CasiMiniFest 6: Sixth edition of an independent electronic music event based on a beautiful seaside town in the north of Spain.

Nightmarish job and a lot of fun at the same time: There were screens and lights flickering at different frequencies all over the place. If that wasn’t enough, even with the Voigtländer 25 wide opened at 0.95 and the camera set to ISO3200, massive parts of the frame were still underexposed by 1.5/2 stops most of the time (if you were to trust the flawed in-camera metering).

Shot on a hacked GH2 with Sedna AQ1 C. Graded in ColorGHear for After Effects.

@shian . firstly i would like to say i just bought this and it is giving me hours of fun and teaching me with such ease up such a steep learning curve (first time grading and the fact you help set us us with tutorials and film classes etc is just increadably valuable) ... however theres one tutorial bit i dont understand... how do you get secondaries in colour fist?? do you use colour finness for the secondarys? you seem to show us how to play with colorfist and thats all great but then sudenly you bring the secondaries back in and are like boom "anyone want a magenta dog" and im here scratching my head.... sorry complete noob but to anyone wondering is this gear good.... it really really is!!! plus £26! absurd!!!!!!!!!

@jakepowell - you'll find out in a later tutorial that I was color keying the footage, but then stated that the process was too inconsistant. Sometimes, like in that particular case it worked great, and almost always works with R3D footage, but was hit and miss with DSLR footage. For secondaries; I now use SpeedGrade to set up the secondary, save it as a LUT, and import it into AE. Or if you are not using CS6 yet, you can still use Color Finesse, and I think I demonstrated that in the most recent tutorial.

I will soon release a set of skin tone LUTs created in SG for you guys to use. I'm finding that the 3 LUTs I created seem to work almost universally, unless the skin color is just wildly off.

So a little treat for those of you using CS6 -----

I've uploaded a SpeedGrade Skin LUT for you all. Go to the Member Download Page - http://colorghear.com/member-download-page/ - At the bottom you'll find the link. Download it. Create a folder called LUTs, and unzip it into that folder.

(Be sure to put it somewhere where you'll know where to look for it. I have a ColorGHear folder on my desktop, and all my stuff goes in there.)

To implement it: Create a new adjustment layer, right click the layer, or right click in the effects controls panel and go all the way down to the bottom to Utility> Apply Color LUT, it will ask you to pick the LUT you wish to use, navigate to where you unzipped the file, and choose it. It applies the LUT to that layer, then you just mix to taste. This one is designed to kill green in skin tone, and overall give it a more organic film-like texture.

I use this on almost all my GH2 footage in place of minus green because it mostly targets just skin tone. (Although I set the bleed tolerance to a pretty soft setting) I usually mix the layer down to between 33-50%, but use as you see fit. You can also try masking off the area you want affected if it is changing the surroundings too much do to the softness. But it will for the most part act as a secondary color selection.

I used it on the grade below to get a more natural tone on his skin. The rest of the grade is (from the bottom up) - a very light power window on the left side of his face, Skin LUT, Shadow Lift, Toner, CineGhamma, and ColorFist, with a custom vignette to darken the edges. The skin LUT goes on the bottom of the stack just above the power window. The only difference between the 2nd and 3rd image is I bumped the mix on the LUT up to 50% from 33%, and tweaked the 3-way on the ColorFist layer.

Enjoy!

Here are some stills from the short I just DP'd ... playing with some grades in Color Ghear... Shot - All was shot Sedna C q20

@shian is there a secret to using the spectral enhancer? I love how it makes colours and detail pop, but it also seems to break the 8-bit codec in areas of lower detail, even when I dial it down to around 40%-50 opacity.

@jakepowell I used the warm gradient at say 60% or so... also I ALWAYS for theatrical stuff shoot nostaligic -2 all.... I still believe It holds up the best in grading and gives me a more filmic image.

Jason you might want to peep my tests on film modes - it is #3 on my list of best modes behind Smooth and Standard (which is as close to raw as you can get) Smooth has a very mild shadow boost but other than that it's identical to Standard.

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/3315/gh2-film-modes-matrices-and-dynamic-range/p1

I'm still compiling all the data, but Dynamic, followed by Vibrant and Cinema are the worst offenders in terms of what the profile does to the image especially the highlights - and not in a good way. And Nostalgic is stretching blacks in a major way and adding noise. Also see these threads for more on the subject

Skin Tone http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/62959#Comment_62959

Exposure for best grading results http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/3773/expose-in-the-zone-getting-the-best-image-for-grading./p1

@shian possibly I'm doing it wrong, but this was the order I was using...from top to bottom.

1. Density Night (70% opac)
2. Spectral Enhancer (30-50%)
3. Shadow Lift
4. Green Kill
5. [Footage]
   • Color Finesse 3 (Tech Pass) - RGB adjustments - Luma mod - Levels adjustment

In almost every instance, when I add Spectral Enhancer, I get a whole boat load of colour that pops out of nowhere and makes flat areas ugly. I'll post some screens once I've finished this latest render.

Belated happy fourth of July. This one took about 5 mins color grading. Simply Warmed and Spectral Enhanced. Then CineGhamma curve was tweaked to be a reverse S-curve to reduce contrast.

Oh I'm flattered. Yeah Norah... I love her!!!

@itimjim - nice. If you're on CS6 try the new Skin Tone LUT on the member download page instead of Green Kill... I think you'll really like it. Set it at somewhere between 33-50%, and you'll get that desaturated skin tone you're after without having to go so heavy on the Dense Night GHear