COW Tutorials: Apple Color Getting Started

[Chris Poisson]

Hey Walter, thanks, that’s very helpful, not the usual Mac experience!

[Walter Biscardi]

thanks. I was wondering how many people would simply start Color and get stuck right at the first screen. Lots more lessons and tips coming soon……..

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Chris Poisson]

Stuck! You’re telling me? I blew right by that first screen, figured it would just save things where they belong by default. I thought my Mac had turned into a PC when I saw that screen!

I looked for instructions, couldn’t find anything I understood, so thanks again.

[David Bogie]

Walter, you have performed a service of incalculable value. You are going to go down in history as the best advocate Color has.

Good grief, WTF? When this product was intro’d/demo’d at NAB, did anyone in the audience jump and down and scream, “Who was the freakin’ dumbass who designed THIS piece of junk?”

I’m safely assuming, like LiveType, Apple merely bought the toys and shoved it through a code mangler without ever spending a dime to make the interface user friendly, intuitive, or in the least bit Mac-ish. How hard can it be for a bunch of Apple coders to make a professional Apple video product useful and elegant?

What a crock.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Russell Lasson]

[bogiesan] “Good grief, WTF? When this product was intro’d/demo’d at NAB, did anyone in the audience jump and down and scream, “Who was the freakin’ dumbass who designed THIS piece of junk?””

Wow. Those are some harsh words.

I’ll agree that the interface isn’t up to Apple standards, but for many high end software apps, the UI is secondary to the power of the application.

While not user friendly, once you know that external drives are located in the Volumes folder, it’s not that bad. Shake is set up the same way.

At least we know that the UI is only going to get better from here.

-Russ

[Chris Poisson]

Bogie,

LOfreakin’L! Boy, THAT made my day, no, make that week. Too funny, and sadly, too true!

Russell, I’m sorry, but David is right on. Who says hi tech apps have to look and act that way? Isn’t ease of use the point of Macs in the first place?

[Russell Lasson]

[Chris Poisson] “Russell, I’m sorry, but David is right on. Who says hi tech apps have to look and act that way? Isn’t ease of use the point of Macs in the first place? “

I guess Color is what you get when you get too many engineers and not enough designers.

“Okay, who wants to take a stab at the UI today?”

It’s bad compared to many other Apple apps, but for me, it’s not nearly as bad as bogiesan made it out to be (note: FOR ME, not every else). I can see how people new to the software could be left scratching their heads.

Chris, at least his post made your week! That’s definitely worth something.

-Russ

[T. J. shank]

I hear a lot of discussion about how ‘awkward’ the Color interface is.

I suppose that, compared to FCP or Motion, it is different – but having spent a little time in a CC suite I don’t find it badly designed at all.

Most professional correction systems have similar interface approaches. The design challenge is to make the work easier, not necessarily to set something up that looks like it only has three buttons. You need a lot of control and a number of ways to approach a problem to get good results from any color correction software.

I haven’t tried some of the other CC plugs out there to compare them with Color, but I have Color Finesse on my home system and find that it, too, is ‘awkward’ compared to FCP’s own CC plugs. But CF does more and that makes it worth the ‘non-Apple’ design for me.

The worst part is trying to do color work with a mouse – I’d love an inexpensive control surface (in the $500 – $700 range?) to make the work faster. Other than some import/export problems that I understand happens primarily with DVCPro material, I’m happy with Color. It just takes a little getting used to.

My 1/50th of a dollar.

tjs

[Walter Biscardi]

[bogiesan] “Good grief, WTF? When this product was intro’d/demo’d at NAB, did anyone in the audience jump and down and scream, “Who was the freakin’ dumbass who designed THIS piece of junk?””

First off, it’s not junk. It was designed as a Unix application that was ported to the Mac a few years ago.

Second, if you go sit in on a daVinci coloring work session, look at the screen. Color (fomerly Final Touch) was designed to mimic the look of daVinci because that was the target audience of the app, not Final Cut Pro editors.

Third, once you learn the interface you may grow to like it even more than Final Cut Pro. I know there are many things about that interface I like more. I prefer the dark interface. I prefer not having to double click clips into a Viewer in order to make changes to them. I much prefer all the secondary controls.

It’s completely foreign to a Mac user and when I first opened it up, I had no idea what to do. Since I learned how to use it, I don’t think there’s much that needs changing. you just need to adjust your workflow to this tool.

Color is not for every project or for every user. It’s a tool that Apple has thrown into the toolbox. When used correctly for the right job, it’s a pleasure to use. If they ever get the DVCPro HD issues worked out, then we’ll finally be able to put it back into production.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Walter Biscardi]

[TJ Shank] “The worst part is trying to do color work with a mouse – I’d love an inexpensive control surface (in the $500 – $700 range?) to make the work faster. Other than some import/export problems that I understand happens primarily with DVCPro material, I’m happy with Color. It just takes a little getting used to.”

Get a tablet, this speeds up Color a LOT.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi