You're right, the blacks have a more natural look. Pity we couldn't hear the music.
----- But seriously, it almost looks like before and after you cleaned your lens.
Tor

This also works really well on video that has lots of noise I couldn't beleive how much it removed on some of my low light scenes woot!

Shogo, I've seen your handle a few times for the last - maybe six months, so I looked at your first post and saw that you were asking about the learning curve for Vegas. Well, now you know: it never ends.
Tor

Yup - Colour curves do rock, it's as if you've lifted a fine "murky" veil covering the whole of the footage.

Grazie

I can't get Russell Brown* from Adobe out of my head. The image of him clowning around on some TV computer show demoing Photoshop. For those that have climbed past the basics on the learning curve for Photoshop know how much superior curves are for adjusting.

Anyhow, nearly every show the topic of how do I fix an over exposed or washed out image would come up. These the host would mention something simplestic like brightness and contrast and you could almost see the hairs on the back of his neck start to stand up.

The exchange would go something like...

Russell would reach in is pocket and pull out these super thick glasses and put them on. He would go into his act and pretend to stumble around just to find the keyboard. Almost every time he then would say something profound. Getting dead serious (*Russell Brown is one of Photoshop's developers, his name still can be found in the credits 'about Photoshop', up to version 5 anyways, the version I have) and say something along the lines, you know, we put a control in to adjust brightness and contrast. Its for DUMMIES. No serious person would use it, it will ruin your image. Then Russell would bring out this hammer he has under the desk and say something along the lines this is you using brightness and contrast and make some reference to that now famous anti-drug commerical 'this is your brain on drugs" then compare using the brightness and contrast method, then show the RIGHT WAY using curves.

I never forgot, and I simply brought the basics over to video editing. The difference ARE indeed night and day when combined with adjusting levels, gamma, etc..

That jpg has convinced me to go home and check over all the D8 footage from my current project.

Just follow the guide on Billyboys site?

Let me throw out a few caveats out before anybody gets too excited over what you can do with this filter.

Adjusting with Curves (called color curves in Vegas) are indeed a good way to make adjustments, sometimes dramatic ones. That said over use or misuse can make things worse. What I'm trying to say is you can make bad video better, yes, sometimes much better and good video maybe somewhat better, you can't take already properly adjusted video and make that better still. In other words if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. The Color curve filter has the most impact on the worse video. It has less effect on good video.

I wrote the earlier tutorials before Vegas 4 was released. Prior to that while good, the levels, color balance hue adjustments controls weren't as good as they are now.

Somewhat confusing is the filter's name. While called Color Curves in its default state the filter is adjusting the combined RGB values as a uint. So raising or lowering the curve isn't limited to a particular color, rather the overall strength of all pixels in three distinct areas. Shadows, midtones and highlights. Again, set to the default position the effect is to adjust the relative strength of how many pixels fall where. In the demo images you saw the blacks get blacker and the colors richer, because the distribution of the pixels were changed.

Unlike most other FX filters color curves is very powerful because you can to decide WHAT PART of the image you are going to influence, whereas most of the other filters effect all pixels in the image equally. That's why the big deal about don't use brightness and contrast. Doing that you effect ALL pixels. The ones you want plus the ones you don't want, thus generally ruining the image.

All images (video too) can be divided into three broad areas, shadows, midtones and highlights. Done properly color curves lets you change a range independent of the other areas. So if only the highlights need to be dropped, you don't mess up the midtones or shadows. While the Color Curve filter supports adjustment of each primary color seperately in the three channel red, blue and green, rarely do you have to do that. Adjust as a unit works well.

Prior to using Color Curves, rarely before, you'll probably want to use Color Corrector. When you do, switch on the scopes so you can see the effect of your adjustments. Ditto when using Color Curves. While using the Color Corrector note the luminance histogram. It shows the makeup of how the pixels are distributed. Roughly the left 20% of the graph are shadows, the right 20% highlights with the remainer midtones.

Next select a representative frame so its in the preview window. Use the eye dropper tool (low) to set a black point, and the (high) one to set a white point. Try several places in the image. I like to set several key frames so I can go back and forth. You may also want to switch on the split screen view over the preview window so you can see before and after. You don't have the split the image 50/50. Click on the icon and draw a little area over the preview window.

Once you're happy with your white and black points, next slowly adjust gamma. If you slide left, you'll see more pixels moving into the shadows and you're overall image will grow darker. Move right and it grows brighter. To stay "legal" don't exceed 105 on the waveform lumiance scale (select to show all 3 scopes at once). Repeat adjusting gain which has same effect on the pixels. In many ways these two adjustments mimic what color curves does.

Now fine tune the most important part of your image which usually is the midrange by moving the mid range color wheel out from its center position. The further you move towards the outer edge, the more hue you're moving towards appears. Generally moving at an angle between two primary colors works best. Example: If you image is too cool looking, move NW roughly between the Y1 and R on the color wheel. Now if needed you may wish to give both the low and high wheels a little nudge. Adjusting any color wheel outwards impacts the saturation, so sometimes to get much better overall effect try pushing the saturation slider higher or lower, lower probably if you move the color wheel more outward.

Now do the fine tuning with the Color Curves filter, watch the histogram and alternating between it and the preview window which of course you're viewing on an external monitor.

Way excellant advice... you should repost that on your site as a quick start.


One thing that you may state in your tutorials (I just have not read them) is that this is all useless if your intended goal is broadcast or TV. You need to get a well calibrated monitor!

I learned that the hard way.

-J

I've used colour correction to "bring together" footage from a Canon and a Sony. This was shot in dubious disco low light. Once threaded together as a 2 camera edit, nobody could see the join.

Grazie

Sheeesh - this is amazing! I didnt even realise how crap something looked untill i put the colour curve on it - only the most subtle changes will really enhance this footage or equally, make it look crapper :)

Seems like in experienced hands these tools could be pretty damn powerful.

Its very late here and i have been at this for hours - so i might have read and forgotton it, but i can manage to get scenes looking VERY nice with nicely balanced colour (looks like it to me) but darker areas come out looking worse.

EG this is a wedding vid shot by the uncle without lighting in a dark church, so i know its not going to be perfect, but where the guys all standing together in dark suits you can see the foreground person arm against a background person chest, but after i 'fix' the colour up this definition is lost and it looks like a dark area, rather than individual suit wearing limbs.

Whats the trick in this area?