Color correction question

Sebaz wrote on 12/25/2009, 7:29 AM

When you have a scene that is severely off the right white balance, either too blue or too yellow, which way is the right way to use the 3 way color corrector, to start by correcting the lows, then mids and then highs, or the other way around?

Comments

Grazie wrote on 12/25/2009, 7:37 AM

. . as nobody is replying to mine . ..

I go the other way.

Start with HIGHS, and use the complementary colour picker for HIGHs and choose/drag what SHOULD be white. That SHOULD pop the whites AND do much to bring the other colours back into play and behave themselves.

I then go to the MIDs and again choose the complementary colour picker and drag over a grey-ish mid tone.

Then finally the LOWs. Choose a decent black.

HTH?

Grazie . ..

any takers on my PTT quest?

Grazie wrote on 12/25/2009, 7:39 AM

Make sure you have the Sync Cursor disengaged ion the CC Timeline otherwise you WILL get into an awful pickle!!

Grazie

TLF wrote on 12/26/2009, 12:13 AM

Or for a quick fix, just use the white balance tool from AAV (http://aav6cc.blogspot.com/). It's free and does a great job. I find that my video looks 'odd' after correcting with the Sony color corrector.

By 'odd', I don't mean the colours look wrong, but there is something about the image that makes it look difference from non-corrected clips.

Sebaz wrote on 12/26/2009, 8:12 AM

Thanks, that is a pretty good color corrector. The only thing that annoys me a bit is that every time I call it up, by default it shows the 6-vector section and you have to click on the "Adjust" checkmark and then on the word itself to switch to that section. It should come by default ready to correct white balance. But it does a very good job, at least faster than going through the 3 selectors in the Sony filter. I do like the Sony color corrector better than the ones in Premiere and FCP, it's faster and gives better results, IMHO because I'm not a professional color corrector.

TLF wrote on 12/26/2009, 9:16 AM

AAV Colorlab is still in beta, but it's rock solid, and there's a 64-bit version too, which makes it all the more valuable.

If AAv doesn't get it right, then I move to the Sony Color Corrector. I tend to fix low first, then mids, then highs.

Better still, I try to colour balance BEFORE I press the record button.

Jeff9329 wrote on 12/28/2009, 1:22 PM

Like Grazie said, use the primary color corrector, click the left button on the high wheel (complimentary, meaning high/white colors) and then click on something you know is white. You may need several tries and you may want to fine tune manually. If your monitor is not color calibrated, it is tough to impossible to correct an image.

Right click the wheel for an easy "reset to none" to try again.

The more you correct, you will start to see that all your clips tend to trend in a particular direction and amount on the wheel. Usually southeast for my camera. You can use this info in the future to set your cameras WB offset a little closer to reality.

The mid correction has lower effects on the image color and the low correction has very low effect on the image color correction. But they are still very usefull, just don't expect to be as far from center using mid or low.