Look what Color Correction can do.

I think I can safely say I've learned a lot in a year and a half. Look how I color corrected this scene way back in December of 2000 compared to how I did it now. Can you tell which is which?

[image=http://www.pe.net/~shoemake/matt/images/hou.jpg]

 

i hope the right one is the latest... i like the coloration, but the very right edge is a bit dark.

 

The right one is in fact the new version. I don't see the problem with it being dark in that spot though, it just didn't happen to have much light there, so when I did the color correction it became black. Looks better than gray.

 

wow it's amazing !!

Could we hope to have a litlle tutorial with this ?

 

Very nice..

I second the tutorial idea.. it would be much appreciated.. for the greater good of all man kind.. woman kind too..

jezza

 

Looks good but the contrast is a little too high since it seems that a lot of the backgrouond detail that was distinguishable is lost now.
Colour correction is just that...you still try to balance out the lights and the darks without losing any detail at the same time.

 

Very nice. Bit dark but it is up to the mood of the action. But what kind of camera did you use to make the original one? Also the type of lighting you use in the original one!

 

nice work.

 

very nice...... are we gonna see a tutorial?

 

good work...make a tutorial

 

So I says to Mayble I says, "When do we get to see a tutorial?" and Mayble says to me, she says...

 

I like it, Ghenna! Very tasteful, and radically different from the original. This all done in AE?

 

I suppose the darkness is just a personal preference then.

alphacentauri, the camera was a Sony DCR-TR7000, probably about a mid-range digital camera. If I remember correctly (since it was so long ago) we used the light that hung from above and an extra one that someone held.

Sciz, it was indeed corrected in After Effects, and it should be able to be done with the standard bundle.


As for a tutorial, would you guys want pictures with it? I'll work on that when I can.

 

I personally prefer vague "concept tutorials" that don't give you all the exact details or hold your hand through the whole proccess as it encourages the reader to experiment and discover their own methods.

So a quick paragraph or two without pictures would be perfect in my opinion.

But then again, that's just me.

 

I would appreciate a pretty specific tutorial, but hey, if you can do it fast by making it vague, then that's great too.

-Kol.

 

yes i want pictures in the tutorial !
it's much better especially for color correction !!

 

Although I find all this tutorial talk great and all, but how can any of you tell which is better? We need to see the original shot.

-tm

 

Good point, so I went ahead and added the original version to the picture. It's on the left

 

So now you see we need a tutorial

Please do it, it would help so many people 'round here !

 

I second that. If you could do a tutorial for it then ...... the rewards for it would be far greater than you would imagine! :\

 

Until the tutorial is finished I thought I'd play around with the original pic in After Effects just to see what kind of results I could come up with.

Color Correction Test

I managed to get some of the color saturation out but I still need to do some work on the contrast in order to give it the cinematic feel.

Your method is really great and I look forward to the tutorial

 

--bump--

<cough>TUTORIAL!<cough>

-Kol.

 

--bump again--

Sorry man. not trying to rush you.

-Kol.

 

Calm down.

 

Jerak, what sort of tutorial are you looking to get, anyway? Color correction is used for several things:

1. to give a consistent look to images shot on various cameras in various different lighting conditions.

2. To create a stylistic change to the look of a picture. For example, IN the George Clooney film "Oh Brother, Where Art thou?" the filmmakers used computer color correction techniques to isolate and saturate certain parts of the picture.

3. To correct out-of-standard colors. For example, NTSC video displays only a certain range of colors correctly, and color correction is used to make sure the images conform to, or "are legal" in the NTSC broadcast.

What he posted above is interesting, but can be called color correction only in the loosest sense of the term. "Color manipulation" is a more appropriate term. Color correction needs a reason, whether it be aesthetic, conforming or consistency oriented, and is very often an eye of the beholder art.

Personally, I feel that any version of the image above is acceptable. Each, in motion, may convey a separate mood or idea within a film, but on their own they are just 3 images that look a bit different from each other.

-tm