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Color Grading and Correction - Learning resources

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SandeepDey

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Hi all,

I desire to educate myself a bit about Color Grading and Correction. I am primarily a director, but I want to learn enough to know how easy/difficult I am making my colorist's life when I OK a take.

I would appreciate it if I could be pointed to some books or online resources which would give me nutshell overview of the process and a brief insight into the art.

Thanks,
Sandeep
 
SandeepDey said:
Hi all,

I desire to educate myself a bit about Color Grading and Correction. I am primarily a director, but I want to learn enough to know how easy/difficult I am making my colorist's life when I OK a take.

I would appreciate it if I could be pointed to some books or online resources which would give me nutshell overview of the process and a brief insight into the art.

Thanks,
Sandeep
Click to expand...
Hi Sandeep. Very noble ambition.

This may be way more than you're looking for but fxphd.com have two courses on color correction this term - one on DaVinci and another on Apple Color. The latter, while based around Color, is quite general in nature and very good. The term is about 3/4 through but you can still join and play catch-up.

Note I'm not affiliated with fxphd in any way except I am taking classes this term and they are top-class quality. My two cents worth anyway.

Regards - Mike
 
Reading and courses are definitely helpful, but you'll only scratch the tip of the iceberg doing this second hand.

My recommendation is to sit in on as many color sessions as possible with as many different colorists as possible (grading material from as many media as possible) to get a better overall picture.

And don't restrict yourself to any specific platform (i.e. DaVinci, Spirit, Baselight, Scratch, etc...). Many folks get caught up in the hardware/software hype, but it's 99.9999999999999999% bullshit.

The real difference is the colorist and support staff at any particular facility.


cheers,

JT
 
Example digital color correction tools... freeish to try

Example digital color correction tools... freeish to try

You can read an example digital color correction at my site,

http://www.dancad3d.com/S0410300.HTM#LADO2B5.JPG

You need to scroll up and down on that page. You can then use RED CINE to extract TIF frames from R3D files and use my "freeish" DANCAD87.EXE (tm) to do color correction on those RED ONE frames yourself to learn how the levels, gamma, and curves change the results, as well as the chroma matrix values. If you don't have any R3D files you can get some on REDRELAY.net,

http://www.redrelay.net/

http://www.red.com/support/release_history/6

I am working on some new things you can check "What's New" at the top of the page later to see how that goes. If you want me to CC some TIF frames for you I can try. Note that that old LAD film is really messed up, clean TIF frames from RED ONE can result in "better" results.
 
Mike, John, Dan,

Appreciate your responses and your time, gents.

I believe that CC is a deep subject. I have played around with curves in Color & Mattes in AE. But I know I haven't even begun to scratch the surface. I am to trying just that. I will be glad to if I can just scratch the surface. Maybe then I will be able to fathom it's depth. I have sat in on grading sessions which is why I know, I need to know more.

Dan, I will check out your website rightaways. I am not in the middle of a production as of now. But as an exercise I can just use some test footage I have. I see you are based in San Francisco. I am across the bay in Fremont.

Thanks again,
Sandeep
 
Thanks shocklight.
-s
 
shocklight said:
Here are a couple of books on the topic by Steve Hullfish:

The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction
Color Correction for Video, Second Edition

Haven't read 'em, but Lucas from Assimilate endorsed his books:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9402

Mr. Hullfish posted here about a year ago, and the redusers seemed fairly well disposed to him:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9983
Click to expand...

I've Read it and it is really great. Ofcourse it doesn't make you a colorist. Only practical experince will get you there, but the book has a lot of great guys contributing and I learned a lot from it.
 
Virgil, thanks for supporting the recommedation. I plan on checking out the book.

-Sandeep
 
Steve,

I took a quick look at your website. Looks like I will be spending some time there. Thanks a lot for the pointer.

-Sandeep
 
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