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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

skintone

Steve Sherrick said:
It's another part of the chain. Since we're talking about color, accuracy, etc I was curious what people were using for monitors.
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All this is more about taste I think and I find it quite interesting to see what people come up with even though I'm looking at the screen of my macbook air, I can only say it's all very intriguing. Being in a projector room or such would probably be a lot better, but then again these images where more likely to be graded of a mac screen than in a proper cinema grading suite.

I do not think it matters that much as for me I do no have to look for the subtile tint shifts or gamma differences and such (then a more calibrated aproach would probably be needed) As I think a good graded picture still looks good even if I really lower the brightness of my screen, add a heavy tint, bring up contrast or such. Thats not what I look for in for "good skin tones", as to me good skin tones are more about the gamma and color dynamics within these mid tones. Basically I find "good skin tones" to show of the subsurface scattering of the skin and such much more then the color levels. The opposite to my preference of good skin tones would be the flat non vibrant pastel / dead pancake kind of skin tone.

Those flat skins where quite common in the beginning of the "Red era" when very few actually came even close to get it right. The MX helped a lot and the new color science, But most importantly I think it's now much easier to get the work flows right and everyone learned a lot from experience and such. I for one have shot terrible skin tones on film when using the wrong lights etc. So it's far more than a sensor thing.

I think the RED skin tone issue is actually 95% due to do the fact that there are quite a bunch of us Redusers that thought that just because Fedex delivered the package everything we shoot would look epic... Well it does, but we kind of need epic makeup and lightning as well :)
 
Good points Bjorn. In fact with more dynamic range coming with Dragon, Color correction knowledge is going to be mandatory. There is a lot of footage that I see is so flat because people don't do much more than one pass of CC. Truth be told, its easy to separate the talent from the backgrkound when it's essentially blown out. More dynamic range will actually require better lighting and more controlled grading. And of course makeup!
 
Björn Benckert said:
All this is more about taste I think and I find it quite interesting to see what people come up with even though I'm looking at the screen of my macbook air, I can only say it's all very intriguing. Being in a projector room or such would probably be a lot better, but then again these images where more likely to be graded of a mac screen than in a proper cinema grading suite.

I do not think it matters that much as for me I do no have to look for the subtile tint shifts or gamma differences and such (then a more calibrated aproach would probably be needed) As I think a good graded picture still looks good even if I really lower the brightness of my screen, add a heavy tint, bring up contrast or such. Thats not what I look for in for "good skin tones", as to me good skin tones are more about the gamma and color dynamics within these mid tones. Basically I find "good skin tones" to show of the subsurface scattering of the skin and such much more then the color levels. The opposite to my preference of good skin tones would be the flat non vibrant pastel / dead pancake kind of skin tone.

Those flat skins where quite common in the beginning of the "Red era" when very few actually came even close to get it right. The MX helped a lot and the new color science, But most importantly I think it's now much easier to get the work flows right and everyone learned a lot from experience and such. I for one have shot terrible skin tones on film when using the wrong lights etc. So it's far more than a sensor thing.

I think the RED skin tone issue is actually 95% due to do the fact that there are quite a bunch of us Redusers that thought that just because Fedex delivered the package everything we shoot would look epic... Well it does, but we kind of need epic makeup and lightning as well :)
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Hopefully my tone didn't come off as questioning anyone's methods. It was actually a sincere curiosity as I'm always interested to see what tools people are using, how they are using them, etc and monitors/projectors are yet another tool in the chain that helps inform our creative decisions.

The images you guys are posting are fantastic. As has been demonstrated, there are many ways to approach an image and everyone's eyes see things a little differently. I'm really enjoying this thread. It's my favorite type of discussion on Reduser. I'm jealous because I currently don't have my Resolve system setup so I can't play. :-(
 
Steve Sherrick said:
Hopefully my tone didn't come off as questioning anyone's methods. It was actually a sincere curiosity as I'm always interested to see what tools people are using, how they are using them, etc and monitors/projectors are yet another tool in the chain that helps inform our creative decisions.

The images you guys are posting are fantastic. As has been demonstrated, there are many ways to approach an image and everyone's eyes see things a little differently. I'm really enjoying this thread. It's my favorite type of discussion on Reduser. I'm jealous because I currently don't have my Resolve system setup so I can't play. :-(
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Your question is perfectly valid, since monitoring is an important, or may be the most important tool in this chain.. cheers.

EDIT: I have a very well calibrated monitor, but I always check my Ipad, and my wife's computer to make sure that what people is looking at is correct.. I have found that to be pretty accurate..
 
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Pablo Moreno said:
Your question is perfectly valid, since monitoring is an important, or may be the most important tool in this chain.. cheers.

EDIT: I have a very well calibrated monitor, but I always check my Ipad, and my wife's computer to make sure that what people is looking at is correct.. I have found that to be pretty accurate..
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Pablo, which iPad and which computer?
 
Steve Sherrick said:
Pablo, which iPad and which computer?
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I was just joking he he, I trust completely what I see on my monitor, but after posting something on the web, I grab my cellphone, laptop or whatever, to have an idea what people is looking at. (after all there are thousands watching on regular non calibrated monitors, right?)
 
Björn, I understand that you are one of the few that I know, who can cook your own LUTs in this forum, , is that correct?, I am working on one right now: Fuji Eterna Vivid 250D.
 
Pablo Moreno said:
I was just joking he he, I trust completely what I see on my monitor, but after posting something on the web, I grab my cellphone, laptop or whatever, to have an idea what people is looking at. (after all there are thousands watching on regular non calibrated monitors, right?)
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I do the same. And watch things on as many TVs and other devices possible, just to see how things translate. No one gets to see the images we see in our environment, so real world testing is always interesting.
 
paulherrin said:
do you guys filter in mixed/tungsten lighting these days?
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Ever since I stopped shooting 35mm film (which is the king of color baked imagery) and started shooting and grading from RAW digital files, that was the day I stopped using correction filters. :) and worried less about mixed lighting.

And lovin it.... :)
 
Shervin Mandgaryan said:
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.

RC3 / RG3 (What the camera shot)
cg12_zps405ebb0c.jpg


SpeedLooks Fuji tweaked
cg10_zpsd47ff38b.jpg
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Was any other tweaking done to this Shervin (e.g. made bluer to enhance the day-for-night)?

While I think it's a little too blue for my personal taste (unless you did more than just add the LUT), it's insane how much more differentiation the LUT puts between white and skin tone... That's awesome. And with cheap LEDs you say? Colour me intrigued.

Mark Toia said:
Ever since I stopped shooting 35mm film (which is the king of color baked imagery) and started shooting and grading from RAW digital files, that was the day I stopped using correction filters. :) and worried less about mixed lighting.

And lovin it.... :)
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Mark, does that mean you'd use a secondary to balance the different sources? The problem I have with mixed lighting is two-fold; one, it doesn't react to a adjustments/LUTs the same across the lighting and two, the tonality completely changes tint between different lighting (e.g. LEDs/Florescent would be excessively green compared to Daylight, so you can't just use the tint slider and expect it to work/balance for a first light pass.)
 
Does anybody have a link to Bjorn's 2393 LUT? I think I saw it in older thread.
 
Would it be useful to have some sort of repository or resource for LUT's and associated stuff. Don't know if it should be on this board on on another FTP box somewhere ? To my mind it would be very helpful. Id be happy to set a box up but would need some time to do it.
 
Bob Gundu said:
Good points Bjorn. In fact with more dynamic range coming with Dragon, Color correction knowledge is going to be mandatory. There is a lot of footage that I see is so flat because people don't do much more than one pass of CC. Truth be told, its easy to separate the talent from the backgrkound when it's essentially blown out. More dynamic range will actually require better lighting and more controlled grading. And of course makeup!
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This is something I've been thinking about. With great dynamic range comes great responsibility. You have to know what to do with it. Sometimes flexibility can be overwhelming, which direction do I take this picture because I can pretty much take it anywhere...... Overwhelming but also pretty amazing to have that power.
 
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is what these LUTs are specifically intended to do. LUTs created for emulating a film out with a program such as Cinespace or Light Illusion are meant to specifically replicate what your images would look like when printed out to that print film whether its Kodak 2393 or Fuji and of course it's always best to work directly with a lab and do a test to ensure proper calibration and color reproduction which often results in needing a custom LUT from the lab. But although you can just plug and play with these LUTS Bjorne has provided what they don't take into account is the specific monitor profile used to create that LUT. The first step in creating these LUTs is doing a very specific monitor profile / calibration Which in turn you then use to create your 3D Cube LUT for the most accurate representation of how these images will translate to your target delivery format.
Now since most people here have no intention of ever doing a film out the LUTs are strictly for trying to reproduce the benefits of film like color / contrast representation. But, these LUTs are only truly accurate based on the monitor profile that was originally used to create them in the first place. For example, at our studio we have a Dreamcolor, 2x Cine-Tal Cinemage, Pani Plasma, and projection all which need there own profiles created to bake the same film out LUTs but the 3D cube taking into account each monitoring sources own characteristics. This means that if I created Kodak 2393 or DCI P3 LUT for my Cine-Tal and sent it to you and you plugged it into your Apple Cinema Display it would no longer be an accurate representation of that LUT because your monitor wasn't profiled and that profile wasn't taken into account when creating that 3D cube. Just thought you may want to know how and why these LUTs are created and meant to be used in the first place. As for the Speed Look LUTs I can't speak on how or what was taken into account to create these "Looks".
 
Yeah, or if you used these LUTs for your "look" and then (for whatever reason) ended up doing a film-out... you'd be doubling down... I'm going to use two instances of it and see what it does to the image.
 
Mike P. said:
Yeah, or if you used these LUTs for your "look" and then (for whatever reason) ended up doing a film-out... you'd be doubling down... I'm going to use two instances of it and see what it does to the image.
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That is not true. As printers have their own sets of luts so if you would set the printer to print you VideoHD frame that you created with these luts then it should and would come out exactly as you would se it on your calibrated monitor. as the Printer then would do a LINtoLOG conversion when shooting out the stuff.

As these luts where intended to use for printing cineon raw files wich very much looks like LOG-C or redlog film.

Thats is also why there is LOGtoVideoHD and VideoHDtoLOG. Basically you can apply the look and also remove it using the VIDEOHDtoLOG set of luts.

This I use all the time, I grade using a set of luts with one of these kodaks or Fuji and bake it into the pictures, then we can also reverse the luts later to apply 3D and such in flat log and the reverse again to be dead on where it was. It's kind of like flipping on and off the grade on colorbaked DPX files or tiffs. And everyone in the work chain can get "under the grade" if needed during the VFX work.

So as I see it the only thing those luts are in the digital world. I just a way to mimic the over 100years of technical development that fuji and Kodak have developed for their Print stocks color science, and that is not a little. As you understand for using these lut both kodak and Fuji developed print stock that was far from linear in their color reprentation, They have during these hundred years of development tried to come up with the perfect blend to bing out the skin tones and extend the tonal difference in their picture presentation. It's actually also so that the fuji prints are developed to keep skintones nice for asian, as their market was bigger over there were as kodak was aiming more towards the more pale faced americans.
 
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