@shian I am watching your ColorFist tutorial. In Color Finesse (bundled with AE CS6), I can adjust the luma range (and the high/med/lows of the luma range window shift as I make adjustments), however the waveform and final image do not change at all like they do in your example. I have the little box checked to enable Luma Range changes. The other controls all effect the scopes and the 'Result' image; it is only Luma Range that is unresponsive. What am I missing?

Yeah, that will change here in a week or so. The site will get a little easier to navigate.

@QuickHitRecord you have to Login to be able to watch all the CGH Tutorials and FilmSchool videos.

One possible workaround is to import the AAF into After Effects, save that file and open it in Premiere Pro, and then export an edl or XML from PP

@shian, Hi again,

Just wanted to call off my request for help :-) I've solved the problem with the colors myself. Made a lot of tests in AE and searched through some sites.

What I'm gonna state now concerns a lot of GHears (on a PC - for sure)!

GH2 files have the broadcast luma range (16-235: black - 16 and white - 235). It's not a full swing range (0-255). When you output your files in AE you gotta be very careful with the color management output settings and watch out for you codec's settings. In my case it's DNxHD (I'm on a PC). This codec has two internal color settings (you can use color setting: "709" or "RGB"). And this is very important.

If you use "709" in DNxHD then you'll get a nice colored look (the blacks are very pure, meaning the highest level of blacks is 0, not 16!). With this setting your image is very contrasty. I don't know about ProRes (for MAC users) but I assume everything's the same.

For example, if you output a movie in 709 full range (DNxHD is set to 709 as well) and this movie is cropped to 2,35:1, when you play this movie in full screen you'll see the upper and lower black bars (projecting by your monitor). The highest level of your movie's black will be the same as the black color of the bars.

Now play any blu-ray or DVD on a PC. You'll notice that any uncropped widescreen movie (16:9 aspect ratio, inside -2,35:1) has these bars. Are they pure as the bars mentioned above? Right, they aren't. Because every blu-ray disk/DVD is recorded with the broadcast luma range (16-235) and the black level in these movies is not that "deep" and "pure" at all.

You can say that it's not a problem. Well, I think it's not a problem but... If you wanna get the CORRECT look, the first thing you gotta think about is the final detination of your output (meaning: will it be a movie theater, broadcast TV, your home blu-ray player, your PC or web sites?) because the correct level of blacks is not the same for the final output destinations I mentioned.

It's my personal view. Any comments are welcome.

Hi @shian and other GHears,

I have a problem with "colors" in After Effects, so I would appreciate if you could give me an advice in terms of exporting final footage after grading with ColorGHear and getting the right colors (I'm on a PC, AE CS6, Win 7).

After exporting with DNxHD the blacks in my images are TOO pure and the whites are TOO pure as well. As I understand, GH2's range is (16-235), but I interpret my GH2 files as "HDTV Rec. 709" (not as "HDTV Rec. 709 16-235" - broadcast range).

If in the AE's output settings I choose "Rec. 709", I get a clean graded image but it's too contrasty! And If I choose "HDTV Rec. 709 16-235" then the blacks in my image are faded too much. I've watched a lot of screengrabs from different movies in terms of analyzing the levels of black and none of them has a pure black. The black is not that "deep"/pure in these movies.

@shian, I know you're on a MAC, but taking into account your experience, what if you maybe know how to get the "correct look" in terms of blacks and whites. Maybe with Color Finesse?

Thanx in advance.

How to make a perfect couple between older versions of Sony Vegas Pro and Resolve Lite to involve ColorGHear.

I'm working with Sony Vegas Pro 11. Hence I think about a convinient workflow which would include Resolve Lite to finally involve ColorGHear methods. Does anybody have an idea of economical workflow.

What's about:

a) converting mts files into lossless video file which Resolve Lite could read, use these files as source files.

b) start cutting these source files with Sony Vegas Pro 11

c) consolidate source files to a single folder by "save as"-method of sony vegas whereas trimmed copies of source media are developed

d) use these trimmed copies to start color grading in Resolve Lite

e) render final version in Sony Vegas

I do understand that using Sony Vegas Pro 12 would be easier, but what about the older versions...

Schweet!

@shian it could be. Also, I haven't gone through all of them yet either. I just anticipate a lot of folks dragging and dropping without necessarily taking the interaction of blending mode into account for each type of operaton. The color grads, for instance, I don't know which would be worse, them thinking they're broke or thinking that's how they're supposed to look with the default blending mode.

That could very well be a bad assumption on my part, since I don't come from any sort of heavy Photoshop background. With the compositing tools "I grew up with", even if they had the full gamut of operations from the Ron Brinkmann books on tap, it was rare to use anything but over,add,screen,mult, inside or outside and a few more I can't remember anymore because newer software tends to dress up the terminology a little.

Attachment: take a look at this, if you like.

1) This is what I use for sharpening instead of any of the built-in sharpening tools and like the result. It's a high-pass filter, essentially, for After Effects. At a filter size of '6' it works pretty well for DSLR footage without heavy false-edging like you get with traditional sharpening filters. It works better than un-sharp mask as well. (transfer mode: OVERLAY)

2) You've got your Tony Scott homage, here's the above set to Dragan ;)

3) And here's a version of the pixelart attempt to mimic cross-processing, fixed to work in a 32bit linear workflow. (I'm gonna be bugging the Film Convert guys to add cross-processing and dye-transfer to their film presets once they're done adding new camera presets)

@shian Question for you: have you experimented with doing certain "GHears" or tweaks with other than the normal blending mode? I've gotten into the habit of doing certain types of effects to a copy of a clip and then compositing this result over the original using COLOR. I wasn't sure, but this seems to work just fine with your ColorGHear methodology.

Specifically, I see better looking output from the grain killer when its layer uses the COLOR blending mode. A/B between the result both ways and see if you agree. Tiny detail, represented by luminance, stays intact while the noisy color channels get smoothed out. I've also found your grain killer node works quite well with applying a median filter at about 3 (and also using COLOR for blending) for 1080 footage I've found. The two of these ganged up look like they're smoothing out some really bad, highly saturated and medium luminance blues especially.

@shian just one quick question - when talking about exposing in the zone, how would I go about using that principle in broad daylight, lots of blue's, skies, water...long shot stuff

What should be my primary reference, GH's lightmeter or histogram?

I think it was right there in the first, free primer video he states it's basically all levels and curves. The catch is, and it's a superb endorsement for his technique, both of these tools have been in, like, v1.0 of After Effects and almost every other tool that allowed color correction for video. This is the first time I've seen color correction this extreme and this vibrant demonstrated so well starting with non-444 sources.

The better stuff out there, the footage that got me excited about shooting with DSLRs, the look is always somewhat muted and controlled, so that its MP4 origination doesn't call attention to itself. The way Shian was able to make the signage in Andrew's Japan footage pop the way it does, without falling apart, that was worth $50 just to see how that was possible.

I'm itching to put some files through a full pipeline of Flowmotion (or bigger patch, I need to upgrade my cards first) + Windmotion (444 upsample) + Film Convert + ColorGhear!

;)

@shian Thanks for the answer. I'm also more after the tutorials but also interested in speeding up my grading process. Zilk, please share some of your work!