Grasping and Understanding Coloring Images

[Jacob Callaghan]

Hello Reduser,

If this is the wrong forum please move.

I have been shooting for 2 years and have owned an epic for about 7 months now. I have been really struggling with color grading/correcting. I cant seem to grasp and train my eyes to recognize colors as effectively as i should. I really struggle with matching shots. I also cant seem to understand skin tones. I work with alot of action sports and have alot of trouble finding a look that works. I feel there is so many options how do i pick what look? I feel very overwhelmed by this process and find myself spending way to much time recoloring and recoloring shots over and over.

I am reaching out to you on Reduser to ask for any helpful tips and tricks. I have been reading and watching as many tutorials that i can find. I know this is not an easy craft and takes years to master. Anything helps though.

Thanks,

Jacob

 

[Nick Morrison]

Talk to Jake Blackstone. He's a wizard.

 

[Clayton Burkhart]

Hello Reduser,

If this is the wrong forum please move.

I have been shooting for 2 years and have owned an epic for about 7 months now. I have been really struggling with color grading/correcting. I cant seem to grasp and train my eyes to recognize colors as effectively as i should. I really struggle with matching shots. I also cant seem to understand skin tones. I work with alot of action sports and have alot of trouble finding a look that works. I feel there is so many options how do i pick what look? I feel very overwhelmed by this process and find myself spending way to much time recoloring and recoloring shots over and over.

I am reaching out to you on Reduser to ask for any helpful tips and tricks. I have been reading and watching as many tutorials that i can find. I know this is not an easy craft and takes years to master. Anything helps though.

Thanks,

Jacob

Hi Jacob,
This is going to sound a bit counterintuitive, but you are looking for answers on the outside, when in fact the real answer comes within you.
The truth is that there is a great difference between color correction and color grading.
Color correction implies an objective standard. 50% middle grey is a specific value which can be matched for instance. Or another example is that there is a little bar between the red and yellow zones of a vectorgraph which corresponds to caucasian skin tones that you can shift the color towards. Also, black is clear on an RGB parade (bottom) and so is white (top) - equal the values across RGB in either zone and you begin to neutralize your whites and blacks. Your scopes help enormously here. Get the contrast right and then work on the colors too, not the other way around, because contrast affects the colors.

However, anything beyond such quantifiable values (and even the case of skin tones is questionable in that regard) and you enter the realm of subjective choices. For this you need to try and match what you desire on the inside. That is color grading.
How do I feel about a scene ? Is it cold or warm? Do I wish to focus on an individual and direct our eyes towards him or here? How can I do that ? Does adding or subtracting saturation intensify the shot for me, etc.
So until you know what you want to achieve on an emotional level for tha scene, you will never be able to determine what needs to be done in the grade and grope your way towards that.
The truth is, it's an inside job.


PS: Check out Alexis Van Hurkman's book "Color Correction Handbook: Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema". Really the best oone out there...

 

[jake blackstone]

Frankly color correction and color grading had been used rather interchangeably. But if you want to be technical about it, color correction is all about correcting the image in order to correct the acquisition errors, like wrong color temperature and exposure, re-framing etc or to correct the image to fit into a look you want that image to be. After the correction comes the color grading, with the word "grading" being the pertinent word. To level or smooth to a desired gradient. In other words, you need to match shots so they all flow from one to the other.
Then spend 10,000 hours perfecting the skill and you're done...

 

[M.Halsell]

A good starting point. Get familiar with the artist color wheel. Build up your muscle memory on the relationship of primary, secondary and tertiary colors. As you begin to push and pull colors, the artist wheel will help you understand the dynamics of color relationship.

Learn early how to best balance the shot as mentioned. Getting a good neutral point with the best level of contrast. The early potholes you will encounter are images that have non neutral color (color cast), shots not lit optimally (high key or low key), and different color temperatures (images shot under different color light sources). Learn the value of the scopes to help quickly read and identity color problems within the image. Train your eye to spot the most common color hurdles and work on building up your bag of solutions. That would the color correction portion of the puzzle.

Next is color grading, which is the creative or stylized approach to applying consistent color treatment across the project. At this point its subjective or interpretive to the colorist, director or client, but this where experience and dedicated color knowledge comes into play. Often the solutions or style lie past a simple one grade approach. The bag of tricks are channel manipulation, masking, filtering, clamping, relighting, smoothing, tracking, isolation and others to achieve something that someone would 'pay for'.

Just a quick note about using filters to apply color grades: The Magic Bullet Looks and similar packges have become popular for obvious reasons. These solutions work well in the following senarios: 1) Dialing in or defining a quick look early in creative treatment 2) Low-no budget for any color work where color may not be super critical. But these type of solutions loose footing under longer format, color critical, complex grading situations.

So the the color correction and color grading process is similar in analogy to Algebra I & 2. Without the proper framework or clear understanding of color priniciple, you are pretty much abandoned to taking darts and stabs at the color grading process.

And as Jake said. The pain of experience will the bring the pleasure of success.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Hello Reduser,

If this is the wrong forum please move.

I have been shooting for 2 years and have owned an epic for about 7 months now. I have been really struggling with color grading/correcting. I cant seem to grasp and train my eyes to recognize colors as effectively as i should. I really struggle with matching shots. I also cant seem to understand skin tones. I work with alot of action sports and have alot of trouble finding a look that works. I feel there is so many options how do i pick what look? I feel very overwhelmed by this process and find myself spending way to much time recoloring and recoloring shots over and over.

I am reaching out to you on Reduser to ask for any helpful tips and tricks. I have been reading and watching as many tutorials that i can find. I know this is not an easy craft and takes years to master. Anything helps though.

Thanks,

Jacob

It takes time to become good at spotting colors. The science behind how we percieve colors and how they work together in a flow and coordinate with our brain is not an easy one. Having an experienced colorist do the job isn't about the tools but about their ability to understand colors. It's one of the least understood professions, much like people had ideas about CGI VFX artists just pushing buttons to create a dinosaur.

So, first off, just keep doing it, you will get better at it the more you do it. Second, don't over do it. Most settings in any color grading software goes way beyond what is necessary in 99,99% of all calibrations. If you find yourself to have pushed highlights, midtones or anything to it's maximum, there's something wrong somewhere and it might screw up the "fidelity" of the whole image.

Doing color grading is about fine tuning. I would suggest that you use a powerful tool for the job, the most obvious is DaVinci Resolve because the Lite version is free but better than most other softwares, even paid ones.
Resolve use a node based workflow so to start out here's an easy setup. The first node should be color correction and everything after that is color grading. This means that the first adjustment you do is matching everything together in a scene so there's no weird colors that mismatch in a cut or stand out too much (depending on how it's shot). Anything after that setting is your creative choices. There are hundreds of strategies on how to do color grading, but the basic thing to do would be that.

To get skin tones right you might need to use something neutral for your eyes. If you have a reference image with skin tones you feel are natural, import that as a reference into your color grading software and whenever you feel lost and off track, check the reference compared to your shot. Another tip is to not focus too hard on one shot for too long. Make adjustments for a couple of minutes and move on, then do another pass through the entire edit. The reason is that you might loose track on how the colors work together between cuts and you might overdo one shot so much that it stands out compared to the others. This way you get a better consistency between all the shots.

Then there's the most obvious thing, you need a calibrated monitor. It need to be correct, otherwise you will never be able to get the colors you want.

There are many more things to say about color grading but the more you do it, the better you get. Best thing is to import references with different looks and try to match those looks with your images, it's a great way to understand how you reach a certain look and find your own tricks and strategies.

 

[Hugh Scully]

+1 Alex Van Hurkman's Color Correction Handbook.

 

[M.Halsell]

Some approach color visually, others technically. I will just add a bit more technical roadmap specifically to fleshtones. Color correcting human skin adjusts two components: 1) Grey-scale values (exposure) and 2) Color values (hue/saturation). The Grey scales values can be measured with the Waveform and color values measured in the Vectorscope. The Waveform measures strictly greyscale values, Vectorscope measures measures color.

Fleshtone baseline reference numbers are - caucassion skin measuring higher on the Waveform (up to 75-80%). Asian/Hispanic skin 50-55%, Black skin 45-50%. Gray values in males in each category fall roughly 10% below the females. The numbers also adjust higher/lower depending on studio vs outdoor lighting. Over/underexposed, focus quality.

 

[M.Halsell]

When cobbling together info from various sources, the syntax may vary. So add this info to the cheat sheet:

Shadows = blacks, pedestal or lift
Midtones = gamma, grey or mids
Highlights = whites, gamma or luma

Chroma = color
Saturation = gain

Caveat. Internal software scopes are less effective than scopes than are receiving signal downstream from the source.

 

[Bob Gundu]

I would add to the other advice here, try to at least capture the correct colour balance from the beginning. I like to shoot colour chart before a scene too.

 

[Mike P.]

Then spend 10,000 hours perfecting the skill and you're done...

Ahaha! See, it's just that easy!

As other have said, I try to get a decent shot-to-shot balance in-camera, but it's usually fairly broad strokes (e.g. Daylight at 5600k, Tungsten at 3200k) and the best results are obviously in controlled lighting/sets.

All else fails, go B&W... At least then you'll only have to worry about the contrast, black point, and white point. (And yes, I'm joking).

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Frankly color correction and color grading had been used rather interchangeably. But if you want to be technical about it, color correction is all about correcting the image in order to correct the acquisition errors, like wrong color temperature and exposure, re-framing etc or to correct the image to fit into a look you want that image to be. After the correction comes the color grading, with the word "grading" being the pertinent word. To level or smooth to a desired gradient. In other words, you need to match shots so they all flow from one to the other...

Exactly... Many really continuously make the very mistake to interchange the two were they are in fact completely different tasks and shovel NOT be used as one as they obviously are two completely different things!

 

[Nick Morrison]

Frankly color correction and color grading had been used rather interchangeably. But if you want to be technical about it, color correction is all about correcting the image in order to correct the acquisition errors, like wrong color temperature and exposure, re-framing etc or to correct the image to fit into a look you want that image to be. After the correction comes the color grading, with the word "grading" being the pertinent word. To level or smooth to a desired gradient. In other words, you need to match shots so they all flow from one to the other.
Then spend 10,000 hours perfecting the skill and you're done...

Love the distinction btw "correction" and "grading". You see - he's a Wizard!!

 

[Phil Holland]

I've got about 15 years of professional color experience under my fingers. I also instruct Color Theory at The Gnomon School of Visual Effects and various workshops.

Jake and I agree on many things color related and I want to expand a bit.

As he mentioned it's good to clarify between Color Correction and Color Grading.

The way I've always worked is:

- Color Correction = The perceptual or numerical color transformation of an image to make it "normal looking".
- Color Grading = The more creative stylized color pass if desired.

On larger jobs in particular, Color Correcting every shot and scene prior too Color Grading is very helpful. Once things are balanced by eye or by chart you have a baseline. Then when moving onto your Color Grade you can perform revisions much, much easier and quicker when the client has notes.

On smaller projects, especially if they are shot rather carefully, you can get away with moving straight to the Color Grade if desired. I'm talking 100 shots or less here.


To Jacob's original post, it sounds like your lost in a sea of color. Which is fine. It can be overwhelming at times with so many directions to go.

First I recommend getting well versed on Color Theory. Study color schemes and how color interact with each other. Much of what we witness today on screen is the simple juxtaposition between complimentary colors without much in between, overall focusing on warm and cool. I would also recommend taking some time to study some old paintings and some of your favorite films. Take a look at their palettes and try to imagine what informed those decisions. A lot of a frame is lighting, art direction, and exposure rating. Outside of that examine the color carefully.

Asking yourself a few questions like:

- What is the tone of the piece?
- What is the mood of the scene?

Are very useful. Similar questions really that you'd have when directing, lighting, or shooting a scene.

Good color can enhance the mood on screen for the audience.

Color work in general is about making deliberate decisions once you are zoned into what you are looking for. Those decisions can guide you and your focus hopefully without getting lost within the possibilities. Though it's good to explore a bit outside the box if the situation allows for that.

 

[Bob Gundu]

Speaking of Color Correction, I'm sure many of you know about this restoration project, but man is it geeky! ...and cool :smile:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Amaz...-Removes-All-George-Lucas-Mistakes-66990.html

 

[Jacob Callaghan]

Thanks for the reply guys, some great stuff. I appreciate the help. You are correct Phil i am lost in a sea of color haha.

 

[M Most]

The way I've always worked is:

- Color Correction = The perceptual or numerical color transformation of an image to make it "normal looking".
- Color Grading = The more creative stylized color pass if desired.

Well, while this sounds very nice and logical, this certainly isn't the first time people on RedUser have decided to apply their own definitions to longstanding industry terminology. The truth is, however, a bit different than the "definitions" being offered here.

Color correction is a largely American term that has been used for years, certainly for as long as I've been in the industry. It was used to define what was generally done as part of a telecine process, and is basically the equivalent of film timing (another primarily American term) that was done in a lab. In the UK and other parts of the world, the lab process was called grading. For years, the people who did telecine transfers were known as Telecine Operators (TK Operators in the UK and elsewhere). As time went on, and the electronic process became more specialized and higher paid for those who were good at it, the term "operator" sounded a bit too technical. So the term "colorist" came into vogue, probably because it sounded more artistic and justified the high price companies were charging for the service (not surprising, given the cost of the equipment needed to do it). A bit later, the British term "grading" began to be used in place of "color correction," partly because it sounded more like an art, and partly because Americans in general think that anything that sounds British is somehow inherently more intelligent and sophisticated. Out of all the people here, it's likely that only Marc and possibly Jake remember all this, but the notion that somehow "correction" and "grading" are two different things is basically an invention of those who don't remember it. Doing a "base grade" followed by secondary manipulations and additions has been a common way of doing this work for almost 40 years. The use of the word "grade" has been around that long as well, assuming you have been working in Europe, where the term meant exactly the same thing as "timing" in the US - namely, the process of balancing the color channels to achieve a proper interpretation of the photography. That's it.

It might also be noted as a little historical footnote that when video post production of film originated material began in the 1980s, largely through the joint efforts of Lorimar (a production company) and Pacific Video (later known as Laser Pacific after a merger with Laser Edit), the implementation at Pacific was branded as the "Electronic Laboratory," and the people doing the color work were called timers, just as they were in the labs. The product of their work was called the Color Timed Master. If Pacific was a British company, they would have been called Graders and the masters would have been Color Graded Masters. There is no difference in the process or the work done to achieve the result. It's just that the American terms were "timing" and "color correction," and the British term was "grading." If people want to invent their own definitions for these things, I guess I can't stop them. But I can point out the actual reasons for the existence of these terms, and therefore what they **actually** mean. Or don't mean.

 

[M Most]

With respect to the original post in this thread (I just went back and re-read it), I would suggest forgetting about lift, gain, gamma, and separate correction of those ranges. Assuming you're working with log coded images (i.e., using RedLogFilm to interpret the RAW image), you might want to try a log grading approach, which simplifies at least the base grading significantly. Alexis explains this quite well in his book, but basically you want to work with only exposure and contrast to achieve the basic channel balance to bring out the photographic intent. By doing all of your balance using only an Exposure control (Offset in Resolve and some other systems), and controlling your contrast with a combination of the Exposure (offset) control and a Contrast control you should achieve a much more accurate base grade, and do it simpler and faster. You will need to place a "normalizing" LUT after that base grade, but if you're using RedlogFilm that is simply a log to video LUT.

As I said, Alexis explains this very well in his book. But it should be noted that this is also a very common way of doing DI work, particularly if you're using Lustre or Baselight.

 

[Phil Holland]

Well, while this sounds very nice and logical, this certainly isn't the first time people on RedUser have decided to apply their own definitions to longstanding industry terminology. The truth is, however, a bit different than the "definitions" being offered here.

Color correction is a largely American term that has been used for years, certainly for as long as I've been in the industry. It was used to define what was generally done as part of a telecine process, and is basically the equivalent of film timing (another primarily American term) that was done in a lab. In the UK and other parts of the world, the lab process was called grading. For years, the people who did telecine transfers were known as Telecine Operators (TK Operators in the UK and elsewhere). As time went on, and the electronic process became more specialized and higher paid for those who were good at it, the term "operator" sounded a bit too technical. So the term "colorist" came into vogue, probably because it sounded more artistic and justified the high price companies were charging for the service (not surprising, given the cost of the equipment needed to do it). A bit later, the British term "grading" began to be used in place of "color correction," partly because it sounded more like an art, and partly because Americans in general think that anything that sounds British is somehow inherently more intelligent and sophisticated. Out of all the people here, it's likely that only Marc and possibly Jake remember all this, but the notion that somehow "correction" and "grading" are two different things is basically an invention of those who don't remember it. Doing a "base grade" followed by secondary manipulations and additions has been a common way of doing this work for almost 40 years. The use of the word "grade" has been around that long as well, assuming you have been working in Europe, where the term meant exactly the same thing as "timing" in the US - namely, the process of balancing the color channels to achieve a proper interpretation of the photography. That's it.

It might also be noted as a little historical footnote that when video post production of film originated material began in the 1980s, largely through the joint efforts of Lorimar (a production company) and Pacific Video (later known as Laser Pacific after a merger with Laser Edit), the implementation at Pacific was branded as the "Electronic Laboratory," and the people doing the color work were called timers, just as they were in the labs. The product of their work was called the Color Timed Master. If Pacific was a British company, they would have been called Graders and the masters would have been Color Graded Masters. There is no difference in the process or the work done to achieve the result. It's just that the American terms were "timing" and "color correction," and the British term was "grading." If people want to invent their own definitions for these things, I guess I can't stop them. But I can point out the actual reasons for the existence of these terms, and therefore what they **actually** mean. Or don't mean.

Good to learn a bit of that history.

I wasn't around in the 80s. However, I was around at that weird moment when DI didn't exist and then did (1999-2001 and beyond). The effort put forth at the studio with this terminology was to help the client and the studios too understand what stage things were at. This was particularly important when we made the transition into doing just a few shots into doing a whole lot of shots. I had the luxury of defining that at the time.

CFI, Pacific Video, and eventually Laser Pacific were folks R&H worked with for some time. Deluxe and Technicolor in there a bit to, though not our primary labs.

There was a moment where Digital Color Work was the wild west and in that moment I chose to help simplify things at our studio and the production studios I worked for.

Made sense then, still makes sense today.

I've respected you for a while for information and experience like most of the post above, so I don't fully take this as an backhanded insult, though I'm aware it was. However, this is how it was done for over a decade while I was involved on about 120+ features.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Well, while this sounds very nice and logical, this certainly isn't the first time people on RedUser have decided to apply their own definitions to longstanding industry terminology. The truth is, however, a bit different than the "definitions" being offered here.

Color correction is a largely American term that has been used for years, certainly for as long as I've been in the industry. It was used to define what was generally done as part of a telecine process, and is basically the equivalent of film timing (another primarily American term) that was done in a lab. In the UK and other parts of the world, the lab process was called grading. For years, the people who did telecine transfers were known as Telecine Operators (TK Operators in the UK and elsewhere). As time went on, and the electronic process became more specialized and higher paid for those who were good at it, the term "operator" sounded a bit too technical. So the term "colorist" came into vogue, probably because it sounded more artistic and justified the high price companies were charging for the service (not surprising, given the cost of the equipment needed to do it). A bit later, the British term "grading" began to be used in place of "color correction," partly because it sounded more like an art, and partly because Americans in general think that anything that sounds British is somehow inherently more intelligent and sophisticated. Out of all the people here, it's likely that only Marc and possibly Jake remember all this, but the notion that somehow "correction" and "grading" are two different things is basically an invention of those who don't remember it. Doing a "base grade" followed by secondary manipulations and additions has been a common way of doing this work for almost 40 years. The use of the word "grade" has been around that long as well, assuming you have been working in Europe, where the term meant exactly the same thing as "timing" in the US - namely, the process of balancing the color channels to achieve a proper interpretation of the photography. That's it.

It might also be noted as a little historical footnote that when video post production of film originated material began in the 1980s, largely through the joint efforts of Lorimar (a production company) and Pacific Video (later known as Laser Pacific after a merger with Laser Edit), the implementation at Pacific was branded as the "Electronic Laboratory," and the people doing the color work were called timers, just as they were in the labs. The product of their work was called the Color Timed Master. If Pacific was a British company, they would have been called Graders and the masters would have been Color Graded Masters. There is no difference in the process or the work done to achieve the result. It's just that the American terms were "timing" and "color correction," and the British term was "grading." If people want to invent their own definitions for these things, I guess I can't stop them. But I can point out the actual reasons for the existence of these terms, and therefore what they **actually** mean. Or don't mean.

Agree,
As I see it "Color correction" is a term that been used on buttons on video mixers etc since the time when video mixers where invented. Usually it says "CC" on those buttons. Most non linear editing platforms still has a color tool called "Color Corrector". And yes, Grading is just a new word that became widely use when the telecine rooms did not actually do telecine any more.. i.e film was not televised, only colors changed in digital files. A lot of producers still call that process "the scanner" or "telecine" which is not quite right... But then again a lot of us still say we work in the film industry... even though we had nothing to do with celluloid for quite some years now. It will probably take quite a few more years before we say we are in the r3d business, or maybe better to go back to the old term motion picture business.

But all fancy new and old terminology aside. The common advice given here is: Primary and secondary grade / coloring / CC / color warping or what ever you want to call it.

Primary.
Is the fist step make a neutral / balanced look. It's important here to understand clipping, colorspace etc. Best for red material to do this first step from the native r3d's and stay in as good bit depth as possible.

Secondaries.
This is whats done downstream of your primaries and where taste and creativity comes into to play.

Or at least that's how I do it.