Limit effect/Luma question

[Jerry Hofmann]

I usually set the whites and blacks first, then color correct.

To use the limiting feature, click on the subject’s face with the eyedropper in the limiting area of the Color Corrector 3-way.

FWIW, Color would do a MUCH better job of fixing this shot…

Jerry

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[Kent Beeson]

Thanks Jerry,

Sounds too simple, and I just tried it, but what happens is this – I take down the whites and add a tiny to the mids, everything’s legal…then I click on eye dropper right side of Limit effect, click it on person’s face – it takes the whole shot back up to warning icon and gives zebra stripes, while leaving my whites/mids sliders where they are, after I adjusted them. I’m trying to take down the whites (legal) and also I want to ONLY affect the skin tone after the rest of the shot is legal…what am I doing wrong?

K

[Boyd Mccollum]

Add a second filter to do the limit effect.

[Andy Mees]

kent

what you’re doing at the moment is correcting the overall levels of the image but then telling the color corrector filter to limit those broad corrections only to the “orange” skin tone areas

as Boyd points out, you need to add 2 instances of the 3-way color corrector to fix up your shot

with the first instance you can make all adjustment as you have already done
and once that broad brush correction is looking good then leave that instance alone

with the second instance of the color corrector you use the limit effect controls as you are doing to select that secondary area of the image to which you want to make further corrections … in your case the skin tones. after you have isolated this secondary area for correction you then use the main 3-way correction tools to correct as needed

hope that helps
Andy

[Kent Beeson]

Very helpful, thanks for the advice – I did as you said, I see how that works now…I also tried this: selected eyedropper under whites, chose area of pic that should be white, clicked on it, it rightly made a good adjustment, chose eyedropper under Blacks, clicked black on pic, it made a good adjustment, then I took down the whites (getting a good single check mark, no plus sign), l payed with the balck slider and the mid slightly, it now looks good – and only one instance of the 3 way CC.

So question is are these just 2 ways to do the same thing, or did I do something that’s less acceptable/less correct than adding 2 instances of the same filter?

Also, when timeline is playing, on the FCP 5.1.4 waveform tool my Blacks are dipping around -3 and whites are slightly higher (though still legal) than when parked on any frame – is this a concern?

Thanks

K

[Boyd Mccollum]

Well there are different ways to achieve the same result.

The beginning part of this thread talked more about limit effect and the workflow for that – which Andy did a great job describing.

From the description you gave, what you actually ended up doing was to remove the color cast from the Whites and Blacks. The difference between that and limit effect may be negligible in your situation, but they are doing different things. Your corrections were applied to the entire image. A limit effect would only be applied to the specific region you wanted.

To see this in action, take a clip and make a copy of it. Apply the 3 way corrector to each one. On one clip, as an example, limit Luma to everything over 90 IRE. Bring up your waveform monitor. Play with the luma slider under the Whites. You should see the difference in how the image is affected between the two clips.

One way I might use the limit luma effect is when I’ve corrected the shot to where I want it but still have areas that are over 100IRE. If I readjust the luma slider for whites, it will change the look of the entire shot, and I’d need to readjust the mids and blacks again, and may not achieve the look I want. So I apply a second filter, limit luma to over 90 or 95, and then bring those values down. The rest of the shot is unaffected.

[Kent Beeson]

Good, useful thoughts – thanks to everyone for the help…

K