round tripping as it means that Color renders the grades in the background whilst I am working in FCP grading stills with the 3 way CC and doing supers and credit rolls.
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[Lee Warner] “Other than the fact that it is included and there is no additional cash outlay, why is Color your preference?”
Probably because it’s a full featured color correction tool that was built from the ground up do nothing but color correction.
Colorista is nice for folks who don’t want to take the time to learn Color and are satisfied with essentially an enhanced 3 Way Color Correction tool that also adds a mask. It’s a MUCH better tool than the internal 3 Way CC because it does not fall apart so quickly.
If you want a full featured color correction tool, well then you switch to Color which used to be the $25,000 Final Touch 2k.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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Well let me ask this a different way then.
Let’s imagine that I am equally skilled in both Color and the newest version of Colorista and Looks. Is it your opinion that I could produce a noticeably superior grade and in less time round-tripping to Color than staying within FCP and using the Magic Bullet plugs? If so, what is it about the results that would have someone voting for the Color version?
I like what Michael had to say about the Color advantages of using control surfaces and background rendering. Those are tangibles that can inform my own methodology.
Lee
SAMDOG Digital Post
Calgary, Alberta
Mac Pro 2.66 12-core 16gb ram • FSI LM1760W Monitor • Matrox MX02 • Caldigit HD One 8tb Raid • Euphonix MC Transport • Final Cut Studio 3 • Premiere Pro CS5 -
[Lee Warner] ” Is it your opinion that I could produce a noticeably superior grade and in less time round-tripping to Color than staying within FCP and using the Magic Bullet plugs? If so, what is it about the results that would have someone voting for the Color version?”
I don’t know about less time. That depends on your skills and what you’re trying to do. We have some edit suites that only use a Wacom Tablet and one suite that has the Tangent Wave panel. For just cutting short news stories that run 3 minutes or less, you really don’t see a difference using either method. For longer form like documentaries, then the control surface is sweet.
I’ll put it this way. In color you have a Primary In, 16 levels of Secondary, 1 Primary Out and a ColorFX room for EVERY scene. With Colorista you would have to apply the filter 18 times for every shot to replicate the amount of control you have in Color. With Looks… well I’m not even sure what you would do in Looks to replicate a single Grade in Color.
In Color you have four Grades for every scene. So you can have a Grade, and then make changes to that in Grade 2, switch back and forth to see which you like better. Maybe start over in Grade 3 and switch back and forth between the 3 to see which you like and then switch to Grade 4 if you want to play even more. With the client in the room you can show them four complete grades on the same shot just by control click 1, 2, 3, 4.
Yes, you can create a noticeably superior grade in Color than you can with Looks or Colorista. Color can definitely push codecs further and with the ColorFX room I can control noise in the signal much better than any filter set I’ve seen. Especially if you add the Nattress plug-in set for color.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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Color is much faster!
FCP list of steps:
Apply the CC filter
Double click on the clip to put it in the viewer
Select the CC tab
Click back in the timeline so you can see your changes
Now your ready to color correctColor list of steps:
Send from FCP to Color
park over the clip you want to color correct
start color correctingNow think about the FCP list for a hundred shots! That’s a lot of extra steps and time.
Dajen Productions, Santa Barbara, CA
MacPro Two 2.8GHz Quad Core – AJA Kona LHe
FCS 3 OS X 10.6 QT 10 -
Interesting review for Colorista II at the ProVideo Coalition website
https://provideocoalition.com/index.php/ssimmons/story/review_magic_bullet_colorista_ii/
Lee
SAMDOG Digital Post
Calgary, Alberta
Mac Pro 2.66 12-core 16gb ram • FSI LM1760W Monitor • Matrox MX02 • Caldigit HD One 8tb Raid • Euphonix MC Transport • Final Cut Studio 3 • Premiere Pro CS5
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