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)

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/no-stupid-questions-with-colin-smith/introduction-to-speedgrade/

ProLUT is a color grading pack of looks based on real films and movies.

It comes in every format you can think of so that you can use it in whatever software you're using.

Watch the demonstration video here:

More info http://www.davidhjlindberg.com/?product=prolut

http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2013/09/adobe-premiere-pro-cc-october-2013-release.html

There is a ton going on with this update, but this paragraph is what has me smiling.

"Color is becoming increasingly important throughout an entire production workflow, and the addition of the Lumetri Deep Color Engine in the June 2013 Premiere Pro CC release gave editors the ability to work with beautiful SpeedGrade grades right inside the application. With this release, SpeedGrade has fully implemented the Mercury Playback Engine from Premiere Pro, and a brand new workflow between the two applications is being introduced, namely Direct Link. With Direct Link, editors can save a project in Premiere Pro and then open the sequence they were working on directly in SpeedGrade, with no need to deal with interchange formats or any kind of conversion. SpeedGrade then opens the sequence in a familiar timeline that more closely matches how you work in Premiere Pro. You can access all the clip edit points, transitions, and layers, using the same track layout as Premiere Pro. From there, create your grades, and then reopen the same project in Premiere Pro with all your color work fully intact. This workflow uses no interchange formats and no importing or exporting – it’s just the same Premiere Pro project moving between the two applications."

A quick demo of the capabilities apparently. I guess this whole CC thing has some merit update wise.

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-at-ibc-2013/adobe-premiere-pro-cc-speedgrade-cc-direct-link

What I envision as a workflow would be the following--use a preset from each cam, not a custom WB, so anyone could use these Look Up Tables, then shoot some scenes with the Macbeth Color chart, using the same chart and lighting for each cam, and then finally just put the numbers online. I suppose an even better solution would be to somehow convert these LUTs into Cineform values so we could bypass Speedgrade altogether.

The result would be that one could open a preset, say "incandescent" in the GH2 and 5D MK2, or pro camcorder, then just apply the LUT. And anyone could use the LUT because it uses the preset WB in the Cams, which presumably are the same for every user.

Anyone in the world could then use these LUTs.