How to color grade teal orange by masking subject?

SyedDanish-Ali wrote on 4/18/2025, 5:00 AM

Hey guys i need help learning how to color grade Teal Orange, as from the sparse tutorials on youtube i could find it seems like you have to mask the human subject so they can be coloured orange as they move around the screen while the background (unmasked) you make teal and desaturated. I have tried Z-depth which does not isolate the subject accurately and AI mask 2.0 while perfect picks out the subject it is impossible to use it as with the low accuracy it is not accurate and with high accuracy when i clikc on "complete mask" it takes 15 minutes to complete a small 5 second clip and my reel is 90 seconds long. Does anyone have a quick youtube tutorial video or some link to quickly learn how peopel color grade in vegas using Teal Orange. I am not interested in a lut as i already have that, i need help with the above which is in isolating the human subject from the background quickly and efficiently and just color grading that track separately. Any assistance would be appreciated.
Vegas version: Vegas 21 Build 315. Downloaded deep learning 21.2.0.0, windows 10
My laptop is a an AMD Legion 5:
Processor   AMD Ryzen 7 4800H with Radeon Graphics 2.90 GHz
Installed RAM   32.0 GB (31.9 GB usable)
Storage   932 GB SSD Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB
Graphics Card   NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (6 GB)
System Type   64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch   No pen or touch input is available for this display

Comments

Gid wrote on 4/18/2025, 6:21 AM

@SyedDanish-Ali Hi, hard to say without seeing the video but it sounds like you've tried the AI options, yep they can be slow or inaccurate depending on the image. Next would be to create your own masks, these would require tracking of some kind, whether that is with Vegas's Motion tracker or Mocha, neither of which will work too well if the person turns their head & most prob require some work anyway regardless of how much the face moves. Next maybe would be a mask based on luminosity, this may or may not work as well as the AI versions (the AI may work on a similar basis🤷‍♂️) & you'd prob have to mask of the surrounding parts of that mask to remove unwanted parts.

BCC Witness ML has a face detection function, this only creates an oval mask & to use it as a mask + a teal/orange colouring the B/W matte from the fx would have to be applied as a mask or rendered out & used as a mask event.

Like this, I know this is a crap version 😉

If someone comes up with a better masking version it'd be interesting to hear. & color grading is really not my forte so I just stuck a grad on to show the colouring.

Can you find an online pic of how you'd like the face to end up looking like & a snapshot of your video?

Reyfox wrote on 4/18/2025, 7:51 AM

Do you have Mocha Vegas? I have it in VP21 Suite.

https://vfx.borisfx.com/mochavegas

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 4/20/2025, 1:25 PM

@SyedDanish-Ali A direct way to do it with only Vegas fx is to create the mask with Color Corrector (Secondary). Limit the hue range you want cgp to operate on which will exclude the rest. Follow it with cgp in the fx chain. Duplicate the track or event while inverting the mask with the same settings, but without cgp, to include the hues you want unaffected. You might be able to adjust the color in the mask itself without cgp, using the rotate hue slider, but you'll have to leave that adjustment out of track duplicated with the inverted mask. The masks will do exactly what you want, tracking color ranges included and excluded without regard to motion. Works the same way if you set the mask up based on luminance or saturation.

Gid wrote on 4/20/2025, 2:04 PM

@Howard-Vigorita Thanks for that, didn't know you could create a mask with that fx, 😁👍

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 4/20/2025, 3:15 PM

It's really best if you can come up with masking parameters unique to background or subject of interest.

alifftudm95 wrote on 4/24/2025, 2:35 AM

Best tool is to actually use Secondary Color Corrector that has isolation function similar to resolve qualifier.

You can watch my skin tone tutorial.

you can maintain "orange" skin by injecting small amount of red/warm and use color curve to manipulate the

background color to be cold and muted.