reducing the color palette

[francisco santos]

Im wondering if any colorist on here can give me some insight on the process of reducing the color palette in post. I would assume that you would reduce saturation and introduce the selected colors in via a lift gamma gain or curves technique. Unfortunatley im not getting good results as when doing so im losing skin tones in the process.

Thanks,
Frank

 

[Doug Beatty]

The above look was achieved in Resolve by isolating the blue channel and using it in a layer mixer node set to overlay. I had to use some power windows to protect skin tones and the puppet's red mouth.

There may be an easier way using Hue vs. Saturation curves, but I found the blue channel provided a nice matte to isolate skin/puppet tones.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Or you could select skin tones as a key, then invert it to select everything but skin tones, and then desaturate that. I've done that many times in makeup and hair product commercials.

If you're trying to have colorful people in a B&W world, that requires careful coordination between the set decorator, cinematographer, and post crew. Beyond a certain point, it moves from color correction to visual effects.