basic workflow inside color

[Avi Liani]

Dear All,

I am not professional colorist but I think I corrected color well and eye likes it. So my workflow inside color was basically as follows:

1. I corrected white and black balance, I used either automatic balance or corrected manually by contrast and brightness on RED TAB.
2. Then I adjusted Kelvin and Tint, on RED TAB
3. I adjusted saturation on RED TAB and RED, BLUE, GREEN colors on RED TAB

4. Then I switched to Basics and adjusted gamma, main lift, saturation shadow/highlight sat if needed.

5. Then I adjusted actual colors on graphics

6. Then I added secondaries if needed

Does this look as professional workflow? or I was doing incorrectly

Important is my eye and audience's eye likes new colors. It cannot be even compared to original footage. It's really got what film look is. But I still need this approach to be rated here

thanks

 

[George Butterfield]

Important is my eye and audience's eye likes new colors. It cannot be even compared to original footage. It's really got what film look is. But I still need this approach to be rated here

You always have the option of doing no color correction, or a little color correction or massive corrections as you have done in this case. It depends on what you want the final film to look like. There are no rules. If you did no color corrections it would be because you felt no color corrections were necessary, this is not uncommon for a short film, or single shots.

 

[Avi Liani]

You always have the option of doing no color correction, or a little color correction or massive corrections as you have done in this case. It depends on what you want the final film to look like. There are no rules. If you did no color corrections it would be because you felt no color corrections were necessary, this is not uncommon for a short film, or single shots.

Ok it is feature film

However I edited color in acceptable way?

 

[Peter Stelzhammer]

In my experience automatic balance tends to be a little harsh with the contrast and often lowers the black level in a way you loose details... Of course it is in your hand how much detail needs to be preserved and what result or look is wanted. But basically I don't see anything wrong with your workflow... What monitoring do you use and what format are you finishing it?

 

[Avi Liani]

In my experience automatic balance tends to be a little harsh with the contrast and often lowers the black level in a way you loose details... Of course it is in your hand how much detail needs to be preserved and what result or look is wanted. But basically I don't see anything wrong with your workflow... What monitoring do you use and what format are you finishing it?

This is professional monitor. I will check but it is callibrated as far as I know. Regarding format it is 1080P 24fps, quicktime movie apple prores 444 compression. I will record on blue ray which will be for small screen room in theater and for big theater, I am going to do dcp as they have dcp projector.

You know I noticed that harsh color when clicking on autobalance, but then I manually adjusted contrast and brightness to fit. What lesson I learned was that starting directly by manual adjusting is not as good as cleaning shot by autobalance and then manually adjusting. But there are exclusions. For some shots autobalance was horrible from beginning.

I like principle eye like, eye feels film then you done it corrrectly no matter what rules you followed

 

[sandro-bachmann]

real name please

 

[Avi Liani]

real name please

It's in the signature

Sandro is my son's name.

Where are you from? I see sttutgart.

 

[Ben Brainerd]

Autobalance is *NEVER* a good idea. If you're looking for a shortcut, do a basic setup on one shot, then copy it to everything else. Color's auto-correction is very twitchy, and can do some very odd things that aren't necessarily visible at first glance.

 

[Peter Stelzhammer]

Jep - Ben is right. I did not mention it but I also never use auto balance myself and wouldn't recommend it… Just because I don't fully understand what exactly it does and why. It is difficult to reproduce and I think it is better to know what you do so you can always reproduce it - with auto balance you pretty much loose that ability.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Jep - Ben is right. I did not mention it but I also never use auto balance myself and wouldn't recommend it… Just because I don't fully understand what exactly it does and why. It is difficult to reproduce and I think it is better to know what you do so you can always reproduce it - with auto balance you pretty much loose that ability.

It's not hard to find out... click the advanced tab and have a look.

Lot of gain operations... Not very nice at all, and it def messes up any nice gradients in the image. + gain = grain and low precission. Not really what you would want to do for a cinematic release.... if it isn't exactly the look you want....

 

[Rick Turners]

A professional colorist "workflow" in any color app does not have to include adjusting every option on the box.

Sometimes its just throwing down the shadows and lowering the highlights inside of the legal limits and doing a little saturation and thats what the image needed.

Lots of people can spin the balls and jerk some nobs and call themselves a colorist.. its more about the sensibilities of understanding how to approach all kinds of images and what to evoke from them.

I think your bigger concern will be how to get from REC 709 space (which you are hopefully grading in on your potentially calibrated monitor) and xyz/dcp and film out color spaces. Understanding gamma shifts in different codecs etc etc etc etc.

 

[Ben Brainerd]

A professional colorist "workflow" in any color app does not have to include adjusting every option on the box.

Amen. This is why I don't let clients sit in on my set-up sessions. A lot of them seem to think you *HAVE* to use secondaries, color FX, etc. You'd be amazed what you can do with some basic primary tweaking.

That said, auto-balance is still a bad idea.

 

[Avi Liani]

Amen. This is why I don't let clients sit in on my set-up sessions. A lot of them seem to think you *HAVE* to use secondaries, color FX, etc. You'd be amazed what you can do with some basic primary tweaking.

That said, auto-balance is still a bad idea.

I agree to this too, on my movie I never used FX room because there was no inevitability.

Contrast, Saturation, Kelvin, Tint, Blue Red, Green and that's all

The important is actor should retain skin color of his own.

 

[Rick Turners]

I forget who said it.. (or maybe its just a general ideology)

The cinematographer who can light a scene better with fewer lights is a better cinematographer?

Same applies to color perhaps?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

I forget who said it.. (or maybe its just a general ideology)

The cinematographer who can light a scene better with fewer lights is a better cinematographer?

Same applies to color perhaps?

As a wery wide general statement to be taken with large lumps of salt whenever you want to shoot or post "something else"...

A definite maybe perhaps....