To access the old thread - go here: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1817/colorghear-toolkit-color-grading-system-for-ae/p1

So as not to be misleading, ColorGHear is a system, and not so much a plug-in... a school of thought supported through the ColorGHear Toolkit -which is a set of MODULAR PRESETS for After Effects and ColorGHear Pro - which is a set of MODULAR LUTs for Davinci Resolve, FCP7, Premiere Pro, and Adobe Speedgrade, and is not what you'd consider a classical style plug-in.

The toolkit isn't a collection of drag and drop "looks" like Magic Bullet. It is a series of nodes which contain a set of grading instructions or "macros" (a set of operations), specially designed to work with each other to speed up your workflow. Along with these nodes, comes a system of grading which replaces having to perform the minutia of individual corrections by hand. Learned through the online tutorials, this system will give you speedy and precise grades. It is this precision that prevents you from "bending" your images like with standard methods which is what allows me to get such drastic and dramatic grades from normally flimsy DSLR codecs.

As a professional colorist, I noticed that because of the way the color channels in RGB video are tied together; that typical methods like the Color Balance tool, and the 3-way Color Corrector will actually bend an RGB image out of shape. So in order to maximize the full potential of any given image, I had to learn a method of grading that would avoid damaging the footage. I called this method "precision grading."

I also noticed that in executing these precision grades, I was performing the same operations over and over. I began taking notes on what these operations were, and trying to determine if it were possible to create a set of interacting preset nodes that would save me time in having to repeatedly perform these operations.

I soon discovered 37 distinct sets of operations that would serve to correctly grade any, and all footage. 6 of these macros cancel each other out, and only 1 of those 6 could be effectively used at any given time leaving me with 32 nodes - giving me 1,024 possible combinations. Over a thousand distinct grades. Over time, I added some other tools to the set which now sits at 74 nodes all of which are designed to be used in conjunction with the other nodes. (69, if you subtract the 5 canceling nodes) which brings the total to 4,761 distinct grades.

The precision method I mention above is demonstrated here. Along with how the 3-way Color Corrector damages your footage.

The power of ColorGHear is presented in the video demonstrations below.

ColorGHear is available at http://www.ColorGHear.com

(ColorGHear Pro not yet available to the public)

Since it's Friday I decided to make a color grading tutorial for you guys on how to create the cinematic golden look as you can find in the beautiful film A Very Long Engagement.

I'm doing this all inside of Adobe Premiere Pro since that's the most common software you guys asks me to do a tutorial on.

Hope you'll like it!

Obviously, my question's about matching the color grades. I can't see to find a set of settings or a LUT that would take my GH4 footage and conform it to the standard Panasonic curves in any consistent way. The LUTs that are closest-- the standard Vlog to v35, Balazar's luts-- have two faults: they're a bit greyish in the low end, and they're actually kind of dim, so I have to adjust the floor and boost the low-to-midranges.

Seems to me that there ought to be a LUT that accurately brings the Vlog footage to something very close to Standard. Any suggestions?

It displays data of Rec 709 YCbCr and fixes pixel location where you like to read color changes - you see changes during color grading at defined position.

Tip for MAC: take care about huge shadow around Windows, this acts like a filter if you pick close by

1. Remove artifacts and de-noise.
2. Balance your shots by adjusting BLACKS/MIDS/WHITES, SATURATION and WHITE BALANCE.
3. Relight within a shot using power windows or masks.
4. Add gradients, diffusion and other lens filters.
5. Add vignettes
6. Grade your images
7. Simulate a film stock of your choice
8. Resize and sharpen

Since the introduction of Digital Cameras it became easy to film and to learn making indie films, you just grab your camera and experiment with it. However the look of the digital footage(even color corrected and graded) still leaves amateur and domestic camera impression, the digital footage doesn't look as good as straight out of the film camera.

What is it about film that people like so much? Simple - it's color. Maybe some will say dynamic range, some will say the motion and flares. But the best feel about the film is that it looks unique and cinematic. People say that film has a unique color processing that can never be achieved by a digital camera. I take a more scientific approach and after many researches I found some breaking points in simple After Effects effects profiles and LUT usabilities and achieved unique fake color caps which gives that beloved film feel. The limited color brightness is one of the most important things when trying to emulate film look.

The hardest part in grading Digital footage is that it needs to be RAW or LOG, that means a flat footage taken out of expensive cameras. Then it is graded digitally by shifting colors of keyed parts, adding tints and editing curves. Amateur and Indie filmmakers sometimes doesn't have all those REDs and Black Magics and ARRIs and other beautifully named machines and anyway they want to look pro, so what we all indie filmmakers do is not called grading we just do the color correction - just create some interesting looks by shifting and tinting video. But there is certain points and colors that will leave that digital and domestic feel in the DSLR video even when it is color corrected. The colors overbright, and oversaturated areas doesn't change with color correction. Many of indie filmmakers lowers the saturation, but what happens is that they desaturate all areas of the footage so colors in shadows becomes undersaturated. I tried to fix it by collecting some unique braking points of Adobe After Effects CS6 as known as ColorGhear techniques but instead of doing it manually I tried to automate the process. The process is not grading nor color correction - it's something very different and unique and is used as a simple preset for After Effects CS6, which will be available soon for just a few dollars ($5-$10).

So I made some tests. At first I didn’t even think that I would come up with something interesting but now I actually need your opinion, it is usable? Does it really make a difference and most important – does it make the footage look like FILM (kodak). It does certain things to a simple footage: adds color bright limit, adds saturation limit ONLY to oversaturated areas, increases saturation to undersaturated areas, makes overbright colors(not whites) more visible and appealing on screen (for human eye).

There was a guy who tried to create and then disappeared his plug-in known as "Filmvision plug-in" I think he used similar techniques.

What do you think ?

Also I will make a video with just original color limiting process because the current video also affects the overall saturation and makes it more blockbuster Blue Orange type of thing.

Just wanted to show you my latest work. A short film which I edited and graded.

If you want to read more about the editing and grading you can visit this blogpost in which I've explained everything a bit further: http://davidhjlindberg.blogspot.se/2013/04/the-road-of-life.html

The Road of Life

The Road of Life - Grading Breakdown

Just wanted to let you know that I recently launched my new site which will a bit as my old blog (http://davidhjlindberg.blogspot.se/) which maybe some of you have seen, but it will be way more active in terms of updates, competitions, posts and articles.

The same time as the launch I decided to start another grading contest which maybe some of you have been a part of in my previous ones. If you want to know more about the site and the grading contest, visit my blog and read the first post! http://lindbergdavid.com/

I've already got entries to the contest but there are two weeks left before it closes, so make sure to be a part of it!

All the best, /D

And, It's breakdown;

http://mohitseb.com

Any tips on how to not do this again in the future would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Without putting too much into grading/color correcting the videos the videos to match, would it be better to just go with a second GH2 and shoot everything twice, or just get two GH1s?

Also, if I went with the dual GH1 setup what hack would best match the GH2 Flowmotion 2.02 IQ?

Also do you think that one should start with a simple color grading tool like Magic bullet Colorista/Looks or Color Finesse or move directly to more advance stuff like DaVinci Resolve. Also i heard some criticizm of Adobe Speedgrade, what is your take on that?

Do you need well lit scenes for color grading or can you grade scenes that are lit using only the sun?

http://www.fourseasonshd.com/cgi-bin/csvsearch.pl?db=db1&tp=tp4&search=bluelight1

Basicly he is putting a color filter in front of the lense to move the exposure of red and blue channel up some stops. Then in post he is trying to fix the tint. Does this make sense? Wouldn´t setting a "wrong" white balance have the same effect?

QUESTION===> If your video / film content is not aimed at TV distribution but only for the web and also film-festivals, how crucial is it to have a broadcast monitor for color correction? Are there good, affordable (less than $1,500 or abouts) alternatives to a professional broadcast monitor that give nearly as good results in color critical work? Is there a good source of info on this?

What about a monitor like this: http://www.necdisplay.com/p/desktop-monitors/pa271w-bk

(Although even that is a bit pricey...)

Here is a little before and after comparison video to show how far you can push hacked footage during a color grade.

Hope ya like it,

Michael "Pixelphile"