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initial rgb correction when color grading
Hi all,
I’m a beginner on color correction/grading so this will surely sound silly for you guys, but an answer would be appreciated.
I’ve been going through a series of tutorials lately and a common thing on all of them is saying that the raw image has low contrast and that therefore it’s important to stretch the colors so that we get pure black and white.
I guy whose tutorial I saw however said something additional which did sound in the least interesting: before you pull the black and the white you must balance your colors so that you have white in the top and bottom zones of your color graph.
This was the post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL_hWR60LaA, its around 7:20, for those in a hurry =)
I have the impression that he’s correct, but no other tutorial mentions it, so I wanted to check with more experienced people.
Thanx you and hope to ear from you soon,
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4 Replies
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As usual there is no one size fits all and there are no magic buttons.
However, if you know for sure that you image indeed contained pure black and pure white (mathematically) then sure, go ahead.
Very often, you will have information in the color channels that the camera, or some other link in your chain, interpreted to be blacker than black and some that significantly whiter than white. If you color balance based on those extreme values in one or more of your color channels, then some other part of the tonal range of your image will become very unbalanced.
I would say that by the number approach has its plays but might not be valid in every situation.
Let’s say you have a sunset scene. If you were to balance shadows and highlights to be agsolutely neutral all the way through you would have lost the impression of the scene, as it would loose warmness of the original light. -
Very good point, Dmitry.
I’m mostly trying to get to understand better this grading job, so it’s great to hear opinions of more experienced people.
Are there any books on color grading, or even more generally on color that you would say it’s a good basic to start from?
cheers and thanx!MEndonca
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Start with these:
Alex’s Van Hurkman’s Color Correction Handbook:
https://www.amazon.com/Color-Correction-Handbook-Professional-Techniques/dp/0321929667/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1CHXH704NKTQ12DRM6BZSteve Hullfish’s The Art & Technique of Digital Color Correction
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Technique-Digital-Color-Correction/dp/024081715X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403253999&sr=1-1The free Color Management SIGGRAPH white papers go into detail about how the science of color applies to the real world of digital images:
Patrick Inhofer’s “Tao of Color” newsletter and website are also informative resources:
https://www.taoofcolor.com -
Thank you very much Mark I really appreciate it.
cheersMEndonca
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