Premiere Pro News Notes #05 (Color Edition)

A series of as-they-come notes on news of assorted Premiere Pro tutorials, tips, and related tools continues with Premiere Pro News Notes #05 (Color Edition).

77 free color grades for AE

Unseen here, Facebook users can "like" Dropdrop.com to get the free template "Cassidy Bisher's Color Grades for AE." The package includes 77 comps; just drop in video underneath the adjustment layers + effects, or substitute a video placeholder.

Cassidy also has many After Effects tutorial videos available on Vimeo that support his AE templates at Dropdrop.com. Here's an example of his work that was liked by Particular creator Peder Norrby:

CS Next is CS 5.5

CS Next is CS 5.5 at PVC has details and links to videos and more. New features include Warp Stabilizer, Camera Lens Blur, stereoscopic 3D camera rig, light fall-off, source timecode, & more!

 Continuing updates on CS 5.5 will be available at AE Portal on PVC.

Good sources of news on NAB include ProVideo Coalition. PVC authors like Alex Lindsay, Adam Wilt. and FreshDV are doing video reports.

Free plug-ins: Colorista Free, LUT Buddy + AE Flame

Still phasing in a transition to ProVideo Coalition -- here's the latest:

Colorista Free and LUT Buddy and AE Flame: free plug-in for CS4 & CS5.

Meanwhile on Aetuts+, check out Parenting: Basics + the Jump Parent.

Compositing and Color in AE and Premiere with RGS

In Episode 54 of Red Giant TV, Compositing and Color Correction in After Effects and Premiere Pro, Eran Stern returns to show you how he created the promo for his new DVD: The Best of Premiere Pro.

He covers keying, compositing, color correction, and visual effects in After Effects and Premiere. In this tutorial he features uses of Red Giant tools along with plenty of other tips.

After Effects A-Z: Brightness & Contrast

Motionworks' tour of built-in AE filters continues with a few words on the Brightness & Contrast effect (AE Help) with guest presenter Topher Welsh.

Beyond that we can note that in Photoshop, Brightness & Contrast is much improved, though those improvements haven't trickled down to Afters Effects and Premiere. In AE the effect even seems different than the Legacy option in Photoshop, thought it hardly matters since you're better off with Levels or Curves anyway. For a good illustrative look at limitations (using the waveform levels monitor in Premiere), see Color Correction 1: Brightness & Contrast by Andrew Devis.

For an in-depth intro to controlling color in AE with the standard Adobe tools, see Adobe After Effects CS5 Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques by Mark Christiansen. It's really the best place to learn how to use these tools in AE, and builds the foundations for mastering procedural mattes for compositing.

If you need a free option, happily there's videos at Lynda.com from Photoshop CS4 One-on-One: Advanced by Deke McClelland, with a whole section that covers the basics of Level, Curves, and related effects in detail. See also the free infographics Levels Quick Reference Guide (thanks for the picture) and Curves Quick Reference Guide by John Dickinson, as well as some useful tutorials at Cambridge in Colour.

To go a bit deeper see AE Portal references Waveform, vectorscope, and basic color correction and White balance + more with Color Finesse.

PVC book review: Color Correction Handbook

Over at PVC, Scott Simmons has a book review of Alexis Van Hurkman’s Color Correction Handbook. The subtitle summarizes:

This is a MUST read for those interested in color grading and a SHOULD read for everyone else.

Peachpit offers a butchered sample chapter online but the Amazon preview is a better experience if you can't gets your hands on a hard copy to peak at latest in color correction (including DaVinci Resolve). Scott says to read both this one by Van Hurkman and The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction by Steve Hullfish -- the expanded version of a Hullfish book reviewed at AEtuts that offers deep analysis with professional colorists.

For more on the authors, see the Colorist Interview Series: Hullfish & Van Hurkman on The Tao of Color. For some practical resources for After Effects, see Monitoring And Correction With Color Finesse on AEtuts+, How to talk to a Colorist, and posts tagged color on AE Portal.

For fun, here's an extremely abridged version of the documentary Visions of Light,

Colorist Interview Series: Hullfish & Van Hurkman

The Tao of Color Grading started a Colorist Interview Series, complete with discussion outlines and resource links. You'll also find notes on working with DaVinci, Apple Color, Magic Bullet Looks, etc. on the website and extras in the newsletter. So far there are 2 audio interviews, both with authors of books on software tools.

Steve Hullfish interview:

• Part 1: The Skill Set of Professional Colorists
• Part 2: Sharpen Your Axes (or, why learn color grading)
• Check out an AEtuts+ book review on Color Correction for Video by Hullfish and Fowler

Alexis Van Hurkman interview:

• Part 1: This Checkbox is for Checkboxing
• Part 2: A Bad Grade = Giving The Edit Away
• Part 3: The 3 Pillars of a Grading Suite: How To Set Up Your Room for Color Correction
• For an exploration of definitions, see How to talk to a Colorist by Van Hurkman

Some of this goes deep into color correction and grading issues. For some practical resources for After Effects, see Monitoring And Correction With Color Finesse on AEtuts+.

Colorista session with Prolost

Stu Maschwitz posted a color correcting session, Color Correcting Food with Colorista II. Stu says his "favorite bit is at 09:00 - about why colors blow out ugly on video and how to fix it."

Prolost has a bunch of tutorials and related posts, like Color Correcting Canon 7D Footage and Colorista II Tutorials (6 videos). Here's the session, which uses DV Rebel Tools script and more; there's more on Prolost:

07 - Color Correcting Food with Magic Bullet Colorista II from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.

Demystifying color grading, with footage

Oliver Peters posted another set of color experiments in Demystifying Color Grading II. He shows how many different tools can be used to design interesting looks in Final Cut and Avid, and includes a ton of examples using native tools, Magic Bullet Looks, Magic Bullet Colorista II (see the recent review by LFHD), and filters from GenArts, Coremelt, BorisFX, and Noise Industries.

The cool thing is that you have access the the same source footage:

"As subject matter, I decided to play with the short film Convergence, filmed by UK Director Martin Scanlan and DoP Steve Lawes. This is one of the first video pieces produced with a pre-production model of the brand new Sony PMW-F3 camera. Scanlan was kind enough to post both the ungraded offline-edited version and the final color-graded version of Convergence on Vimeo. Further info is on their blog. They have graciously made the ungraded version available for download, so I pulled some examples from the 1920×1080 H264 file."

Oliver provides links to his other recent articles on color (see especially Color Correction Effects Demystified and Grading with Color Wheels); click the tag color to find AE Portal color-related notes.

Waveform, vectorscope, and basic color correction

Andrew Devis has series of newer tutorials on color in After Effects and Premiere. Here are the ones for AE:

• Primary Color Correction in After Effects
• Secondary Color Correction in After Effects
• The Vectorscope in After Effects
• [later] Waveform Monitors in After Effects

Related AE Portal posts include: White balance + more with Color Finesse, Profiles and color management in AE, How to talk to a Colorist, and a review of the book Color Correction For Video by Steve Hullfish at AEtuts. See also Color Correction in Adobe After Effects CS3 by Mark Christiansen, an excerpt from his book that covers what you really need to know about Levels & Curves.

By the way, there are 2 other 3rd party plug-ins that provide good monitoring in AE (not in a modal dialog box), Synthetic Aperture Test Gear and Metadma ScopoGigio.

An interesting free Pixel Bender filter was posted on Video Copilot last year, Waveform Monitor by Peter Werner, shown below.

3D or Real: 'Above Everything Else'

@AdobeAE notes Fxguide on Above Everything Else by Alex Roman (embedded below), 3D or Real: Above Everything Else.

It's a commercial almost completely done in CG. 3D renders were done in multiple passes. Roman and his partner used Frischluft's Lenscare plug-in to control of depth of field, and extra glows and flares, crushed blacks, and vignettes were done in 32-bit full-float with the standard AE color correction tools plus Magic Bullet Looks.

Read more on Fxguide...

Silestone -- 'Above Everything Else' from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Combining Multiple DSLR Exposures in AE

No Film School noted Combining Multiple Exposures for HDR with DSLR Video by Robin Schmidt, who writes further on his blog El Skid. A few simple masks in After Effects can make for some much better shots, though of course motion may add difficult wrinkles.

SKIDVID6 - COMBINING MULTIPLE EXPOSURES FOR HDR WITH DSLR VIDEO from Robin Schmidt on Vimeo.

Soviet Montage posted some nice demos earlier without details, except that the image was fed via a beam splitter. Richard van den Boogaard says that Soviet Montage worked with E3D Creative, who have rigs for Motion HDR (their demos used AE CS4 for "some tricky luma key"); see Exploring HDR Video – The Real Future of 3D Video.

HDR Video Demonstration Using Two Canon 5D mark II's from Soviet Montage on Vimeo.


Update: FilmmakerIQ notes a video in which "MiLapse shows you how to setup a HDR timelapse shot using the Dynamic Perception Stage Zero Dolly, MX2 DollyShield and Pentax K7."

How to shoot HDR Timelapse from Dynamic Perception on Vimeo.

How to talk to a Colorist

Walter Biscardi noted How to talk to a Colorist by Alexis Van Hurkman, which discusses topics like these:

• Brightness is Lightness
• Contrast Is a Stretch
• Saturation Is Intensity
• Hue Is Just a Name
• Cool and Warm Are Important Descriptions, Too
• What, Exactly, Do You Want Me to Change?

If this piques your interest, check out @hurkman's other writings on Colorista II, DaVinci Resolve, etc and his recent book The Color Correction Handbook --which covers cross platform fundamentals, tips, and techniques covering the art and process of professional color correction for film, broadcast, or the web with Assimilate Scratch, FilmLight Baselight, Quantel Pablo, Iridas SpeedGrade, Apple Color, and the new version of DaVinci Resolve.

Test Gear for After Effects CS5

Synthetic Aperture has released Test Gear 2.5 for AE CS5 (and CS3/CS4), with 64-bit compatibility plus new features. Test Gear installs test intruments including waveform monitor, vectorscope, histogram, and audio monitoring directly into the After Effects interface. It supports ITU.R 601, ITU.R 709 (HD), and SMPTE 240M color systems, and there's no need to apply an effect to get displays.

Additionally, it adds a color picker and color swatch book support. Synthetic Aperture also offers a variety of free articles offering tips and techniques for dealing with digital video and audio.

Mamoworld: a new After Effects resource

Mamoworld is a new After Effects resource with free video tutorials and scripts by Mathias Möhl, who is already known for his AE scripts and tutorials on his previous blog AE Extensions and on AE Scripts (see previous AEP notes). The new site has 4 fresh tutorials and some older ones.

Mathias also provides new versions of his AE scripts on the new site. All scripts have both a German and an English user interface. The MochaImport interface has been updated with intuitive new features, for example with a way to work with a stabilized version of the footage in a precomp so that all changes performed there are automatically applied also to the original unstabilized one. This feature is also available for corner pin tracks without needing a third-party plug-in. Those that know Tracker2Mask, KeyTweak, and Chameleon (for color swatches) may want to take a look at their new features too.

Scripts aren't meant for scripting gurus, so duck in! By the way, see comments by Mathias on the various strengths of approaches to tracking in AE in Building an Airport Scene with MochaImport [updated].

Here's one of the new tutorials:

Tutorial: Mocha Corner Pin - Part 1 from Mathias Möhl on Vimeo.

Profiles and color management in AE

Andrew Devis has a new After Effects tutorial video, The AE Color Space, which looks at some basics for color management:

"You spend a lot of time making sure your project looks just right, but if you don't embed a colour profile into your final output, then you have no control over how that precious project will look on other machines and devices! In this After Effects video tutorial, Andrew Devis explains how this works and shows how to set up a colour profile for your project; and then how to embed it into your output so that you can be sure all your hard work will be properly represented on other devices."

For more on color management, see many pages in AE Help starting at Color, books like Mark Christiansen's After Effects Studio Techniques and Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects by Chris & Trish Meyer, and these previous AEP posts:

• Color Management in a CG workflow (Johan Steen discussing "how to calibrate and profile your display and then how to configure and setup your 2D, 3D and post processing applications for a color managed workflow.")

• Introducing Color Management in AE (Trish and Chris Meyer first explain it)

• More help on color management (Todd Kopriva post & Adobe Whitepaper)

• Understanding linear workflow in After Effects (AEtuts video, and links to float torchbearer Stu Maschwitz and others)

• Color space in Premiere ("space" more broadly in various articles by Karl Soule), and [later] the color theory articles at Colorgrader.net.

Color control panel for the iPad

@andymees notes summaries by Peter Salvia on the free Tangent Devices vWave-Lite for the iPad, noted recently by Steve Hullfish, Bob Sliga, and others. See blog scoop – chris from tangent devices discusses vwave-lite for ipad and color control panel for the ipad at Salvia's blog Proactively for a look cool vs. cost and lack of tactile feedback. Here's a video of the iPad app from Steve Hulfish:

Tangent Devices' iPad Color Controller from Steve Hullfish on Vimeo.

'Color Correction for Video' review + giveaway

AEtuts posted a Color Correction For Video “Thanksgivaway”! as well as by my review for this book, which is a serious overview of color grading for moving images by Steve Hullfish. The book is platform agnostic, using screenshots and examples from major applications and filters (including Color Finesse in After Effects), though favoring Apple Color. It also comes with 25 extra iPod-compatible tutorial movies.

A major strength of the book is real advice from professional colorists, which is taken even further in another Hullfish book, The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction (2008).

White balance + more with Color Finesse

Update: a one-click solution is now offered by Francois Tarlier, ft-Auto White Balance.

@AdobeAE shares an AE forum post where Bob Currier explains how to auto white-balance using a new feature of Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse in After Effects CS5:

The "Auto Color" button in Color Finesse (included with AE) will correct white-balance errors. The correction is based on the current frame, so choose an "average" frame to white balance to. To do white balance it's really simple: Apply Color Finesse to a layer. In the effect controls window, click the "Auto Color" button. You're done.

Obviously there's a lot more to Color Finesse, but despite its depth, it's pretty simple for doing simple things. (Note that Auto Color is new to Color Finesse 3 and CS5.) There's a list of training resources at http://www.synthetic-ap.com/support/kb/420301.html.

The Synthetic Aperture training resources page lists almost every resource mentioned here previously. There may be a few extra details in AE Help (10.0.1 update info) plus there's a win in Grading with Color Wheels, a roundup of color correction approaches by Oliver Peters. Here's Chris Meyers on CF in CS5:

Update: There's a 3.03 update to CF ("LE" version for CS5), plus Andrew Devis has tutorials on primary and secondary color correction using CF.