Color Correction help

C

Coalescent

Active member
Hey guys, I'm looking for some tips with color correction. I can never seem to get something that I'm happy with at all. I am using After Effects CS5. Any tips would be great. I know people will say check youtube, vimeo, etc, but I'm looking for what some on NS have to say.

Thanks! Here is a little clip i just made, help on colors would be great.

Hunter Front Side BS from Matt Stambaugh on Vimeo.

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Hey, that clip was awesome, I really liked the whole out of focus/in focus thing you did, but I thought the color was a little too pink...

I highly recommend downloading the demo for Magic Bullet Looks. Looks is a really great tool for me because I will usually start with a preset that I like, and tweak it to look exactly how I want it. How I want a clip to look varies in each video that I make, but it is important to keep every clip inside an edit/video looking similar, color-wise. To get inspiration for how you want your color to look, I recommend watching movie trailers and trying to notice what it is about the color that makes each one special.

Good luck!

 
My internet is way to ghettofabulous to load videos, but for VERY basic color correction, you could always do a slight saturation and contrast boost, that will definitely help any shot a little. As you get a lot more into it, you can start changing color levels around, but that's a whole nother story
 
I think I know what you dont like about that clip.. its entirely pink.

Its called color correcting.
 
Or in After Effects it's called Color Correction.

Glass half full or the glass half empty?

Thanks for the first two comments.
 
Theres no difference between color correcting and color correction. Both imply that you are fixing the colors to be true, adding a pink hue to your clip would be color changing.

 
haven't really mess around with it to much in AE, but I'm pretty sure this will work.

*Create a new adjustment layer

*Add a color correction filter.

*Determine adjustment values using color wheel.

In most programs color correction works by adding opposite hues to the low, mid, and high ranges. Your clip looks to be too cool(blue) on the low ranges and too warm(red/pink) on the mid and high ranges. Try adding a little bit of yellow to the low range and greenish blue to the mid and high range.

*Fiddle around with different values until you get something close to true color.

When i get back to my place I will open up AE and checks these steps. I'm pretty sure adobe provides a color correction filter but not postive. If not look into magic bullet or red giant.
 
There's a difference between color grading and color correcting. What you did there was color grading, correction would be correcting any mishaps during shooting to achieve a realistic saturation and tone of colors. So perhaps that will clear up the miscommunication between you and despite.
As for your grading, not sure I'm digging the pink. I'm personally not really a big fan of intense color grading, but sometimes I enjoy a cool and desaturated image if the mood is right.
I usually just color correct/grade right in premiere cs5 and I can achieve just about any look I'm going for with a couple of RGB curves and an HLS filter (hue, lightness, saturation). There's a lot more you can do as well, and if needed I'll bring in other filters but I typically can get by with those.
If you're really looking to get into grading I'd say look into picking up Magic Bullet looks as I believe someone else may have already said? You can get some pretty neat looks out of that.
 
Magic bullet is handy, but it doesn't have a very good luma curve, along with any of the Adobe Products. Apple Color is my favorite because it has a good one, and the grading process is done in "rooms."

First you should be color correcting before you do any grading. If you try and grade off of an consistent white/black points, the whole thing will be an inconsistent mess. What you need to do first is set your black and white points using a histogram. This should be the very first adjustment you make to any shot, because all other primary adjustments anchor off of the initial white/black points. Then you adjust your gamma as desired. Then, you want to set white and black balance; Final Cut has a handy tool that allows you to use a color picker and it does this for you.

Once you have everything chromatically neutral, then you can begin grading. There are many different approaches and theories to this, but one of my favorites is to use Monet's theory of complimentaries. That is, highlights should be complimentary to blacks. If you warm your mids/highlights, then make your blacks blue/magenta, you attain vivid contrasting colors while simultaneously maintaining equilibrium.

Above all, don't overdo it. Nothing looks worse than over-graded "videocam" footage. This is where scopes become invaluable.
 
I rarely do a lot of changes to my footage. I like shooting my footage the way I like it in-camera, and only touching it up afterwards.

That being said, when I do "color correct" I really only up the gamma, add a little contrast, make sure my whites are as I want them, and maybe add a little saturation. That's all, really easy.

As for grading, I don't know much, so listen to Galin.
 
Like everyone has said already, you didn't color correct you color graded.

If the whites were actually white, it probably would have looked pretty good.
 
thank you all! definately some good help. when i get time, i will go back and tru magic bullets and somme other tipa in here. + k to all
 
You should actually avoid contrast adjustments if possible. The reason is that they don't isolate values within certain parameters, they adjust the white and black points in unison, which is never what you want unless you have nothing else to work with. Always use Levels for adjusting tones.
 
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