Color Correctiong and Grading Order of Operations

karma17 wrote on 8/5/2019, 7:02 PM

Now that Vegas has a Unified Color Grading interface in the style of Resolve, I was wondering about LUT placement. In Resolve, a common practice is to apply a LUT on a serial node, then put any additional adjustments (lift, gamma, gain, etc) before the LUT. My understanding is that any adjustments placed before the LUT work within the parameters of the LUT and any adjustments placed after the LUT are not restricted by the LUT's parameters.

My question is this: In Vegas, do the chain of effects in Vegas function in the manner of serial nodes? If you apply a LUT within the Unified Color Grading interface in Vegas, are the corrections occurring before or after the LUT? Without being sure, I guess you can always apply the LUT from the plug-in chooser, then apply the Color Grading interface before that? Just wondering what others do.

 

Comments

Marco. wrote on 8/5/2019, 7:12 PM

Beware in the Vegas Pro 17 Color Grading workflow there is an input (camera) LUT and an output (look) LUT.

The input LUT is processed before all other color correction tools (except HSL) inside the new color grading panel. The output LUT is processed after all of them (of course except those "finishing" tools).

fr0sty wrote on 8/5/2019, 9:03 PM

Also, the grading works at the event level, based on which clip you have selected at the time. if you want to promote your color grade to a higher level, such as media, track, or entire project, do this:

1. select a scene and grade it.

2. export a LUT.

3. Reset the grade you did on the color panel back to default, so when you apply the LUT it doesn't double-grade your footage

4. apply the lut to any media, track, or project level fx. you can go even deeper with it by nesting projects or grouping tracks and applying luts to those as well.

Last changed by fr0sty on 8/5/2019, 9:04 PM, changed a total of 1 times.

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karma17 wrote on 8/6/2019, 12:02 AM

That's good to know. I hadn't thought of using LUTS that way. I've got to set some time aside and put the whole thing through its paces.

karma17 wrote on 8/6/2019, 12:04 AM

@Marco. Thank you! That's exactly what I was wondering!!

Former user wrote on 8/10/2019, 6:15 PM

Just wondering if the new colour grading window can be undocked, would be useful, not essential though. I really like it.