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Grading, monitors and color spaces
Hi,
I’m pretty new to professional grading (I’m a student who will soon start an internship in postproduction) and I’m starting a little project. The thing is, I have just bought an Asus PA246Q, since I found some good reviews and I didn’t want to pay more for a broadcast monitor, and now I don’t want to start grading in Resolve before knowing a bit more about color spaces and calibrating. I have a few presets in my monitor, and I have other presets in Mac OS preferences (Apple RGB, Adobe RGB, Wide Gamut RGB, etc.) And I’m lost in all these choices… If I only have my Asus, what should I do before grading? Should I calibrate it somehow? Choose an sRGB or Adobe RGB preset in my monitor, or an Apple RGB, Wide Gamut, etc. in the preferences? Every preset looks different, and I wouldn’t like to work for nothing as I’d discover that my monitor doesn’t display the good colors… What steps should I take before starting my work?
Thanks for the help!
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2 Replies
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Hi Etienne,
It’s not good news really, we all did not buy grading monitors because it’s fun to spend money on expensive kit, some things are essential to the job. You need your monitor to truly show the rec709 Color Space to start grading – none of the others will do at this stage. To get your monitor bang on accurate for grading would cost about 10x the price of the monitor itself (ie. the same as a grading monitor) using Lightspace CMS to create a LUT for example.
People here are all for sharing cost effective ways to get grading but really it seems you’re asking how you can set up as a Color Grader for under $500 and start bidding for work against people who have invested $1000’s (or $10,000s) on ACCURATE equipment.
If you really want to take steps to start grading professionally then doing an internship at a good post house seems like a great place to learn about colour accuracy and all of the associated terminology and issues. Your question really leads me to believe that you don’t really know that much about grading yet and just having Resolve Lite and calling yourself a grader doesn’t make you a Colour Grader. In the meantime use Resolve Lite and your Asus monitor to practice with at home.
I’d say it takes a year or so of reading up and practicing to get competent (ie. confident you aren’t making things worse) and the rest of your life to get really, really good.
Good luck
Michael.
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Hi Etienne,
It’s not good news really, we all did not buy grading monitors because it’s fun to spend money on expensive kit, some things are essential to the job. You need your monitor to truly show the rec709 Color Space to start grading – none of the others will do at this stage. To get your monitor bang on accurate for grading would cost about 10x the price of the monitor itself (ie. the same as a grading monitor) using Lightspace CMS to create a LUT for example.
People here are all for sharing cost effective ways to get grading but really it seems you’re asking how you can set up as a Color Grader for under $500 and start bidding for work against people who have invested $1000’s (or $10,000s) on ACCURATE equipment.
If you really want to take steps to start grading professionally then doing an internship at a good post house then that seems like a great place to learn about colour accuracy and all of the associated terminology and issues. Your question really leads me to believe that you don’t really know that much about grading yet and just having Resolve Lite and calling yourself a grader doesn’t make you a Colour Grader. In the meantime use Resolve Lite and your Asus monitor to practice with at home.
I’d say it takes a year or so of reading up and practicing to get competent (ie. confident you aren’t making things worse) and the rest of your life to get really, really good.
Good luck
Michael.
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