skintone

[Bruce Allen]

RE: our brief grain detour (but it's definitely related to skin rendering) - I own CineGrain's Indie collection (was $999 I think) and use it a lot.

If anyone has any specific questions about it, I'd be happy to answer them.

The main thing of course is that just putting the grain on top in Overlay mode is not an accurate representation of true film grain. You have to get more clever than that because film grain is nonlinear.

However... I am usually too lazy / deadlined and do the Overlay trick all the time!

I just like the slight dithering it adds and the perception of higher detail. Also the right amount of dithering has been known to break up potential nastiness later in the processing chain if your chain isn't perfect. And sometimes mine isn't due to factors beyond my control

Only thing is that a lot of the time I just use one particular 4K grain clip even for HD or 2K deliverables because the scan has nice fine texture and a lot of the HD stuff is a bit too lumpy for my taste.

What do other people find? The algorithmic grain solutions are fun too, I think.

And then you get into stereo and grain becomes even more crazy because you want it to register in stereo! What they did for Hugo was nuts but worked, I think. I've heard conflicting reports - either some kind of particle system grain that is clipped by a depth map - or a grain render that is mapped using disparity so that some of it is matched to object depth. Actually Hugo is fascinating because the characters looked good despite the extreme limited color palette. One place where teal and orange actually worked!

BTW has anyone else noticed that both Hugo and Drive - eg some of the major early films that caused people to say "Alexa looks great" both had crazy stylized skin tones? Well, at least they made the look work, which is the whole point I guess?

Anyway, yay. Going to sleep now. Everyone on this thread rocks so much.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

Not sure what you guys think of these? Too saturated, not saturated enough? Not neutral enough?

These are graded using my own custom Kodak 2393 LUT.

Basically identical to the standard LUT with regards to what it does with the colours, except with no warm bias in the highs and no green/blue bias in the lows. Same highlight rolloff but a gentler low end with less crushing and mud. This makes the LUT useful in situations where other LUTs might impart too much of a look.

Click for 1080p grabs.

Yes, this my taste of skintones. Perfect! Did you just ad the lut or did you do more tweaking? Do you mind share your custom Kodak 2393 LUT?

 

[Juan Melara]

Yes to sharpening and film grain. Although its actually just noise in either AE or PS and I wouldn't use this much of either for motion. I reckon it would look a lot better if I was actually using proper grain clips...

I use the noise mainly for the reasons Bruce mentioned and less to mimic the look of film.

I find It can help reduce compression and other artifacts especially in lower res, higher compression footage such as high speed. It can also improve the perception of sharpness. And I like the way it breaks up flat areas and smooth gradients. It can really help tie a grade together and make it work.

With regards to skintones, I find adding a bit of colour noise can help the skin look alive.

With sharpening I find its best to sharpen prior to scaling down. So for a 720p finish I'd render at a larger res (2560x1440 would be ideal so its a 1/2 scale), sharpen a whole lot more than necessary at that res then scale down to 720p. The result is a WHOLE lot better than just sharpening the final 720p file. Also if I use noise, I usually add it after the sharpening.

 

[Noel Sterrett]

If the human eye can somehow pick up a natural color out of terrible lighting, a truly precise, possibly multi-spectral sensor of the future should be able to do the same thing, when armed with the appropriate transforms, no?

You can't see infrared, but if not properly filtered, the sensor can. This causes both color shifts related to heat rather than color (skin tone and hair don't line up), and at the same time blurs the image since infrared focuses at a different point than visible light.

Yeah... BTW for tungsten, if you have the light to spare, try putting a CTB filter on your Red. Fun thing to try as it evens out the color channel responses a bit more.

The idea that you can postpone color balance when shooting RAW is a myth. There is too little blue and too much heat in tungsten for the sensor to properly handle.

All CMOS cameras are inherently daylight balanced and therefore should be filtered in tungsten just like daylight balanced film (80A). With some cameras, IR (and sometimes UV) filtering is inadequate and additional filtering is also quite important. A good starting point for Red would be a Tiffen 80C/80D Hot Mirror.

Cheers.

 

[Juan Melara]

Yes, this my taste of skintones. Perfect! Did you just ad the lut or did you do more tweaking? Do you mind share your custom Kodak 2393 LUT?

Those shots are graded. The custom LUT gets closer to the finished look compared to the standard 2393 LUT, but it still requires work. The same looks are possible with both, they just require different amounts of work.

I might release it in the future...

 

[Scott Crawley]

Yes, this my taste of skintones. Perfect! Did you just ad the lut or did you do more tweaking? Do you mind share your custom Kodak 2393 LUT?

Agreed. This is my favorite. Some of the others were over saturated for my taste, and many retained the orange/yellow that we try so hard to mitigate. Nice job.

Did you have a chart or color measurement for this, or did you start with a basic daylight temp? Taken as it is, this is just the kind of frame that can be a real challenge.

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

Those shots are graded. The custom LUT gets closer to the finished look compared to the standard 2393 LUT, but it still requires work. The same looks are possible with both, they just require different amounts of work
I might release it in the future...

Please post some more shots with this lut.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Those shots are graded. The custom LUT gets closer to the finished look compared to the standard 2393 LUT, but it still requires work. The same looks are possible with both, they just require different amounts of work.

I might release it in the future...

Juan, we've swapped PMs before but I will just add to the chorus again and say that your stuff always looks fantastic and fits my taste too.

I think a lot of it comes from your good eye... but if you feel like the LUT is important to the starting point, by all means you should either sell it or give it away and then just charge everyone to put on the finishing touches

Anyway, you're definitely hired on my next project if I can afford you!

I would love to hear what you think about dealing with tungsten and imperfect daylight sources.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Adam Eden]

Hey Matt

I checked everything out and i bit the bullet and bought the Pro version of Cinegrain. Definately the most organic i have seen to date, and like Juan i agree the 4k over the HD footage looks the best

 

[Matt Ryan]

Hey Matt

I checked everything out and i bit the bullet and bought the Pro version of Cinegrain. Definately the most organic i have seen to date, and like Juan i agree the 4k over the HD footage looks the best

Yup, Cinegrain is definitely the best. If you use it a lot the initial cost doesn't seem so bad I guess.

 

[Pablo Moreno]

I need some of that film grain overlay. Mine is sd so I need to buy some from somewhere that is 2k in size

I don't know if you want to go the expensive way with a software, but I have a technique I learned from a very smart guy for Photoshop, that can be applied also in any program that uses adjustment layers like Speedgrade or AF, no sure about Resolve thou.. But here we go..This will simulate the dye clusters found in Chrome films, that originally formed around the grain before the grain was removed from the film. This method forms the "grain" and then softens it to look like a dye cluster.In Photoshop-AF1) Duplicate the background layer. (name it noise layer).2) Add noise (Filter-add noise), try Gaussian-10%, use Overlay in Blending Mode.3) Use a very gentle Gaussian blur on the noise layer (Filter-Blur-Gaussian blur) - try 1.2 pixels, (adjust opacity on the noise layer to your taste).On the example below I used opacity 80% and the Alexa LUT, I posted before.That's it.

Right click and open in a new tab-window for larger image, so you can see the effect.

 

[Bob Gundu]

Thats the technique I learned for retouching models photos when the skin gets too smooth.

I don't know if you want to go the expensive way with a software, but I have a technique I learned from a very smart guy for Photoshop, that can be applied also in any program that uses adjustment layers like Speedgrade or AF, no sure about Resolve thou.. But here we go..


This will simulate the dye clusters found in Chrome films, that originally formed around the grain before the grain was removed from the film. This method forms the "grain" and then softens it to look like a dye cluster.

In Photoshop-AF

1) Duplicate the background layer. (name it noise layer).

2) Add noise (Filter-add noise), try Gaussian-10%, use Overlay in Blending Mode.

3) Use a very gentle Gaussian blur on the noise layer (Filter-Blur-Gaussian blur) - try 1.2 pixels, (adjust opacity on the noise layer to your taste).

On the example below I used opacity 80% and the Alexa LUT, I posted before.

That;s it.


Right click and open in a new tab-window for larger image.

 

[Pablo Moreno]

Thats the technique I learned for retouching models photos after retouching and when the skin gets too smooth.

Exactly, and you can see on the trees behind, that is a very convincing grain emulation..

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Just out of curiosity, what is everyone looking at for monitors when evaluating these images?

 

[Juan Melara]

Thanks for the kind words...

The custom LUT is kind of important as a start point, but the same end result is possible using Bjorn's 2393 LUT...

Here are some comparisons. To make these useful I've kept the same settings in the raw tab as the finished grade - WB 5440, Tint 3.20. On the first two I've done nothing but add the LUT and bumped the saturation to 76.4 so you can better see the differences.

The differences aren't that apparent on these small grabs. Click the images to open full versions in new tabs and flick back and forth.

Here is Kodak 2393 ConstLclip.



Here is the custom LUT. Looks pretty good. This is useable as is I reckon.



And here is my final grade for comparison.



Pay attention to what the custom LUT does to the shadows under the top eyelids. And also look at how it treats the highlights, particularly in the top right corner of skin. It tends to flatten them less.

So overall not a massive difference, but depending on what you're after for the final grade, it can be a better start point.

I'll add some more comparions with different subject matter soon...

 

[Adam Eden]

I grade on a Sony 24 inch bvm that is glass. I will prob replace it this year with a Dolby one. I also have 46 inch led on the wall and I grade somewhere in between what looks good on both. I do heavily rely on my Tektronics waveform as I have graded that way for nearly 20 years. I mainly make tv commercials so I work in rec709. My bvm is regularly colour checked and I do have xyz luts for it when I work in the p3. Colour space for cinema releases

 

[Pablo Moreno]

Just out of curiosity, what is everyone looking at for monitors when evaluating these images?

Why the question?

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I grade on a Sony 24 inch bvm that is glass. I will prob replace it this year with a Dolby one. I also have 46 inch led on the wall and I grade somewhere in between what looks good on both. I do heavily rely on my Tektronics waveform as I have graded that way for nearly 20 years. I mainly make tv commercials so I work in rec709. My bvm is regularly colour checked and I do have xyz luts for it when I work in the p3. Colour space for cinema releases

Nice! I would love to have a Dolby. Currently I have a TV Logic 24" that I try to get calibrated at least twice a year. It's got it's quirks, so waveform/vectorscopes are still very necessary.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Why the question?

It's another part of the chain. Since we're talking about color, accuracy, etc I was curious what people were using for monitors.

 

[Shervin Mandgaryan]

I've been messing more and more with the SpeedLooks Fuji LUT... loving it's versatility and the way it reacts to skin tones. Here's another test with one of those crappy Chinese LED's with green cast... went for a dimly lit day scene to convert it into a night scene... results below.

REDLOGFILM RAW

RC3 / RG3 (What the camera shot)

SpeedLooks Fuji tweaked